Saturday's first gig was an afternoon spot at the Midtown Arts Festival for Main Street Exiles. We played, strangely enough, in the parking lot for the old Loca Luna, where I spent many a night sweating (and sometimes freezing) while playing salsa music. The club has moved, but the parking lot remains!
We played pretty well. It was fun to be on the big stage, and I liked being able to walk off the back when I wasn't playing. The crowd was ok; it's hard to imagine anyone wanting to stand in a parking lot in direct sunlight in the low 90s. It's still hot in Atlanta!
We had a good time. Once it was over, I drove home and loaded equipment into my truck and headed on to my second gig, a Yacht Rock gig for the Chattahoochee Riverkeepers. Before you ask, I will go ahead and say that I have no idea what they do to/for the river. From what I can tell, they're rich and they like to eat barbecue. I know I have supplied a link to their website, but this doesn't mean that I've actually looked at it.
Anyway, the gig was at some guy's house. He lives right on the river. It's a beautiful house, and you can walk past his pool and his garden and look out over the water. Very nice. Last year when we played, it was right after the river had risen dramatically (they showed us the high water mark), but this year it was just hot and still out there.
Before the Yacht Rock sets, I sat in on Can't Get There from Here with the REMakes. I was playing the hell out of the sax part (I hadn't thought about the sax part on that in many months, but I just reached back and pulled it out of my ass). It was like I'd taken over the song and it was all about me--I was front and center on stage, dancing and playing. The song ended, and I met the sound guy at the side of the stage; he'd waited through the entire song to point out that he wasn't getting any signal from my microphone, which means that though I looked good, I was practically inaudible. Nice. Dude could have easily grabbed the empty vocal mic next to me and told me to play into that; instead he waited til the song was over to attempt a solution.
On to the Yacht Rock set.
I played really well. I was almost annoyed with myself--why couldn't some of this good stuff have come out of me on Thursday night when Bencuya was recording? I mean, even little keyboard fills that I attempted sounded like I was doing something good. What's up with that?
We played until right up at midnight and then quit right at the noise curfew. I loaded out and was home about an hour later. I got home, unloaded all my stuff, packed up my stuff for my church gig, loaded it into the truck, and went to bed.
My first church gig went ok. I think Chuck is making an effort to be a little more organized, but he still calls audibles in the middle of the service (or, like this past Sunday, in the middle of a song!). It's getting better, though. There were no major disasters this time.
My second church gig was very different from the previous week. We had five vocalists, so I was back on my usual stuff, adding the whipped cream and cherry to their efforts.
Monday morning was another rehearsal for this Wednesday night's gig. After we play The Dark Side of the Moon, we are playing Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. We have already learned the material, so the rehearsal was mostly about vocal parts. Easy enough for me.
Tonight I started work on a new clarinet piece, titled Canzonetta by Gabriel Pierne. Here's some video of what I've got so far:
More work awaits!
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