Stan, what you are doing is truly awesome! Giving of yourself without an expectation of financial gain seems so rare these days. I bet the payback to you, though not monetary, is significant!

My wife and I have been talking about doing this for several years but have never actually done it yet. So, how would one start doing what you are doing? Do you have to contact the facilities and see if they want this? Are most places glad to have this? Do you do it on a regular basis? How often? How long is your set? Do you try to do mostly standards or do you spice it up a bit with some newer stuff? Approximately how many people attend each show? Any issues one should be aware of?

John-John-John. I'll try to respond to your points 1 x 1:

1. Yes, contact the activity director at the facility and/or manager.
2. Yes, they are always glad and thankful for free entertainment
3. The places we do our duet are once a month.
4. We play between 35 and 50 minutes. It depends on the type of facility. Dementia patients have a shorter attention span than non-dementia patients--that's been our experience anyway. At the rehab hospital, the activity guy brings the patients who are able into the dining room where we play while they eat. This was his idea to get them off the wards to give them a break and take their minds off their problems for a 30 minutes.
5. We play mostly old standards but have started to throw in some newer stuff. Hey, some Elvis stuff is now over 50 years old! We try to do tunes that the audience might know. Sometimes one of them knows more songs than we do including all the words for all the verses.
6. For equipment, we started with a boombox with cds. Then we went to a Roland cm-30 cube using an old Archos jukebox. We tried to use small mp3 player but now use our netbook via xonar3 to the cube. We are now using a roland micro cube w/batteries for the smaller places. That little puppy has some power, too. I still plug the netbook in just in case. We use AiMP3 for the flash player. If the place is larger, like a church, we use the powered cm-30 and mic my wife's flute with an AKG condenser mic w/9v battery. We've found that smaller is better for equipment due to some space and transport issues.
7. The audience size can vary from 7-10 to 30+. Of course church can easily be over 100.
8. We try to play upbeat tunes such as 5 foot 2 and shy away from sad/morose tunes such as My Funny Valentine. We pass out word sheets for most of the tunes so that they can sing along. We try to involve the audience as much as possible. Some will just sit there and stare; Don't worry about it since they may be taking it all in even if it doesn't show.

We are also in a small band-about 15, that plays for 9 months at a different place each week. We do not play at those same places with our duet. It is a time commitment and sometimes the songs can get boring. I've finally got a different 15-17 song program for each month and that helps to keep our interest. We do a patriotic program for November and Christmas program for December. I try not to have the same songs in more than one program, but that's more for us than the audience. We try to pick songs that we think they might remember rather than AC-DC or Def Leopard. Sinatra hits are popular as are Gershwin, Irving Berlin, even some real oldies like Bicycle Built For 2. Songs from older musicals are also good.

Sorry to all for the long post, but if it helps someone get out and entertain the folks, I don't feel bad about it.

Cornet Curmudgeon