The gig was ok. I really didn't feel that good about, but listening to it today, it seems pretty good. I guess it just didn't feel effortless--I was conscious of how many notes I was playing and how I was interacting with Tyrone and Kevin. When it's really happening, I think that I just close my eyes and we musically fill in the blanks for each other.
We started with Moontrane. You'll notice the recording fades in--it's because I screwed up the in head, I had to cut it. Normally I try not to doctor the evidence--I can (sort of) live with my mistakes, but the first thirty seconds of the gig was so horribly embarrassingly take-me-out-and-shoot-me bad that I would rather no one ever have to sit through it.
Beyond that, things were ok. We were near a door, and now I hear how both horns rose in pitch over the course of a tune (the soprano sounds like it starts decently in tune and then gets sharp on Andalee, and the tenor is flat at the beginning of Voyage, but later on is pretty close).
The gig was only an hour. I wish we could have played more because I was finally starting to settle down when it ended.
From there, I rolled over to the 10 High for the Yacht Rock gig. Nick picked a great set list that avoided a lot of the usual tunes we've been playing week to week, and included all of our newer songs. We set up, soundchecked, ate, and hit it.
Right from the first tune, I could tell I was doomed. We were halfway through Nights on Broadway when I just started to suck real bad. I couldn't remember things I'd just played correctly in the previous chorus, and when we got to the bridge, I had no idea about the string part.
The whole gig was like that--I was fine, and then all of the sudden I would suffer a catastrophic brain failure and play a whole bunch of terrible stuff, and then I'd kind of recover. In the end, I was glad for the gig to end so I could stop screwing up.
Mark Bencuya played some super good stuff in the middle solo on Hey Nineteen (right before the "Cuervo Gold" part). He was on fire. Mark Dannells ripped off a pretty awesome solo on Ride Like the Wind that began with a howling bent note.
We did a small tribute to Gerry Rafferty. We played Baker Street, of course, and the band collectively pulled Stuck in the Middle with You out of our butts. I laid out for that. Probably the best thing I did on the gig.
