It's been a while since I've blogged. My apologies--vacation has (kind of) started!
Rewind:
Thursday: I played two gigs.
The first gig was a little trio gig at Dolce in Atlantic Station with Louis Heriveaux (keyboard) and Kevin Smith (bass). It was a nice little gig--they had us separated from the crowd, up on an elevated floor behind the bar, which meant that we wouldn't be competing with them to hear ourselves. I'll admit, it also makes for a better recording! There was a clear half-wall in front of us, which helped as well.
The crowd was bussed in. They were expecting four or five hundred people (according to the contract I had), but maybe one hundred fifty turned up on a cold, rainy night. Most of them sat down, ate, and left! There must have been a club or something upstairs. Anyway, two hours into a three hour gig, the bar started shutting down. Two and a half hours into the gig I was on the phone trying to tell the party coordinator that the room was totally empty and there was no point in us staying!
Playing-wise, I was pretty good. It had been a month since my previous jazz gig, and I was kind of concerned about where my command of the vocabulary would be. It turns out I was fine, though I had some really bad moments trying to remember the heads to some tunes (we played standards so I wouldn't have to deal with bringing charts and a music stand). Louis was on fire--he was harmonically aggressive, reworking lots of these tunes. I really dug that. Whenever he and I have played together, I've always hoped that he would push me a little bit more past the conventional harmony, and this time, there he was. Check out the out head of Wave if you want to hear where he was at. Jeez! This gig was a ton of fun.
The second gig was the regular Yacht Rock gig at the 10 High. Playing two gigs like this is always fun because the first always gets me loose (physically and mentally) for the second. Every sax solo on the 10 High gig sounded like it was coming out of a machine gun--it was like I was still ripping stuff from my jazz gig.
That said, I played sax on the first tune of the gig, and then nothing until I did four or five late in the second set. It's become much less of a sax gig than it used to be. I'm not complaining, though. I think I'd be bored if I was just hanging out waiting to play Baker Street. For me, this gig is much more about working on my keyboard playing.
This gig had Ganesh on drums and Kevin Spencer subbing for Nick. At the last second, Mark Dannells decided he was dying, so Shannon subbed for him. We were boarded by the pirates of smooth! It was fun--the Schooner guys have their stuff figured out.
Friday: I played two more gigs!
I went to bed a 3 or 4 AM after getting home from the 10 High. I was up at 7 AM so I could be at the scene of one of my church gigs--we'd be contracted to help beef up the children's winter concert. So…the middle school choir was on my right; the middle school band was on my left. The rest of the band was behind me. For some reason, my music had gone missing, so it was just me standing there behind a microphone! It was pretty easy, though. I mean, I'm just improvising anyway, so the chart doesn't make or break it for me. I did turn around and check the chart of the guitarist behind me, just looking for the ones where I played soprano instead of tenor.
The second gig was with Yacht Rock at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville. I met the van around 3:30. We rolled in a few hours later, set up, ate and played our Christmas show. It went pretty well. The sound is always good there, but this particular time it wasn't quite so loud on stage, and so it was that much better. The crowd was decent. It seemed pretty full.
We stayed at the Hotel Indigo again. I got the room to myself--sweet! I really dig this hotel. Too bad I was so tired by the time we finished, I went straight to bed.
Saturday: One gig!
We got back to Atlanta early in the afternoon, which left me a couple of hours to prepare for my Sunday stuff (songs to be learned!). That night, I played a Wild Wing gig with the Schooner. They played really well! I'd left my microphones in the van, so I used whatever they had at the bar, and it worked out fine (and got me out of there that much faster). The band was playing well together--when they're gelling, they sound really good!
Sunday: Two gigs!
Sunday morning was my usual church gig. I was worried about this one because one of the songs they wanted to do was the Trans Siberian Orchestra version of Carol of the Bells, and I couldn't figure out how to make it work with our instrumentation. That version has maybe three guitars and three synths, and we're much more of an acoustic band. When I listened to the mp3 of it, I couldn't even figure out what part I should be trying to hear, and I would get frustrated and give up. Fortunately, they had a piano reduction, so I kind of worked off that at the gig and it was fine.
That group is finally coming together. We may finally be figuring out how to work together.
I was home for around twenty minutes before I had to leave again, this time to a Yacht Rock gig. We played a jewish wedding. It wasn't too bad. We learned a couple of songs (Sister Christian and Come On Eileen--EWI violin!). The break room at the temple had some amusing posters.
I was home just after 8 PM, and in bed soon after that. Yeah…nice!
Yesterday (Monday), I was going to try and catch up on things like my blog, but I ended up just taking the entire day off. I did some half hearted practicing and broke in some reeds, but really….I did nothing. It was good.
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