Yacht Rock returned home yesterday from a short trip to the northeast with very successful gigs in Washington DC and New York, including our biggest audience to ever see us in NYC. Very cool.
Wednesday: We drove all day. It's too far to drive to DC and play a gig. Late in the afternoon, we stopped in South Carolina and ate lunch at a random Mexican restaurant, and considered the consequences of touching a fence that might or might not have been electrified.
Thursday: There's a crappy Holiday Inn in Maryland. We woke up there. Off to DC for our gig! First, a Chinese restaurant for lunch:
We played The Hamilton, one of the greatest venues we've ever played. Beautiful room, great sound, fantastic staff. We had 517 people (in a room that holds 600) on a Thursday night. It's a win!
Friday: The drive from DC to NYC takes...4 hours? 5 hours? Even when you get close enough to start taking pictures, you're still an hour or so from the gig. The traffic is horrible, and every lane change is a dare.
Anyway...Brooklyn! We're back. There's nothing about the Brooklyn Bowl that isn't cool.
Brooklyn Bowl has the best fried chicken ever. Ever ever ever ever ever. Delicious.
Another good gig! 710 people there to see us--our best crowd in New York City ever.
I was set up pretty far forward--a much different vantage point than usual. Normally I'm not witness to what's happening right up against the stage.
Our friend Danny who runs The Hamilton in DC was in Brooklyn for a wedding, so he ran sound for us. Yes!
One thing that definitely sucked was that there was a late show following us--meaning we had to hurry up and get out. We had a great gig, played an encore, and then ran upstairs to change back into our street clothes. Security backed the crowd up about twenty feet from the stage, and everybody got to watch us frantically pack up and load out. Boo.
Once we loaded out, I had a chance to hang out with one of my favorite and most talented classmates in college, Chris Hiatt. I hadn't seen him since we finished at IU. He now lives in Brooklyn with his family.
Saturday: lunch near Woodstock (NY) with Robbie Dupree. So cool!
We played a wedding at a remote location in the Catskills--kind of Hudson River valley Deliverance.
We didn't get our rider, and the food was terrible. This chicken was the ying to Brooklyn Bowl's yang.
This gig could have been a major letdown after the two previous evenings, but the crowd was really into it from the first song. Not too bad for a wedding. Nice dancing.
My evening ended with Monkey watching Paula Poundstone YouTube videos.
Sunday: we drove to White Plains to fly home. The counter agent for Delta gave us some trouble with Bencuya's Fantom (weighing 59 pounds). Eventually she got it straightened out. We used the Silver Medallion baggage weight limit argument. The language on Delta's website is pretty clear, but she still needed 10 minutes on the phone. Meanwhile, the line behind us backed up almost to the door.
Come on, Richard Anderson! Get it together!
You'd think after this week's pictures of John Pattituci's bass being mangled and Rick Springfield's guitar splitting open that the airlines would be a little more cool with musicians...
The rest of our gear is staying in the Northeast until our next gig--Friday in Cambridge, MA. I've never been to Boston, so I'm really looking forward to this one.
