If you missed Yacht Rock's Steal Away trip to Jamaica, you really missed a good time. The weather was wonderful, the scenery was sublime, the gigs were good...and my wife was happy. What more could you want?
Ok, so getting there was a little bit tough--for some reason, Delta didn't give us our usual medallion status perks (multiple free checked bags, in this case), so all the gear had to be shuffled around between people so that we didn't have to pay a fortune (my three music cases plus a suitcase would've cost $390 because the cost per bag raises exponentially).
Also, the customs process for bringing in a bunch of musical equipment was also a major hassle--basically, each of us had to show the customs officer each item we had listed on a manifest. I had a page of stuff all by myself, so you can imagine how fun it was when we got down to her asking me to show her saxophone reeds.
But we made it! Several naps later, we reached the resort, ate something, and explored the premises. Friday afternoon looked like this:
I also went for a run, which was basically me running along a two lane highway, stopping periodically to love on (adopt/steal) all dogs that I encountered. This guy was just one of four I talked to on this night.
Pretty solid first gig! The sustain thing only happened once, and I was able to kill the sustain by immediately changing sounds. Otherwise, we were all maybe a bit disoriented by the on stage sound (especially Monkeyboy, who had a miserable time trying to get his monitor mix set to his liking), but everybody rolled with it.
In an exciting practice room development, I solved the sustain issue! The stage, the keyboard stand, and the keyboard were vibrating a lot while we were playing, and the release knob was moving! I usually put all of these knobs as counterclockwise as they'll go, but I figured out that if I put the release as clockwise as it could go, it couldn't "open" anymore when it vibrated. Salvation! Jah will provide!
When I first got my Fantom, the "RESO" (resonance) knob would randomly do this, and so I'd be playing, and all of the sudden it would sound like Star Wars blasters. Very embarrassing. The long term fix is to replace the circuit board on this part of the keyboard. You can buy it for $75 here: https://www.keyboardkountry.com/roland-fantom-x6-7-8-left-panel-board/. You're welcome. No soldering. Easy installation.
On our last full day, I went for one last run (no dogs would pose for photographs, though), passed a COVID test (so we could go home!), ate a bunch, paddle boarded, kayaked, and it rained, and I spent some time in the practice room. Here's the view after the rain.
My flute pretty much fell apart during this session--I thought it was a pad that maybe got wet with all the humidity and condensation, but it turned out that a screw had worked its way loose, and several keys became misaligned. Damn! I guess, though, that I am somewhat relieved to find out that my embouchure wasn't going to hell over the course of an hour and a half. All of this travel is tough on my instruments.
This was the picture on the door to our room by the way. Is it a joke, or stupidity? That's the guys from the Yacht Rock Schooner. Close, but no cigar.
At the airport, those of us with the piles of gear (guitars, pedalboards, saxophones, etc) dealt with the customs lady again (making sure we didn't sell of it on the black market while we were here "on vacation").
We stood next to the bus for a while and waited for customs...
When it was time to board the plane, I was one of the people randomly selected for extra screening (they said it was TSA, but we were in Jamaica, so...how does that work?). I had to take everything out of my backpack, lay it on the table, and they checked it for explosives. They also checked my shoes and socks. The lady also yelled at me for taking this picture, so I blamed my wife.
Look! Atlanta traffic!
We landed, made it through US Customs (the officer was very nice--sometimes they can seem a bit intimidating), collected all my gear, bungee corded it all together, took the shuttle back to the parking deck, wheeled it out to our car...and the key fob was dead! Holy shit! Now what? I thought we'd have to haul everything back to the terminal and hope that a shop would have one of those strange little batteries, or sit and wait for someone to drive our spare car keys down to the airport, but Beth did an internet search and found out that inside the key fob was a small key so that we could open the car. A second internet search said that if you hold the dead fob next to the power button on the dash board, the car will read it and you can start the car. Who'd a thunk it!
You can see more about it on the house's website here: https://www.the1043.com
This gig, though...all these jazz gigs are just casuals, and you never know who you're playing with until you get the email with the details. In this case, I knew the bass player and the drummer from other jazz gigs around town, but I was not familiar with the vocalist and keyboardist (who are husband and wife). The keyboardist was not at all a jazz guy--not only was he not familiar with the material, but we didn't really have a leader, so he would just start playing the next song on the setlist his wife created without any kind of plan about how to arrange the performance--like, "hey, let's play the last eight measures as an introduction before the vocals," or "let's vamp in G until she starts singing."
And then the tunes, the chords...oof. It'd be like dropping your neighborhood piano teacher into a jazz gig. It was just too much, so we had to very aggressively ignore whatever he was doing. In all fairness, I think he was a last second sub for somebody who backed out of the gig, but it was ROUGH. He was in waaaaaay over his head. And on the inside, I was just howling with laughter because I love gigs like this were things go totally berserk and it doesn't matter (and it's not my fault or responsibility). To make matters worse, I was playing like "I might not play another jazz gig for the rest of the year, so I'd better make the most of it by playing a million notes and playing as fast and as complicated as I can while also trying to clearly outline every chord and also constantly suggesting the melody so that the three of us who know this song can keep our place" on every song.
The people at the party thought we were great anyway. No harm, no foul, I guess. And I had a great time--I mean, jazz gig! I'm on it! Here comes all the notes! Here's everything I've been practicing!
Also--this might be my favorite story from the gig--the keyboardist read on the email with the details that he needed to bring his own keyboard, so he did--but no amp! And the vocalist--brought a microphone, brought a microphone stand--but nothing to plug it into! Holy cow! Fortunately the bass player lived close enough that he could race home and grab a powered speaker so that we could all hear them.
Quick load out, though. One saxophone. Didn't have to go through US Customs on the front porch or anything, and I was sitting on the couch in my pajamas eating crap forty-five minutes later. Gotta love that! And my car started!
