December 2025

Not much happened in December. A couple of Yacht Rock gigs, a couple of church gigs…but first!

I had to learn some of this solo for the Yacht Rock Schooner gig I subbed on in November, and I thought that figuring out the rest of it would be a fun project. Check it out! David Sanborn's solo on the Carly Simon version of You Belong to Me. Making the backing tracks was as much fun as learning the solo.

Friday, December 5, 2025: Atlanta, GA to Seattle, WA. Kind of a mess. We flew west on Friday night with the band spread across several flights. I went on the late flight, but because of the way the tickets were booked, I didn’t have Sky Priority (meaning one free checked bag versus three with Sky Priority), so I had to drive my saxophones to Peter Searcy’s house on Thursday. He also did not have Sky Priority, but he was on the same flight with Kip, and Kip had Sky Priority, so he was able to check them at no additional charge. I brought my box of stuff (sax stands, flute, etc) and my suitcase to the airport. I checked the box, and gate checked my suitcase. Follow all that?

Through the magic of AirTags, I could wonder if they'd fallen out of the plane as they crossed the country.

On my way to the airport, I-75 was briefly shutdown (on a Friday at 5 PM!), and all traffic was diverted onto Northside Drive, and it took me an hour and forty minutes, and I wanted to turn around and go home.

Anyway, five and half hour flight. This big lumberjack guy slept for most of the flight, but he violently jerked in his sleep and elbowed me a couple of times. When that wasn’t happening, I wrote a bass clarinet chart for an upcoming project, ate a sub for dinner, and took a nap.

look at my old laptop go!

Pub sub!

The weather was wet and windy, and our approach into the airport felt like the gusts were pushing us around too much, and we were too fast, and I was pretty sure we were going to crash. In a way we did, I guess—it was the most violent landing I can remember. Even the lumberjack next to me said, “I fly every week—that was a really hard landing.”

A driver delivered us to the hotel in downtown Seattle, and I ran on the treadmill. There were a bunch of teenagers in the hotel, and a few couples were looking for places to make out--the exercise room, for instance. I'm glad. they didn't stick around once I started running.

Saturday, December 6, 2025: Seattle, WA. I woke up pretty early (thank you west coast time), had coffee in my room, went for a run, and had Indian food at a restaurant down the street. 

"an odd but ingenious contraption"

not much going on at the port today

the place where they throw the fish

a wall of old chewing gum

this was good!

ye olde back hallway noodling

ye olde rice and beans dinner

The gig tonight was some sort of corporate fundraiser, maybe cancer research at a hospital? I don’t remember exactly, and we were backstage, so I missed most of that. Guess who else was backstage: Rob Lowe! He was the MC for the evening. While I was standing around, he approached me, asking what we had on the setlist for the evening, and he said that he was very much a yacht rock afficianado! Our set list was approved!

Rob Lowe, just hanging out backstage, looking at his phone

He didn’t stick around, in case you were wondering. He came off the stage after saying goodnight and went right out the back door of the ballroom with his handler.

For us, it was the usual thing. Van and I worked on my mix, and got it seventy-five percent better than it had been at the previous fly-date gig in Connecticut when I couldn’t hear anybody else on stage.

My trouble with the Africa solo hit a new low tonight—my hand was shaking so bad that I played a bunch of wrong notes and had to stop and wait for the next phrase to get back on track, and I was so destroyed that I messed up the beginning of the next song, too. Everybody got a good laugh out of that.

After the show, I sent one saxophone with Kip and one saxophone with Nick (both had earlier flights and Sky Priority), and I went back upstairs to my room to stew over my performance.

Sunday, December 7, 2025: Seattle, WA to Atlanta, GA. Our flight had a small delay, just long enough for me to eat an entire burrito before boarding. When I got back to Georgia, I swung by Nick’s house, talked to his dog, and collected my two saxophones.

Thursday, December 11, 2025: Marietta, GA. One of the churches that regularly hires me to play, the Catholic Church of St. Ann, had a mostly secular Christmas sing along concert. I played it last year, and this year I was again invited to participate. My friend Ed runs the music ministry and plays piano, and he was the leader on this one, and he hires good musicians and just lets them play whatever off of generic lead sheets. It was kind of weird--there were plenty of people on stage all filling in around the lyrics, so I mostly stayed out of the way--I felt like I played less than ever--but everybody still liked it. I guess it worked. We all just kind of chased Ed for ninety minutes.  Pretty fun, though.

Friday, December 12, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I played a short gig with Blair Crimmins at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta (sort of). There was some kind of corporate holiday party going on in the Egyptian Ballroom upstairs, and we led a parade down to the ground floor, out the front door, and down the street to the bar on the corner, where I presume they must've been having some kind of after-party. We had prepared three songs, so each one went really long, and then Blair threw a curve ball at us and called a fourth song that most of us knew? I vaguely remembered it from previous gigs. Anyway, not too bad for a thirty minute gig. I think I played pretty well (it was just clarinet), and it wasn't too cold even though we stood outside on the corner of Peachtree and Ponce for a long time.

I still haven't made up my mind as to whether Blair is using me as a sub because I'm doing a good job, or I'm just the only person available.

Oh yeah, and the traffic was hellacious. It took me forty-five minutes to travel the last mile to the parking lot, and then northbound traffic after the gig was terrible, too. 

Wednesday, December 17, 2025: Roswell, GA. I got contracted to play with the Atlanta Pops, backing up John Driskell Hopkins for his yearly Christmas show. Nick and Pete were then asked to sit in on a song, and then the whole band was asked to sit in on two songs. So, three songs on saxophone (really!) and two songs on keyboards. So weird. I kind of wanted to ask if they needed a second flute or second clarinet, or a bass clarinet or something (just looking for something to do for two thirds of the show!), but it was a union gig and they'd have to pay extra money and it probably wasn't any benefit for them, so I just dropped it. 

There was lots of hanging around, watching from the wings, and talking to my buddy Gary, who was there for the entire day to play ONE SONG on bari sax.

Kip and Zach on sound tonight

Nick, working on a stage prop for our holiday show

Anyway, the gig paid great--the full fee for three songs, plus they paid a fee because the concert was to be livestreamed (the livestream didn't work, but we got paid anyway), and I the concert went longer than anticipated, so we made overtime. Hooray for union gigs that have all these extra charges in place!

Ya know what was weird, though? I knew the five brass players behind me pretty well and I met Eryn, the bassoonist sitting next to me, but the horn players, and the flute, clarinet, and oboe in front of me completely avoided acknowledging my existence in any way. It was a very weird vibe. Even the string players were nicer. 

Saturday, December 20, 2025: Smyrna, GA. The Yacht Rock Holiday Show at The Roxy. Great gig! I had fun, and I got through the Africa solo (barely). I was so nervous by the time the song started that I could barely play the thing I do in the intro.

I must've spilled something on my horn--there's this pink streak where something is reacting with the brass

Let's take a second to talk about the things I have done to deal with this bullshit, all of which has been going on since I cracked at the beginning of October:

1. Practiced the solo a million times very slowly, like 60% of the tempo

2. Practiced the solo with a different rhythm to try and create a new neurological groove in my brain, since the old groove seems to be messed up

3. Practiced each hand separately, especially working on my right hand, since that's where most of the trouble is happening. At the worst moments, my right hand feels like it has no muscles in it--I can't make my hand form the proper shape, and I can't make my fingers move in time

4. Read The Inner Game of Tennis 

5. Watched a bunch of Inner Game of Tennis videos on YouTube

6. Read The Inner Game of Music

7. Watched a bunch of videos about the golfing yips, which completely blew up my algorithm. Based on all the putting yips videos, I changed the rhythm of the second phrase, much the way the videos suggested that I change my putting grip.

8. Tried singing along with it to change my focus

9. Tried practicing the whole song, so that I could feel the solo within the context of the rest of the thing, but also to see if I could get a little bit nervous but also make it all the way to the end without disintegrating.

10. Looped the solo section over and over at a Yacht Rock soundcheck to see if I could either find out what was wrong or beat the nervousness out of me (neither worked). I could play it over and over without any issues at all.

I can't wait for this to be over. I wish that we could play Africa three times on every gig. I want to beat the nervousness out of my system.

Back to the gig: we're going to use several cameras on stage next year that project onto the video wall, and tonight we tried them out to see how it will work. Looks like it looks cool! Hopefully we don't get so caught up in playing with the new toys that we forget to engage with the people in the room.

Wednesday, December 24, 2025: Marietta and Atlanta, GA. It's church gig time! I started at St. Ann's in Marietta, playing the overflow mass at 4 PM. When that finished, I jumped in my car and drove to Atlanta to play the 6 PM mass at the Cathedral. That ended at 7, and I jumped back in my car and drove back to St. Ann's to play at 8 PM.

Thursday, December 25, 2025: Marietta, GA. Two more! Jan Smith, Briana, and I played the 9 and 11 AM Christmas Day services at St. Ann's. My flute face was super tired.

(also on YouTube: https://youtu.be/CMAxo-1cO5g?si=1gPlpbJq_cBIX4u6)

Wednesday, December 31, 2025. No New Year's Eve gig this year, which felt kind of weird. With the exception of the year of COVID (when there were no NYE gigs for anybody), I've had a gig somewhere. I guess my streak has ended! It was just another night at home.

Another way to think of it: last year, we opened for Journey in Las Vegas, and this year we don't even have a gig! We've peaked! Game over, man!

Anyway, here's one more video to close out the year. A little arrangement I found online of Bach's Christmas Oratorio. Somebody else wrote this arrangement for flute, oboe, and bassoon, so I rewrote it for flute, clarinet, and bass clarinet. Dig it!

November 2025

November was slow, but I kind of needed the time for some other stuff, and just the general catching up on life.

November 1, 2025: Atlanta GA. Remember the New Orleans brunch gig that I did at that crappy restaurant in Buckhead? We played Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans, and it reminded me how much I loved the Harry Connick Jr/Dr. John version on Harry's album Twenty. It also made me think about how much my grandmother liked the Pete Fountain/Al Hirt style of New Orleans music, so this one's for her!

November 6, 2025: Decatur, GA. Nick had a solo show at Eddie's Attic, and he invited me to play a few songs.

My part started with Nick doing a solo version of the Kenny Loggins song Heart to Heart, and when he got to the sax solo, I interrupted him (this was a planned bit), and we began together from there. After that, we played three Yacht Rock Revue songs: Doobie Bounce, Step, and Bad Tequila (where I managed to get lost in what we were doing and completely blew up at the actual sax part). Nobody seemed to mind, though.

November 8, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I subbed on saxophone with the Yacht Rock Schooner. Details came in late for this one--I just knew it was a Schooner gig over by East Lake Golf Club. Later on, I found out it was some kind of music festival. Huh...when I got there, it was this stage inside this tent in a green space in an unfinished apartment complex. Very odd. No parking. Virtually no advertising either, so I didn't have high hopes. Oh yeah, and it was chilly with a good chance of rain. And the crowd would be standing in a muddy field where they'd just laid new sod. 

They had several bands, and music going from 5 PM to 11 PM. We shall see!

As expected, kind of a dud of a gig. The band was fine (and they had dedicated parking for "artists"), but the rest of it didn't feel like it was organized by anyone who'd ever run a festival. Maybe it was a pet project for someone on a city board or something, or money set aside for arts and they couldn't come up with a better idea.

The best thing about it was that we started a half hour early. Start early, end early!

Anyway...an easy night for me, just playing saxophone on about two thirds of the set. Monkeyboy subbed on guitar. I think we performed for about thirty people at the most. 

the audience, end of our show

Friday, November 14, 2025: near Columbia, SC. This was the Camp Cole fundraiser gig--we've played it a few times, and the people are always cool, and it's for a good cause ("Camp Cole is a camp and retreat in South Carolina that serves individuals with illnesses, disabilities, and life challenges"). 

Up and down the driveway I ran, for a total of 6.1 miles

my strange dinner--fried rice and pizza

fried Saltines--this is a new one for me

Easy gig. Dark stage.

October 2025

Not as much stuff happening in October...

Wednesday, October 1, 2025: Mashantucket, CT. What a name! This was a corporate gig at a bar in a casino. We started the day by flying from Atlanta to Hartford, where two sprinter vans picked us up and drove us seventy-five minutes to the gig.
 

We used rented gear for this one, and all of it was good, but hot damn, my in-ear mix was worse than ever! It sounded like I was playing along with a band in the room next to us. All I could hear was my keyboards and the kick drum. Totally survivable for ninety minutes, but it was really bad. We have another fly date coming up in December, and I would like to set everything at the same level and then start turning individual instruments down. Maybe that's the move...? Some consoles have an app and wireless so that I could make adjustments without having to ask for a million things, and I would like to try fixing it that way. We'll see. I've definitely worked my way into a giant mess.

Anyway, soundcheck took a very long time, so I missed the chance to run on the treadmill, and the gym closed before the gig finished, so no run today. There were a few dinner options, but I went with Subway (oh man, the guy making sandwiches was so inept I thought I was going to run out of time before he finished making my order), and then had some chips and fruit in the green room.

On the plus side, I used my "other" pair of saxophones because my "road" pair are in the trailer in Atlanta. Something is definitely wrong with my "road" tenor.

Thursday, October 2, 2025: travel day. Reverse it! 9 AM lobby call, 4:30 PM back home. Kip bought a dozen doughnuts for the ride back to the airport. 

Saturday, October 4, 2025: Portland, OR. I was asked to sub with the Yacht Rock Schooner guys on a fly date in Portland, as the regular guy is having some kind of in-ear/motion sickness issue and can't fly.

We flew out the night before. That's a long time sitting on a plane.

We stayed in the Duniway Hotel downtown, one of my favorite spots. 

One pleasant effect of jet lag: I am up early enough to justify breakfast! These were great.

the view from my hotel room window

A very quiet Saturday in the war ravaged PNW.

Zach Wetzel (former YRR monitor guy) was with us on this gig, running sound and coordinating all the details, and we had a chance to go grab lunch and catch up. Good Indian food just a few blocks away!

the view from the gig

OK, so this gig...somebody's birthday party, at a winery. We (the Schooner) were the opening band--the second band was an ABBA tribute, and there was a rumor that they'd been flown in from Europe. Woah! This is expensive.

For me, this was kind of a weird one. I only played saxophone, no keyboard, so it was familiar and yet not so. Some songs had no saxophone, so I just went and stood in the back corner of the stage. Am I doing this right? 

Whatever. The evening's schedule got out of whack, and we ended up only playing for an hour.

Saturday, October 11, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Delta Airlines turned 100, and they rented out Mercedes-Benz stadium for the party. We played a set after Ludacris and before Thomas Rhett. WSB must've left the party early.

We had an early call--8 AM--to meet at the stadium loading dock to be escorted in. From there, we went straight into setup.

I brought my other tenor sax from home so that I could feel the difference between my road ravaged tenor and the one that stays at home. Surprise! They both feel fine. I. am. still. insane.

9 AM soundcheck. Finished by 9:30. 

Our part of the show was scheduled for 3:30 PM, so lots of hanging out. I took a nap--no surprise there. After lunch, more hanging out. We had credentials and could walk around, but it felt crowded enough that I thought I'd probably catch Covid or the flu or something. The odds were too good, so I went back to our suite behind the stage.

I went side stage and watched a little bit of Ludacris, and it felt like most of the Delta people were there to see him and see Thomas Rhett, and probably had no idea who we were.

Anyway...the gig! Mostly good. I wasn't shaky nervous--I would say I felt kind of disconnected from the whole thing, like "Huh, this is what a giant stadium show looks like," except that I happened to also be playing at the stadium show. My mind was kind of wondering. I guess the inability to focus on what's happening is also a form of nerves? In my defense, there was a lot to look at.

As we got into it, I started to think about how I hadn't messed up the Africa solo in a while, and usually I get nervous about playing that solo at a big important gig in front of gazillion people, and then I made myself nervous and messed up the solo, so...way to go, Dave. That was annoying. I tried to think about how it was two measures in the middle of a two hour show, maybe not the end of the world, but it definitely bummed me out. I guess I should be thankful that at least it didn't show up in the news clip.

When I went out front to play Baker Street, the first time I leaned back, I caught sight of myself in the video screens up in the ceiling, and I was like DO NOT LOOK AT THAT!!!!! It was disorienting, and I wanted to look at it to see what I looked like, but there was a chance that it was going to make me mess or fall down. Can't have that! So I had to close my eyes when I looked up, but also don't look at the camera when I look down, and also, don't fall over, and also, don't mess up.

 

So much for that. I packed up my gear and went home, tired and annoyed.

Sunday, October 19, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I got a text Tuesday afternoon about playing a New Orleans jazz (known as "trad jazz," like traditional) brunch in Buckhead, in the middle of Atlanta. It's more like dixieland (but without the vests and arm garters) than Miles Davis. For me, it meant a lot of clarinet playing, so I was mostly interested in the chance to do that.

So...I got the address, the times, and the setlist, and on Sunday, I headed down there. Ugh. It was some kind of chain "New Orleans" everything-ending-in-"-eaux" restaurant with a weird parking situation, two people in the restaurant at 12:30 PM, and all the vibe of a CVS. Plus, the piano player forgot the power supply for his keyboard and had to go home to get it, so he missed the first forty minutes of a three hour gig. At one point, I had to go re-up my parking IN THE MIDDLE OF A SONG because the restaurant's validation expired after two hours. They said, "If you get a ticket, just email the restaurant general manager and they'll pay it." Yeah, I'm sure that's not a pain in the ass.

Anyway, the music was pretty fun, and the trumpet player leading the band was really good at this style. As for me, nobody hires me to play clarinet, so I liked the opportunity to play in this context. I think I did pretty good, but for the record, I did not get called to come and play again, so maybe not. 

I used the restroom before I left, and when I came out, the piano player was recommending another clarinet/sax player for the gig, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Thursday, October 23, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Yacht Rock played for the Live Thrive and the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials for several years in a row. I'm a big fan of recycling, so count me in!

The venue for this gig has bounced around. Most recently, it was at a distillery in West End, but that was horrible room for live music. This year it was at The Stave Room in town. Also a bad room for live music. At least it was closer to my house, though.

Our set up seemed like it was happening in slow motion--I think we were short a crew guy?---so the soundcheck ended up getting cut a little short (we were trying to rehearse some songs that we haven't played in a while).

The vegetarian dinner option was...half a potato with a glob of cheesy crap on it, two samosas, and some kind of little salad thing. Not enough food.

It was an ok gig. I think we played well and the crowd was great, but the room, being a big metal and concrete box, did us no favors. I tripped a little bit on the Africa solo (it's going to take a while for me to get my confidence back), and I blew a tricky spot in Everybody Wants to Rule the World, but I remembered how to play Maneater, so maybe those cancel each other out.

I brought home ten bananas from our rider. Score!

Saturday, October 25, 2025: Raleigh, NC. We flew to North Carolina to play a birthday party for someone with too much money. 

the Raleigh airport is nice

scene of the crime: a stage in a country club ballroom

vegetarian pasta dinner--pretty good!

We got into town pretty early, so we set up and sound checked and ate dinner and went to the hotel to check in and I ran (I ran so far away, I just ran, I ran all night and day, I couldn't get away) and we went back and hung around in our green room and dealt with the crazy lady who was a guest at the party and wanted to stir things up "backstage" while we were looking at our phones.

It was all pretty predictable, the crazy lady (who kept leaning over the rail to see what else was on the setlist, and also had some great ideas about what we should be playing), the drunk middle aged guys, their stylish wives, the holding-on-for-dear-life performance of the goddamn Africa solo. Yeah. It was a Saturday night gig. It was fine.

post show pizza

After everybody had decompressed and eaten a piece of pizza, we took cars back to the hotel (and the crew packed up our gear), and flew home the next day. No big deal.