Everything went well; I can only think of a couple of bad spots for me--a few butchered chords in I Wanna Dance with Somebody. My alto felt great--I keep hoping to find a video of me playing more than a few seconds of Careless Whisper.
My tenor was ok. It has a leak. I'm also still in the bad habit of chomping down on the mouthpiece and overblowing. Chalk it up to my fear of being flat.
Anyway, the gig went great! Super fun. The only hiccup we had was that we played past 11 PM and they shut the PA off on us. Esther took it personally.
As I was packing up, some chick called me over (you can probably already guess how this goes)…
Chick: Where are y'all going next? I wanna party with you!
Me: I'm going home and going to bed. I have a gig in the morning.
Chick: Where?
Me: A Catholic church. I'm playing the confirmation mass.
And I walked away. Evidently, she tried several band members, but no one wanted to go party.
One more video…
…and you can hear my string part after the solo. I'm in the mix!
Saturday morning: Up way too early to go play a church gig. I made use of the extra church gig by doing a little piano microphone experiment. I put a Shure Beta 98 in the middle (clipped to the frame) and a dynamic vocal mic stuck in one of the holes in the frame. Those two, with the Stupid Barcus Berry Pickup, sounded pretty good in my headphones.
I guess I played pretty well. We didn't really play that much considering we were there for almost two hours.
The archbishop celebrated the mass--such a cool guy! Very entertaining and engaging.
Saturday evening: Yacht Rock was hired to play a bar mitzvah. Super expensive gig. I don't think we've ever been hired for one of these before, but this was a repeat customer (the parents, not the kid). The set list was mostly Beatles and party songs with a little Yacht Rock thrown in--not a whole lot for me to do. It was cool, though--gave me lots of time to people watch/check out the super hot women. It was unavoidable, and the pictures I surreptitiously took of these women have been deleted off my phone--I swear!
It was us (for the adults), a DJ (for the younger humans), the Georgia Tech pep band (playing Hava Nagila), sushi rollers, a room where there was a guy custom airbrushing Chuck Taylors, chicken and waffles, lots of alcohol (for the adults), a congratulatory video featuring Dick Vitale and the Atlanta Hawks among others…you get the idea. It was a big party.
We played You're So Vain with a guest singer, and I did very well on the piano part, if I do say so myself. I've come a long way, baby!
Stephen 'Steak' Shapiro tried to sit in with us on Glory Days, but didn't know any of the words. He looked like he knew what he was doing, though.
Some chick invited herself up to play maracas with us on Africa and embarrassed herself without our help.
Sunday: Up again for a church gig. Easy stuff--I know what to expect these days, so it's no biggie. Read the charts down a couple of times, then go upstairs and do it for real. I swapped out my main tenor with my backup horn. Much better.
My evening church gig went pretty well. I left the 98 off, but mixed the vocal mic inside with the Stupid Barcus Berry Pickup, and I think it sounded pretty good. The vocals sounded good, and my flute face was good. Yay!
Stay tuned! More to come this week.
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