Northeastern Tour + TX

Alright goddamnit...I've put this off for as long as I could.  I've done enough stuff since I got home that I don't hardly remember anything anyway, but here it goes...

Thursday:  We (Yacht Rock) flew to Boston to begin our run of shows in the northeast.  The van and trailer (and our crew of Kip and Zach) picked us up.

Boston:  still under construction

Boston Common--oldest park in the country (yes, I looked that up)

Remarkably, we were kind of early for load in, which afforded us time for lunch.  An exotic place in Chinatown was selected.   Good food, but you had to work for it.  A large bowl of broth was set to boil on the burner in the middle of the table, and each of us was given our own ingredients to cook.  Probably easier when five guys aren't trying to fish their food out at once.

Our show in Boston was at The Royale.  It was a beautiful room with a nice sized stage.

Great show!  Somewhere around 500 people showed up, which I would say is a major victory for our third time in the city.  Other than that...I don't remember anything.  That probably means it was good.

Ahhh...we changed the end of Africa, so now we go into a sax solo over the groove to Flashlight by Parliament (instead of an EWI solo over the accelerating Africa groove).  Make sense?  You can watch it here:  https://www.facebook.com/fenderp/videos/vb.1438865258/10207740065926499/?type=2&theater

Yacht Rock Revue plays Toto's Africa...damn cool
Posted by Don Mangels on Saturday, October 3, 2015

photo cred: Kip Conner

Post gig, we walked down the street to grab some pizza, only to discover that the area we were in was populated by hundreds of young, drunk girls dressed as cheap prostitutes.  Maybe I'm getting old, but it was kind of depressing.  Kind of...as we left the scene, Mark Cobb coined the term "slut lap:"  to drive around the block once just to check out the skanky chicks.

Friday:  we drove from Boston to NYC for our first show at the Bowery Ballroom.

No rain in Boston, but by the time we hit Manhattan, the rain was pretty steady.

I stole The Great Rencuya's hat.

In spite of the weather, we sold out the Bowery Ballroom.  Yay!  575 people.

Robbie Dupree came down from Woodstock and we played his three songs (I'm No Stranger, Hot Rod Hearts, and Steal Away).   Another good night of playing.  New York City is always a great gig.

photo cred:  Kip Conner

stolen from Instagram

Post gig...not as exciting.  Some bimbo who had been invited into our dressing room by a friend of a friend asked me as I was finishing changing clothes if I was in the band.  As you might expect, I said no, and then asked her if she was in the band.  I guess that makes us even.

Load out in the rain on a Friday night in Manhattan.  Not fun.

Saturday:  We spent the night at a hotel on Long Island.  With most of the day to kill, a few guys went to the movies.  I stayed in my room and wrote charts for an upcoming gig.  Kip, Zach, and I also had lunch at Wendy's.  Spine tingling levels of excitement.

Saturday night's show was at The Paramount in Huntington, NY.  It might just be the best venue we play.  The stage is great, the crew is great, the backstage is great, the food is great (enough), the post-gig hang in the speakeasy in the basement is pretty great.

The last time (first time) we played here, the marque said something like "70s Soft Rock."  They didn't even use our name.  This time, we made it.

 Rock star warm up: a mirror and a red solo cup full of vodka.

Yet another great show!  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 showed up.  The floor looked comfortably full.  Interestingly, the crowd skewed noticeably older, especially compared to the two nights before.  They dug it though, and we looooooove playing The Paramount.

photo cred:  Don Mangels

Sunday:  we headed on down to Washington, DC.  The rain had dissipated.  Lunch was somewhere at a sandwich shop in Delaware.  Eagles fans.  It felt like a suburb of Philadelphia.

Try and guess what Pete ordered...

So...The Hamilton in DC!  Another really nice room.  We played nothing but really excellent venues on this trip.  We had around 500 people at this one, which was almost a letdown because we sold it out in the early afternoon the last time we came through.  Then again, it was a Sunday night and the weather was a little shaky.

I can't remember anything about our playing on this one, other than I was a little shaky/distracted at the beginning of the night.  It took a few songs for me to get into the gig.

We stayed at a hotel right near the Pentagon to facilitate Monday's fly date.

Monday:  ouch.  6:15 AM lobby call.  I went to bed around 3 AM after showering.  Not so good.  We flew out of Reagan National to San Antonio, TX, with a connection in (of all places) Atlanta.

I was awake enough to work on charts on the flight to Atlanta, but then I slept pretty much from the moment I sat down until we landed in Texas.

The Great Bencuya sleeps

 San Antonio was not too bad for a Monday.  I'd never been here before.  We were early enough (and close enough) to run over to the Alamo and check it out.  Not as big as I expected.

This was some kind of private event.  I really have no idea who we were playing for (though somebody said it was medical related).

Here's how Monkeyboy got through it.

Kind of a small stage.  Mostly the same backlined gear we'd played a month or so earlier in Austin.

It was a snoozer of a gig at first, but the crowd finally came around when we played Islands in the Stream, and from then on the dance floor was pretty solidly packed.  Not a bad gig for a Monday.

Tuesday:  we were able to sleep late (10:30 lobby call) before heading home.  More charts were created on the plane.

Charts, charts, charts...what the hell for?  These are for a gig next Monday, October 12, at Venkman's.    The Pleaserock Horns (Rob Opitz, Richard Sherrington, and myself), along with David Ellington (piano), Kevin Smith (bass), and Marlon Patton (drums), are performing Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.  The second set will be other tunes of the period performed by Miles' sextet at the time.