June was slow! Yacht Rock worked for one week, and I didn't get calls for anything else, which suuuuuuuuuuuuucked.
Wednesday, June 14, 2023: Wolf Trap, VA. Night one of our two night stand at Wolf Trap, opening for Kenny Loggins.
Some small talk with the old man...
It's a beautiful place!
And they have excellent catering! This is potatoes and cauliflower and roasted peppers and some kind of rice stuff. All of it was excellent.
Full house! Pretty good gig. I'm no longer as tense about these openers for a big crowd, so I could look around and see everybody.
We got a standing ovation, which was really cool, but also felt awkward in that we weren't the main attraction.
During the Kenny Loggins set, saxophonist Justin Claveria's saxophone broke, and he ended up borrowing my alto to get through the gig. We both looked over his horn, but nothing was obviously broken, and nothing had fallen off like a cork bumper or anything. Equipment problems are a nightmare. I was happy to help.
Thursday, June 15, 2023: Wolf Trap, VA. Day two. Warming up on the loading dock with Peaches, our lighting guy.
Another standing ovation!
Kenny Loggins' set was impeccable, as usual.
Justin played my alto again, and sounded really great. He figured out that he was a big leak in the side Bb, right in the middle of the horn.
Friday, June 16, 2023: Philadelphia, PA. While Kenny Loggins took the day off, Yacht Rock drove over to Philly to play a show of our own at The Fillmore. It was around three hours of driving, so no big deal.
After load in and soundcheck, I had an excellent veggie burger for dinner at Front Street Cafe.
Philly could use some WD-40.
This gig...I never could get interested, and I spent the whole time thinking about what I might want to try changing in my in-ears mix, and what the lights were doing--kind of daydreaming through the gig and watching the songs get checked off the setlist. The pinnacle of my boredom happened to bite me in the ass when I forgot to play the harmonica solo on What's Love Got to Do With It. "Man, something sounds weird...because I'M NOT PLAYING MY PART!!!!!!" I was sure we played the bridge and then the solo, but it was the solo and then the bridge. So then I was bored and embarrassed. Self inflicted wounds.
We've been playing Fleetwood Mac's The Chain in the encore a lot, and right in the break between the first chorus and the second verse, somebody in the audience yelled "BORING" right in time, and we all died laughing. I wasn't alone that night, I guess.
Saturday, June 17, 2023: Williamsburg, VA. Pretty long drive today, so when we arrived, it was time to go straight into setting up.
Backstage was a tent city.
Also, colonial Williamsburg was right here. I was here in the eighties, but I remember almost none of it.
Another big Kenny Loggins crowd!
Justin didn't get his horn repaired on their day off, but he thought that he might have bent the side Bb back to the correct position (the real story was that he had accidentally bent a key, and when he tried to bend it back, he created a leak that he couldn't fix). I too am prone to tinkering with my instruments until I mess them up, so I am sympathetic to his situation.
Just in case, I left him my alto on a sax stand, and he didn't get far into their set before he gave up and went back to my horn.
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In my spare time, I wrote and recorded an original song. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/uJYXBfUL3-k (I'm not sure why Blogger is not allowing my videos to embed anymore).
