The gigs continue, albeit at a much more relaxed pace. This week: two private parties. Where the fail in excitement, they succeed in compensation.
Thursday: Private party at a ballroom in Buckhead. Not too terrible, but not too exciting. No idea what the party was for. The good news was that I got to go to my house when it was over and sleep in my own bed.
Still loving the Legere reeds! I got an alto reed before this gig, and it's FANTASTIC! Feels great and sounds great--the feedback from both horns is so good that I feel inspired.
Saturday: Up early (6 AM) for a 9:30 AM flight to White Plains, NY on one of those regional jet sized planes. The very limited overhead space makes me, weighed down with saxophones, nervous.
TSA in Atlanta has changed their scanning machinery in the precheck line, so they escorted me over to the regular security and sent me through. It makes me wonder...I guess I should continue to go to precheck and have them take me to the other line so that I can avoid the "take off your shoes, take out your laptop" business? Maybe they'll perfect their system before I have to fly with my horns again. Fingers crossed.
From there, we drove up I-95 to Westport, CT with some insanely inept Uber drivers (our guy very gingerly entered the interstate at 45 miles per hour).This gig was a birthday party for a friend of the band. If the photo below looks familiar, it's because we've played a gig in this very house before (read about that here). No bar, no barrier this time; eee oh eee oh eee oh.
Nice party for a friendly bunch. We had Steve Augeri come through and sing some of Journey's greatest hits with us again, and he sounded great. I love the Journey stuff. We also gave a pretty inspired rendition of Livin' on a Prayer. Uber was much less terrible on this leg of the trip.
When we got to the hotel, Zach realized he'd left his suitcase (with not only his clothes, but all his microphones) at the party. Fortunately, someone else at the party was also flying out of White Plains, and we agreed to meet up the next morning to collect his bag.
Sunday: Mercifully, we were able to sleep late. 11 AM shuttle to the airport.
Another frustrating experience with TSA (the scanner/ID person seemed to be on a mission to only point and never actually speak to me). Following that, I waited on one side of the metal detector for the agent to look up from her phone long enough to wave me through.
Another flight on the little airplane.
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