The dressing room for Andrews Upstairs is up above the stage, and you can look out and see how the room is filling up before you go on. It's a small, hot room with a couple of couches, a mini fridge, and a restroom. We sat up there last night, worried because there was nobody on the floor in the twenty minutes or so before we started. It turns out that we were ok, though, because the bar in the other room was full and people were steadily filing in. By the time we got moving, it was pretty good. Not the most packed ever, but pretty thick. We have noticed that lots of our regular fans have been missing in action, but there are still plenty of new ones turning up, so that's cool.
Musically, it was a pretty solid night. For some reason, other people in the band actually put me in their monitor mixes last night. Usually I am ignored in that regard, but everybody threw a little bit in there, and that was cool. From my perch on the stage, I'm kind of isolated from the overall wash of stage volume, and you really can't hear my speaker except for where I am and where Greg is (more or less right in front of me).
I think the second tune we played was a C major scale. Just for the silliness of it, we played a two octave C major scale. I made it all the way to the end with no mistakes. I don't think the crowd appreciates our humor.
I had a couple of mistakes on the keyboard stuff--nothing major. At the end of Don't Go Breakin' my Heart, I accidentally landed on a sharp 11 chord (a Freudian jazz slip?). Oops. The sound gets so loud in there and it kind of swirls around the room, and it's hard to hear things like strings. On the other hand, I could look at my hands and see my finger on the B natural...
I picked up my alto for Reminiscing, and the first note I tried to play didn't come out at all. I guess my reed had kind of dried out/potato chipped on me, and it didn't vibrate at all. Not good! I desperately drooled on the sucker and it got going again. That sort of freaked me out--I wondered if the tenor reed was doing the same thing.
On The Biggest Part of Me, the headstock of Greg's bass smacked my microphone right at the start of my solo. I think he was more freaked out about than I was--he thought he might have knocked the horn into my teeth. No sweat. It was cool. Once again, I got excited and overblew, but I did play some better stuff than Thursday night (where I overblew and my horn crapped out a little, but I didn't play as many good ideas).
I also had a better flute solo on Lowdown than Thursday night, although the Thursday one wasn't a bunch of crap. In general, when I can hear myself really well I play better (and don't overblow), and playing flute on the front corner of the stage, I can hear the mains so well that I can clearly know what I'm doing.
We have a history of adding a bunch of breaks on Somebody's Baby, and Mark Cobb has been delaying the downbeat coming out of each break by a little bit more. I got to laughing about it so much that I screwed up some of my piano parts.
Things did come to the breaking point with the volume of the room. The constant complaint we hear from friends that come see us at Andrews is that the sound is DEAFENING. Greg finally went back to the sound man and ordered him to back the volume down (I think the demand was thirty percent less), and it made a huge difference. The room volume gets so loud that the front line mics start to pick up the noise and create a feedback loop. And really, overall it's just too loud even before that starts happening. This isn't KISS, it's smooth 70s, and too loud isn't cool--it's uncomfortable. So the second set was not as violently noisy, and we played better. Hopefully it will stay that way in the future. I've said it before--the sound guy can kill the band.
I don't know if I mentioned it before, but Yacht Rock as an official endorsement. We are somehow hooked up with Sebago! Our free boat shoes arrived yesterday. Mine are the old school brown with the white soles. What's next? A cocaine endorsement?
