Once again, I am late on the blog update, but these past two weeks have been full to the brim.
Anyway, let's go back to April!
Tuesday, April 8, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Yacht Rock's monitor engineer Van Markinton has been working on some other projects, one of which needed horns, so my buddy Rob Opitz and I met up at Tree Sounds Studios to knock it out. Rob and I have been playing together since the mid-nineties!, so we are very comfortable playing together. It was fun! Van's horn charts were excellent, and I got to catch up with Rob.
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| excellent vegetarian dinner of risotto and eggplant, and I think the pink things are onions |
We hung out in a house in the neighborhood rented by the clients. Nice place! The crew guys were able to spend the night here.
This gig was at the neighborhood's clubhouse, and our job was to provide after dinner entertainment. We were supposed to start at 9 PM, but it got pushed back to 9:30 PM. It was ok--the crowd dispersed during the first hour, and we played the last thirty minutes to maybe fifteen people. Easy, lowkey show.
No Peter Olson tonight. Tim Smith subbed on bass for Greg, and we had a some hiccups with the arrangements, as we have made some cuts to the way we play our stuff recently. It was fun nonetheless, and I was in the mood to play.
We walked out of here, got in the van, and took off for home, heading off through a hellacious line of thunderstorms. The crews guys stayed behind and packed up all of our stuff. By the time I'd made it all the way home and crawled into bed, it was 3 AM.
Friday, April 11, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I'd just started mowing my yard around 4:15 PM when I got a text message asking if I could fill in for a friend on a big band gig at 8 PM (7 PM soundcheck/rehearsal). Of course! Easy stuff, five charts. Oglethorpe University. That's all I knew about the gig.
What a weird call! There aren't enough players to fill out the college big band, so they hired local pros (3 of the five saxes, 3 of the four trombones, and 2 of the four trumpets). Easy enough, but it felt a little awkward.
The program started with a smaller "combo" group (which was still a lot of the big band, and also included several of the pros), and they played around forty-five minutes while the remainder of us hung around backstage. After a brief intermission, the big band started up.
Just when I thought it couldn't get any weirder, they had an encore, which was the small group playing a song that they'd already played, but it sounds like they'd messed up the arrangement, so they took another shot at it. Those of us not in the big band stayed in our seats and listened. It was weird.
No check at the end of the night. In fact, at the time that I am writing this fiver weeks later, we (the pros) are all still waiting to get paid by the university. It's hard to know who dropped the ball on this one.
Saturday, April 12, 2025: Augusta, GA. Back to the Masters for the same kind of gig. We left Atlanta at 3 PM and got there around 5 PM.
No Peter Olson on this one either, and no drummer. After dinner, we had a pretty long rehearsal at the house to go over everything.
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| another excellent vegetarian meal--cauliflower and asparagus |
Same situation as the other previous night--this gig ended up starting forty-five minutes late (ouch!). Tennis legend Roger Federer was in attendance (before our performance, he did some sort of conversation with ESPN's Scott Van Pelt), and most of our audience was more interested in getting a picture with him than paying attention to us. We're in the background of a hundred selfies!
Other than that, it was kind of a run-of-the-mill corporate event. The crowd thinned out on us again, and this time the remaining people all seemed to be enjoying cigars. Unfortunate, but whatever.
On the way back to Atlanta, we stopped at a gas station at 1:15 AM to pee and pick up snacks, still in our show clothes.
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| a fine stash of bananas at the QT |
Sunday, April 13, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I played two church gigs on this day with insufficient sleep.
The first one was at my mom's church, and my friend who runs their music ministry hired me to play soprano saxophone and flute. The rest of the band was comprised of acoustic guitar, bass, electric drums, piano, and a small choir. It was pretty easy--all the music was on an iPad, and my parts were mostly improvised with a few written melodies.
This was kind of a strange situation--there was nothing particularly special about the day and probably no explanation as to why I was there, so the other people in the group just kind of ignored me.
The second church gig was my usual Sunday evening one, and it was fine, but I was pretty wiped out, and then I had to go home and do some homework for the following week's rehearsals.
Monday-Thursday, April 14-17, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Yacht Rock had a week of rehearsals for this year's tour show. We'd already learned just about everything, but this week was about cleaning up little things (harmonies, movements) and transitions from one song to the next. More importantly, it was for our production to work on their stuff, specifically the lighting.
It felt like video and lighting took a day and a half to set up their stuff, and then spent the next couple of days ignoring us, so...yeah. Maybe they didn't think we'd notice, but they were sitting with their backs to a giant mirror, and it was easy to see that they were doing something else instead of running lights at rehearsal.
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| the Wheel of Chorus |
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| autographed tour passes for our V.I.P.s |
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| Thai food for lunch |
Sunday, April 20, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Easter Sunday! I maxed it out--four church gigs: 8:30 AM, 10:30 AM, 12:30 PM, and 5:30 PM.
The first three were at a friend's church near home, and these were generally fun because he does a great job leading things. The middle of the three was led by his daughter, though, and she was much less experienced and much less confident (basically, she sang and played guitar very quietly, and didn't count anything off and I just had to try and anticipate when the song would start). All good, though.
By the time I got to my usual gig at 5:30, my face was very tired, even after a nap.
Monday, April 21, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Nick, Pete, and I did some radio promo (played three songs and did a Q&A) for our big show in Atlanta at the end of the week. These are always fun!
Wednesday, April 23, 2025: Atlanta, GA to Destin, FL. This weekend's run was to be the first test of the new show, and more specifically, the new lighting and video stuff. All of that would probably need some extra setup time, so we headed to Destin on Wednesday so that the gear could get to the gig at lunchtime on the day of show.
We left Atlanta kind of early (I thought), but you can only drive south on the interstate for so far, and then you have to snake down to the Panhandle on small roads.
There was a neighborhood behind our hotel with a good loop, so I did a couple of laps of that.
After that, I walked to the closest Publix and bought some food. Dinner is served!
Thursday, April 24, 2025: Destin, FL. I stayed in bed until 9 AM, and then wandered down to the lobby for some coffee. After I'd finished that, I went for a run (same loop as last night), ate lunch in my room (same meal as last night), and took a shower. In the afternoon, Jason Nackers and I headed over to the venue to set up our gear. No riser for me on this show--the local crew messed it up.
The rest of the band arrived around 4:15, and we sound checked.
Fun gig! My reeds (new tenor reed tonight) felt really good, and I got the new stuff mostly right, and the sticky Florida humidity didn't mess me up.
Our first attempt at the Wheel of Chorus (a local contestant spins the wheel, and we play only the chorus of whatever song it lands on). Tonight, we played Biggest Part of Me and Baby Come Back.
We also debuted Oh Sherrie as an encore. The intro/outro is all keyboards, and tonight is the first time that I successfully lined my part up with Bencuya. Wooo! Nick was mad because he messed up some of the lyrics.
After the gig ended, the local crew guys didn't return on time (they were also working a festival somewhere else in town), so the load out took much longer than it should have. Kip was not happy about it.
Friday, April 25, 2025: Birmingham, AL. We had an 8 AM lobby call because we had to make the slow drive all the way up through Alabama, and we also encountered some construction. The production team (mostly Kip and management) was very, very frustrated. More than one angry phone call happened.
Anyway, we got there eventually, and got the gear loaded on stage, but we had to cover everything before we could soundcheck because of rain around 5 PM, so on to dinner!
The venue fed us--I think this is a new thing. There was barbecue for all (they had tofu for the vegetarians, but that seemed like a weird option), so I had a hamburger bun and baked beans. And banana pudding for dessert, of course.
Once the rain ceased, we had a V.I.P. "soundcheck experience" (basically, you pay extra and you get to witness soundcheck). I don't think all of the V.I.P.s showed up--maybe we had ten people? I don't really see the point, and I wonder if the attendees were equally underwhelmed. The whole thing is through some independent company, but there's no one on sight managing it or leading the customers through it or anything. It feels like they're selling something, taking the money and forgetting about it.
Anyway, we sound checked and took some pictures.
The show went well, as it seems Birmingham always does. There was a massive crowd (and Avondale Brewery is adding a balcony over their main bar, so next time will have even more people). Once the rain moved off, the weather was pretty perfect, too.
We did the Wheel of Chorus, of course. It was Baby Come Back and something else--maybe Easy again?
We experienced some sort of feedback, or sympathetic stage vibrations, or something--there was a note/sound independent of the band that got more and more prominent throughout the night, and never was resolved. By the end, it was really loud, and really weird that it went on for so long.
We once again had a long load out--our crew was thin (basically two people packing up the stage), so I did what I could to help with that. While they were moving things back to the trailers, I had plenty of time to go make myself a peanut butter sandwich.
Saturday, April 26, 2025: Atlanta, GA. 7:30 AM lobby call! We lost an hour going back into Georgia, there was an extra stop to go get everyone's individual cars, and then we all had to head north to the venue.
When we arrived, there were several extra crew people helping setup the video wall and the video towers. Very cool, but if it takes that many people to set it up for a show, do we need more crew people or fewer gadgets?
The risers were in position, so I went ahead and set up my stuff before lunch.
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| a tofu/veggie stir fry kind of thing--not bad! |
Most of the band guys showed up later in the day since there wasn't anything really to do before soundcheck, so I had time to go for a run, take a nap, and warm up. None of which prevented me from getting nervous! I had a pretty strong stress headache by the time we headed to the stage.
Epic gig! The crowd numbered around 6,000. That's insane! We played well. It was a good night. My parents were in attendance.
The Wheel of Chorus was Biggest Part of Me and Easy, and I didn't not get my Easy parts correct, in spite of working on it.
I played my church gig on Sunday afternoon, and nobody knew or cared about this show at all.
