Saturday, February 6, 2010

Cabo San Lucas

Yacht Rock played in Cabo this week (February 2-4, 2010).  I had a gig Monday, February 1, so I stayed up a little later than usual and slipped out the door at 3:30 AM to pick up Nick and make our way to the airport.
We flew to Denver and then on to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, where we landed to a light rain (and massive flash flooding!).  After dropping our stuff in our rooms, we went to lunch, and then spent the remainder of the day acting like rock stars on a day off in Cabo!  (mucho tequila).
The actual gig occurred the following day (Wednesday).  We played a private function for the Young Presidents Organization--I believe they were all young millionaires.  They were into it from the moment the doors opened and enjoyed every note.
The band played pretty well considering the circumstances.  The keyboards were not what we'd asked for, and we played standing up (I'd asked if they had piano benches or drum thrones, and I guy came back with a bar stool).  The sound guys (all ten of them!) were pretty inept, and the language barrier made for double the frustration.
I brought two saxes, flute, and EWI to the gig, so that part of my set up was normal.  I was unable to route my saxophone through the amp they supplied, so we ran it separately to the front of house, and the guys never quite turned it up enough.  The keyboards were a Yamaha Motif on the bottom and a Roland Juno on top.  Both were nice keyboards, but I was not familiar at all with navigating either one.  More importantly, I did not have a game plan for finding sounds and taking notes.  I fished around on both to find some things that might work, and they kind of did, but I wish that I was more adept at setting myself up in a situation like that.
I played pretty well.  Other than a poor choice for one of my keyboard patches, I made it through.
Thursday was a travel day.  We left the hotel around 10:30 AM local time, flew to Denver, and then flew back to Atlanta.  We landed just before midnight.  Another great adventure!
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