Yacht Rock was hired for a particularly cool gig last weekend in Houston, performing revival-style for a corporate concert at Minute Maid Park in Houston (home of the Astros). They built a stage over the third base dugout and we played facing the stands. We backed Elliot Lurie (Looking Glass), Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss (Player), Matthew Wilder, and Eddie Money, and Ambrosia played their own short set as the opener.
I've never been to Houston before, but I've heard that the summers are pretty miserable. The weather on this day couldn't have been more perfect.
The grounds crew spent much of our set up taking care of the field, which equated to water everywhere, including these puddles perilously close to the power supply.
Ambrosia's soundcheck. Every time they came to a spot that was originally a sax solo, I wanted to throw stuff. Greg subbed on bass for them and NAILED IT!
So...a run down of the show: Nights on Broadway, You Make My Dreams, no problem; Dancing in the Moonlight and Brandy with Elliott, just fine; Still the One and Africa, all good; Kid's American and Break My Stride with Matthew, easy; This Time I'm in it for Love, at a frantic tempo, but that's how they want it; How Long in a different key and plenty of "I can't tell which guitar is supposed to be soloing right now"; Baby Come Back with more dramatic fermatas than ever; Taking it to the Streets--the batteries died on my tenor microphone right when we started this tune, so I had to sit out the first verse to swap them with the alto batteries (which probably means it'll die again in another gig or two); then the Eddie Money stuff.
Eddie changed endings and his song order at soundcheck, grilling us at the rehearsal. At the gig, however, all the endings kind of went out the window. He also sang more at soundcheck than he did at the gig (during the show, we played an entire chorus of Shakin' with only the background "woahs"). I tried to sing along to myself to keep my place in the song, because without the lead vocal, it would be easy to lose your place.
I'm not sure what the final order was, but I think it might have been Two Tickets to Paradise, Baby Hold on to Me, Shakin', and then Take Me Home Tonight ("Does anybody have room in their car for me?" was his joke).
We came off stage after that so they could shoot off fireworks, but the audience demanded an encore...but we don't know any more Eddie Money songs! Eddie suggested we do a truncated version of Two Tickets, and we decided to go into Footloose to close out the evening.
Word never got to Monkey about the change, and he ended up playing the beginning of Footloose on the wrong guitar (tuned a half step down). Then he flipped out and started cursing. Once we got off stage, Nick dragged him into the dressing room and laid into him for screaming obscenities into a microphone. Yikes! Fortunately, Kip had muted Monkey's vocal as soon as he realized that he was probably going to go berserk.
Anyway, the fireworks went on for at least ten to fifteen minutes, giving us plenty of time for a long gig post mortem.
We brought a lot of gear to this one (quite a bit of Kip and Zach's PA). Pete made sure the pack was correct.
The next day, we flew home. I bought the only banana in Houston (Bush) Airport for $1.41.
