Before and After Christmas

Things have slowed waaaaaaaay down since mid December, but I did play a few more gigs here and there. My church gig continues to chug along, and because Christmas Eve was during the week, I got an extra service out of it. I also got a call to play two services after that with some friends at another church, so three on the night, which was pretty cool. All on flute, which was good...and tiring! I made the mistake of doing a normal day's worth of practicing at home, then playing all the prelude Christmas carols, and then playing the mass, so by the second service, my face was starting to get pretty fried. I recovered by midnight mass, but if this happens again, I guess I have to either play more leading up to the big day, or play less and literally save face!

On the Friday after Christmas, the Yacht Rock Revue played a show at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham. What a beautiful place!

Lots of places to explore...

It's a really cool building--kind of reminds me of the "old building" at the IU School of Music (probably of the same vintage). It sounded great, too, though the lack of a standing section directly in front of the stage maybe wasn't the best for our crowd. Still, just under 1,300 showed up and stood up in their seats. I can dig it!

For us, this show took a while--the first fifteen songs felt like I was watching us play a gig. I didn't feel connected to anything until about halfway through. It doesn't come through on the broadcast, I don't think. The camera angle kind of makes it look like we're on a soundstage somewhere. Check it out!