Yacht Rock played Boston (Cambridge, specifically) for the first time Friday night. Wow! Depending on who you talked to, it either sold out or came close (443 people out of a 500 capacity). Hopefully that will become the next stop on our regular trips to the Northeast. It was a great night for the band.
The day didn't begin well, however. We had brought all four keyboards home for an Atlanta gig the night before, and when we checked in at the airport Friday morning, Delta welcomed us with a $200 PER KEYBOARD charge for oversized and overweight items. There was no arguing with them either. Nothing like beginning the day $800 in the hole.
Once again Delta arbitrarily interprets the rules--the same four keyboards that we flew from White Plains to Atlanta on Sunday (for $0 extra) now cost us $800 to fly from Atlanta to White Plains. Can anyone at Delta explain that?
So...we got to White Plains, and hung out for about an hour while Pete and Nick went to retrieve the van and trailer.
The drive from White Plains to Boston was supposed to take three hours, but with traffic and construction and Friday afternoon, ended up taking five. Ouch! Quick load in, set up, and soundcheck. Fortunately, the crew at The Sinclair was awesome about helping us get our gear in the room. Set up and soundcheck were painless.
Mark Cobb and I took a quick walk around Harvard.
The gig began with a heart attack. My computer (the brain for my EWI rig) had gone to sleep and wouldn't wake up. I spent the first few songs (counting down to Hey 19, the first song for which I needed the EWI) trying to play keyboard while diagnosing the problem. If I couldn't get it to wake up, I figured I'd play Hey 19 on tenor, and then I'd be able to deal with it on the break (or decide what to do about Africa, Rosanna, and Lido). After frantically hitting the space bar and the power button several times and unplugging and replugging everything, I was about to faint from the adrenaline. I flagged down one of the crew offstage and said "See if you can get my laptop to turn back on!" He picked it up and it turned back on. What the hell? I plugged everything back in and it worked fine. Five or six songs later, I'd finally calmed down enough to play the rest of the set.
The remainder of the gig went well--a terrific first night in Boston! The crowd was a bit heavy on dudes (many of whom were losing their minds with every note we played), but I'm sure it'll even out in the future. The Sinclair is one of those rooms like The Hamilton in DC where the sound is great, the crew is great, the crowd is great...we'll be back.
The number one fan of the man from Tennessee...
The next day we drove back to White Plains (which I think only took four hours this time), dumped the van and trailer, and flew home--without any gear this time. TSA did take my backpack apart--I always wonder what they think when they're looking at my ear plugs and saxophone mouthpieces and spare batteries and USB/MIDI convertor. The agent said something about my miniature screwdriver, but I couldn't understand her. Something about how in the future TSA was going to inspect everything in my backpack, which they've never done in the previous fifteen trips. I'm guessing that just like with Delta, it'll be random--the roulette of traveling with any kind of musical gear. Goodie.
