Friday night we played Andrew's Upstairs. We sold it out again--such a strange feeling (still) to see a line of people waiting to see a gig that I'm on. The gig itself was pretty good. I was much more tired than the night before, so I don't think I was as sharp, but I can't recall any major disasters. It doesn't sound like FM is going to make the cut. We played it again (debuted it at the 10 High the night before), and people don't give much of a reaction. That's a bummer. I love playing it, and I'm pretty good on the string part (and getting there on the sax solo), but I guess songs with long rambling jazz solos don't appeal to these people. Perhaps Steely Dan is overrated.
Andrews video made a video recording (I would say "taped" except for the lack there of) of the performance. As usual, I'm kind of curious as to how it sounds, and then I'm also scared that my performance will not get good grades. With any luck, the soundman's love of reverb and delay will cloud any of my questionable efforts.
Other than that, we raised $600+ more dollars for Haiti. I can dig that.
Saturday night, I played a Platnumb gig in Knoxville. A very strange gig--it was a 2009 holiday party, even though it's now 2010. I believe somebody said they were a bunch of pawn shop owners. That made sense--lots of very tacky people. We played at the Marriott in Knoxville, which looked a lot like a multi level bomb shelter.
On this gig I played sax and EWI. We had a one hour soundcheck where we rehearsed (not really a soundcheck). For the entire soundcheck and the first TEN songs of the night, nobody noticed that my EWI was not in the PA at all. Not in any monitor and not in the front of house sound. I kept playing in between songs to see if maybe it was really faint (the way the sax was in the front of house--not inspiring, by any means). So ten songs in, he finally realized he'd never checked it and turned it on in the front of house, but not my monitor. My monitor was off the entire night--the aux knobs were up on the board, so I would bet that he forgot to turn on the amplifier for the box. Nice. I'm really just bitching to bitch here--I could've said something. It was more frustrating, however by the fact that nobody else on stage ever mentioned the fact that I couldn't be heard. If listening is part of music (I would say that listening is all of music), and if playing music with other people means you need to hear what they're playing (and you do, as best you can), then the lack of musicianship on stage is staggeringly low. It's like trying to have a conversation with someone who doesn't even know you're talking to them.
Steve Florczykowsi played bass with us. One of his heroes is Will Lee (of Letterman band fame, and about a billion other banda), and he is getting more like Will all the time. It was totally awesome--the kind of performance where you say, "Yeah. That's what we're looking for." He was fun, he was dancing, he was playing great. He also had on a pair of red plaid pants. I had on a pink afro wig.
Steve and I rode up together, and we bolted out of the gig in 10 minutes flat. We got back to my house at 3:30 or so. He had to get back to Snellville and then be a church gig at 9 AM. Ouch!
Tonight (Sunday), I did a House Live gig with Jeff (DJ) and Wayne Viar (percussion) at the Georgia Aquarium for KIA. It was pretty fun. This gig usually gets really boring after 30 minutes or so, but tonight's gig was much more creative. I could hear myself really well, and I think because of that I was able to play lots of good ideas. I don't think I started to run out of gas until about the last 30 minutes. I brought soprano, alto, tenor, and flute to this one.
This week is really slow--just the Thursday night at the 10 High. After the madness of the past two weeks, maybe a couple of nights off would be nice.
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