Yacht Rock played a wedding Friday night in Memphis. My hometown! I imagine that the headline in the Commercial Appeal on Saturday morning said LOCAL BOY MAKES GOOD, RETURNS TO MEMPHIS TO KILL IT AT WEDDING RECEPTION. Maybe not...in reality, we were in town for maybe 7 hours, as we drove in, threw everything on stage, played the gig, packed up, and drove southeast, spending the night in Olive Branch, MS. Not much of a homecoming for me. Then again, I moved away in 1977, and hadn't set foot there since the mid nineties. It's been a long time. Regardless, I love the idea of "killing it at a wedding reception."
Unfortunately for us, the wedding was outdoors on a really chilly day. We were in an open tent in a parking lot behind a restaurant, playing for a couple of hundred beautiful people. My hands don't function well in cold weather--everything I played felt really stiff.
This dude Charvey played on our breaks. Very good!
We drove home Saturday.
No gig for me Saturday night, so I did yard work. Not my favorite, but it desperately needed to be done.
On the entire trip, nobody mentioned either of these:
I had two church gigs Sunday. The first was at the Catholic church near my house. Once again (just like the past few weeks), it was a lot of fun--a small group with plenty of room for me for me to play. I love playing this gig. Both my soprano and my flute felt great (the benefits of a good warm up before I left home!). Musically, this is the perfect church gig for me. It's easy, everything sounds good, the people are cool, it's close to home...yes!
My second church gig was my usual PM service. I only played flute on this one. I think it sounded pretty cool, though there are overall fewer opportunities in the music for me to do anything. More of a play-along-with-the-others situation. They don't leave me spots to do anything.
We had a visiting priest who's leading a mission at the church this week. Funny that he preached about self absorption and narcissism in light of what the archbishop has been doing this past week:
One of the readings for this Sunday was the story of Lazarus, so I tried to work Branford's soprano line from Lazarus Heart into everything (much to my own enjoyment). This album is good shit.
This Friday is our first show of the year at Park Tavern. 80s stuff...the Reagan Rock prom. Bring your hairspray.
