Later

I know, I know...waaaaaaaaaaay late on the blog. I haven't felt like it.

Friday: The annual Dark Side of the Moon show at the Variety Playhouse, and once again, we paired it with Abbey Road. We've played this stuff enough that it's no big deal to get it back up to performance level, so the rehearsals leading up to this were fairly painless. Also, we used Keisha Jackson and her daughter Courtney as extra vocalists on Dark Side, so my responsibility on half the gig just vanished! For the night, I was just one of the horn players.

We opened the show with Abbey Road. I thought it was a good performance and the crowd really responded well to our arrangements of some of the songs; hearing Zach's mix a week later was kind of stunning! My solos were much better than I recalled, our stellar horn section of Rob Opitz, trumpet, Richard Sherrington, trombone, and the occasional Greg Lee, alto sax, sounded really strong and in tune, and of course the rest of the band was slammin'.

The second set, Dark Side of the Moon, was especially strange--I don't know what to do with myself when everybody else is on stage playing, and I'm hanging out in the green room. The two sax solos (Money and Us and Them) come around halfway through the record, and then I was finished for the night.

 I had enough time left in Dark Side after changing clothes to take a walk around the Variety.

We/they encored with The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, which also didn't involve me, so I watched from the audience. Epic.

Saturday: Birmingham, Alabama has become a new market for us, thankfully. Our show at the Workplay Theatre sold out a couple of days before we arrived, camera crew in tow (filming for a short documentary about us). I'm not sure how I feel about getting kicked out of the van so that the crew could film/interview along the way to the gig.

Good show, though! The room was packed, the energy was great, and we delivered.

Sunday: We headed straight back to Atlanta for a gig, loading in for the Team Hidi benefit just after lunch. Fortunately, the stage was ready, and we were able to set up, check, and leave fairly quickly.

The gig was as easy as a Sunday evening gig for a friendly crowd can be, and we slept in our own beds that night.