Saturday, November 23, 2019

Let Me Explain

What's been going on? Let me explain.

The day after Thanksgiving, Yacht Rock is playing a short set at Criminal Records in Atlanta--it's scheduled for thirty to forty-five minutes of music, and we're going to play several of our originals. Because there's a TON of keyboard stuff on our stuff, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday were marathons of programming and practicing to get ready for Wednesday's rehearsal (plus, there was a fair amount of apathy which drug the whole process out). Anyway, Wednesday, big rehearsal on little sleep. We survived--Bencuya and I were, I think, pretty pleased that we were somehow able to cover pretty much everything that needed to be there without any sonic holes.

Wednesday night, I totally switched gears and practiced music for my Thursday big band gig. I worked through everything enough that I felt pretty comfortable. Luckily, I was playing the same book (tenor 1) that I played last month, so a big chunk of the music was somewhat familiar. At the end of the night, I went over the Yacht Rock music one more time to make sure it was still organized in my head.

Thursday was another rehearsal, and everything was a little bit more comfortable than the day before. I didn't even need to reference the charts that I'd written for any of it. Thursday night, I played with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra at Venkman's.

Here's the gig. You'll probably want to skip to 39:45 unless you want to watch the high school band that opened for us.



So...Friday, Yacht Rock played at Venkman's.


I felt good, playing-wise. Played some pretty rippin' stuff.

Today was our first time using these new keyboard stand things. I think they achieve the desired look and they were plenty comfortable enough to use on the gig, but they are extremely frustrating for setup--figuring out how to route all the cables through it easily added fifteen minutes to building my keyboards. I'm sure it'll get easier once I figure out a system, but goddamnit. That didn't even include the time it takes to actually unfold and set the stand up. We're going to need a crew guy for this, or I might light mine on fire.


In other news, or first single has a remix by Jamie Lidell. Check it out.