Yacht Rock at the Variety Playhouse, Day 1

Is it right of me to allow a 30 second brain fart on one song to ruin the good vibes of an entire gig (and several weeks of hard work that led up to it)?  Probably not, but it's still happening, and for some reason the anger and embarrassment will not release their grip.

A recap of the end of this week:

Thursday:  Yacht Rock played our normal Thursday night gig at the 10 High as a final tune up before we went into the Variety Playhouse for the weekend.  Things went very well.  

By the time Thursday morning had come around, the anxiety about performing all of this material (and the potential disasters lurking inside each song) had reached sky high levels.  I set up my gear and worked through every song on the setlist, and by the time I left to go to the gig, I was almost comfortable.

We borrowed Jason Pellett from our Beatles tribute in order to create a horn section for some of the Yacht Rock stuff.  I made charts of anything where we could use him, and then killed a thousand trees printing an editing charts!  He did pretty well;  maybe a bit stiff, but it's getting there.  For me, it was a weird experience because I played acoustic saxophone on songs where I would normally play EWI.  Half the song might be a keyboard part for me, and then I would jump up and play next him, and then turn around and go back to the keyboard--pretty schizophrenic.

Friday:  Thursday ended when I got home around 2:30 AM.  Friday began at 5:30 AM, when my alarm woke me up.  Yacht Rock played on "The Regular Guys" morning show--a 6:15 AM call!  Ouch!  We played You're No Good and Heart of Rock and Roll.  I stumbled a little bit on the solo for Heart of Rock and Roll.  On You're No Good, I hold one chord for the entire chorus, and I think I stepped on the sustain pedal and put my hands behind my head.  Now I hear there's video of us...oops!  Why is there video of a radio show, anyway?!  Here's the audio, complete with one of the guys making lewd comments about Alyssa Olson while Pete (her husband!) stands right there.  I guess it's good radio, but I don't think I could have been as cool as Pete was about it.

As soon as possible, I went home and went to bed for a few hours.

We loaded into the Variety Playhouse around 1 PM (I was late, so I got there at 1:30).  I set up my stuff, warmed up, and we meandered through a soundcheck.  A shocking development:  someone in the band actually asked to have me in their monitor!  It might be the first time ever.  I'm kind of pissed, and for some reason this feels like an achievement--like someone else in the band might actually want to hear what I'm playing.

Pete blew all of these up.

Mark Cobb soundchecking.

Greg tunes the radio.

After that, there was food and a nap, and we were off!

We opened with Please Pleaserock Me, our Beatles band.  It sounded great, and we had a really good time with it.  That's a pretty easy gig for me because there are (of course) minimal horns, so I play tambourine on a few songs and clap on a few songs.  Hell, I even get to sing a little bit on Paperback Writer!  How cool is that?

Yacht Rock came out after that and rocked it.  We played great.  I'm sure everybody in the band was pretty exhausted by the time we got into it, but every person gave his all.  The crowd was pretty good--probably 600 people in total attendance?  The room was pretty full, and thankfully they mostly moved down to the open area in front of the stage, which made it feel full.

Things were going well for me--a little hiccup for me when I skipped a song and had my saxophone in hand for 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, but other than that I was making it happen.  Stayin' Alive kind of bit me in the butt--actually, I'm not sure.  That was one where I was playing sax instead of EWI, and I could hear whether what I played matched the trumpet or not because I was also playing keyboard at the same time.  Let's say I got 95 percent of it right.  

Daniel Songer came out and danced on You Should be Dancing.  Awesome!

And then...I crashed.  We played Sailing by Christopher Cross.  I play the introduction on strings.  I've played it hundreds of times with no problem.  For some reason, I drew a blank and couldn't think of it at all.  I started playing (hoping it would happen), but once I hit a wrong note, then I really couldn't think of it, and then I panicked.  I ACTUALLY STARTED THE INTRO OVER.  That was terrible.  I really wish I could have gotten up and left after that.  What the hell is wrong with me?  

That pretty much ruined the gig for me.   We played a few more songs after that and I did my best to shake it off and enjoy myself, but my little disaster destroyed my psyche.  If they'd asked me to leave the stage and never come back, I would have agreed.  

I'm not sure at what point in my career everything became do or die, but I can see how some day I will retire from performing--not because I physically cannot do it, but because mentally I cannot handle the stress of what could go wrong.  I am definitely lacking confidence at the moment.

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Tuesday Quintet

Tuesday night was an amazing experience.  I played a quintet gig with four friends at the Aquarium, and every second of it was a joy.  The band was Dan Baraszu (guitar), Tyrone Jackson (keyboard), Kevin Smith (bass), and Marlon Patton (drums).  We played eight of my tunes (that, with a break, took up the two and a half hours of the gig!).
I could gush about how freakishly creative and musical each of my friends is, but I think the recording from the gig says it all:



I definitely need to use a camera instead of my crappy phone camera.

I have a HUGE weekend ahead, and I am woefully unprepared.  Tomorrow is going to be really bad.
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Sunday and Monday

Sunday was a two gigger.  I played a House Live gig at the Georgia World Congress Center.  It was pretty cool--I ran into Nick Longo over there, playing in a band opposite of us.  He's doing well.  We were laughing about how often someone pays one of us a compliment, and we know they're talking about the other guy.  I guess we kind of look alike, but Nick is stout--he's nearly a hundred pounds heavier than me!
I discovered a bad cable in my rig, but I cannot see where the problem is (it's not at the plug), so I'll have to pitch it.  Fortunately, Wayne had a cable so all was well.

Immediately after the House Live gig, I boogied over and did my church gig.  Not much to report there.  The leader is on maternity leave, but that band plays on!

Monday morning we had another rehearsal for the big Yacht Rock gigs this weekend.  I found lots of abnormalities in my horn charts--missing measures and such.  It's an annoyance for sure.  I came home, taught, and then practiced.  It felt really good and really bad to practice!  I haven't had time to do any personal maintenance in weeks, so I was very glad to have the time.  That said, I am really out of shape.
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Hot Yacht

The Yachting continues...

Friday, I played with the Yacht Rock Schooner at the Wild Wing in Alpharetta.  It was a pretty decent gig. I shook hands with the same drunk guy after nearly every song in the first set.  He couldn't get enough, I guess.  I felt like I was running for mayor.
The band did ok.  I would not say it was our finest performance.  First, a word about the monitor.  I was sharing a wedge with the stage left keyboards and the bass, both of whom sing.  For some reason, both decided to put their instruments into it as well, as well as a general mix of the other vocals on stage.  By the time we began playing, the monitor mix was terrible--too much crap in it, turned all the way up, and guess who was directly in front of it.  Great.  I was neither pleased nor impressed with the choices made there.  If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Bassist and Mr. Keyboardist, that's why you have lugged an amplifier to this event.
Kevin Spencer was not available as a vocalist for this gig, so we had a guest vocalist fill in.  She sang very well!  In time, I think she'll figure out how to fit in with the group--the vocal gymnastics (a la Mariah Carey) were not necessary.  That said, she did great--she looked the part and helped out with the harmonies.
Every tempo in the first half of the set was quick.  I think Daniel uses a metronome, so I'm probably not used to the original tempo anymore, but it felt like we were flying through songs.  Midway through, Ganesh finally said something about it.  Unfortunately, it shifted everything down so much that the gig nearly came to a stop (probably not, but it felt like we'd strapped on weights).  A few times it felt like the bass was out in front of the drums, time-wise.  Things felt weird.

Saturday, the Yacht Rock Revue played a gig at Barnsley Gardens in Adairsville, Georgia for a very expensive birthday party.  All in all, it went pretty well.  We originally were set up on the front porch of the museum next to the ruins, but around 10:20 PM the rain came and washed us all away.  We regrouped at another location (indoors) and finished the gig.
This gig was recorded and videotaped.  I don't know why that makes me nervous, but everything was really tight--it's hard to play when I'm thinking about how my performance will be scrutinized.  Every wrong note set off alarms in my head that someone down the line would be listening later, and I wouldn't be there to provide an excuse.  I'm sure the video will capture me concentrating like I was taking the SAT, not looking cool and excited about what I was doing.
Alyssa Olson came and sang a few songs with us.  She did extremely well.  We debuted You're No Good last night, and she nailed it.

When we reset indoors, we were unable to bring the PA (or most of our gear), so we did a Yacht Rock acoustic set--one keyboard (instead of our usual four), bass, acoustic guitar, electric guitar (with no amp), one vocal microphone, and one saxophone.  We ran all of that through my little mixer into my powered speaker.  Not bad a bad little gig!  The crowd loved it.  The video was once again rolling, but this one didn't scare me as much, for some reason.  Maybe I was just too busy trying to boil all my parts down and apply them to saxophone.

Dig the new wig?

I have a couple of gigs this evening, and then a few more charts to crank out before tomorrow morning's rehearsal.  A big week awaits, with two shows at the Variety Playhouse this weekend.
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Broken Bottle NIght

Last night's 10 High gig seemed like Broken Bottle night...lots of glass on the floor (in the restroom, around the bar, you name it).  No fights, though!

Here's my latest disaster...yesterday I set my rig up to practice before the gig, and all of the sudden my new laptop would not run my old version (7.1!!!) of Logic.  What the hell!  It worked fine at rehearsal Wednesday morning, so I was freaking out.  I uninstalled Logic and reinstalled it, but still no dice.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had gone wrong, so I grabbed my old laptop (which, by the way, has not flipped out in over a month, which either means that not turning it off is the solution, or it's fixing to erupt again) and headed out the door.

In the back of my head, I spent the whole night wondering why it suddenly would not function.  There's obviously a compatibility issue (the program is so old and the OS is so new, I have to force quit Logic to get out of it), but it's always been ok.  It dawned on me on the way home that I'd run the software update, and it must have changed things enough that now the compatibility problem cannot be bridged.  It's officially time to upgrade to the newest version of Logic.  To the Apple store I go!

Other than that, it was a pretty good night.  It's hard to say whether the crowd was uninspiring, or we were concentrating really hard.  I think we all played pretty well, but it didn't feel like we were having a great time.  Perhaps some of this was due to Ganesh Giri Jaya playing drums (Mark Cobb is taking some time off from the 10 High).  We're playing some of the songs for next weekend's big show, and we're all trying to get the stuff right.

The first song of the night was the theme to The Love Boat, and I could not remember the string part on the verses at all.  I was scared to death of it as we walked on stage.  Once we began, it all came right out of me, and I got all most all of it right.  Why is that?  Two minutes earlier I could not have sung it, but we started playing and my hands and ears just filled in the blanks.  It's funny how that works.  All this stuff is in my head.  I just need to shut up and let it come out.

We played I Keep Forgettin' for the first time in a while...that's one of my favorites because I get the rhodes part (Bencuya plays the clav part), so I'm right there in the meat of the song.  I got it right--a couple of little finger flubs, but I got it.  That's a cool feeling.

I've got a ton of stuff to do before Monday morning.  Wish me luck (and sleep).
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Spinnaker

Yacht Rock conquered Spinnaker last night in Panama City Beach.  The gig could not have gone better.  Kenny, the sound guy, was terrific, the crowd was good, the weather was nice, the load in/out was easy.  I dug it.  We played from 11 PM til 3 AM.  It sounds worse than it was.  I sweated more than I'd ever sweated on a gig.  By the end of the night, the leather pad on my neckstrap was spongy squishy wet.

Other than the bridge to Baby Come Back and a hiccup in Stayin' Alive, things went well for me personally.  The sound guy bumped me up so loud on a couple of sax solos, I'm sure I was heard in Tampa!  I dug it.  I sat in the dark (no light on my part of the stage), but I'd trade that any day for a sound guy that was paying attention.

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Still Going!

So...let's see.  It's been a few days since my last post.

Wednesday:  we (Yacht Rock) had a big rehearsal in preparation for our upcoming two night stand at the Variety Playhouse.  One night is regular Yacht Rock stuff, but the other night is the Reagan Rock Prom, so we're spending our time learning lots of wretched early eighties stuff.  Yuck...stuff like Break my Stride and True.  We tackled eight tunes in about two hours.

Wednesday night I played a Rolling Stones tribute rehearsal.  That was pretty easy--a couple of solos and I was done.  It was deafeningly loud, though.  I bought a little Mackie SRM150 as a baby monitor (if you recall from my previous blog post).  It worked really well at throwing some sound back towards me.  Up against 2 guitars, bass, drums, and a keyboardist (plus vocals in monitors), I needed some help.

Thursday:  Yacht Rock night.  Evidently, it was fight night at the 10 High!  Some guy stepped on stage at the end of the night and Mark Cobb flipped out, demanding to know where our security guy was to stop the guy.  It turns out he was upstairs rolling around in the street with another security guy and some drunk--they were trying to hold him down until the cops showed up.  He'd taken a different drunk fighter upstairs, which is how he'd ended up there in the first place.
Playing-wise, things were pretty good.  I practiced that afternoon, so I felt really confident going into the gig.  Somehow, I overlooked Human Nature (which bit me in the butt), but most other things went pretty well.  I played a really horrible chord on Really Love to See You Tonight (instead of G minor for the first chord, I played A/G!), but other than that I was ok.  Bencuya recorded it.  I'm hoping it sounds better than I remember.

Friday:  A two gig night it was.

I loaded in to the Park Tavern for the Yacht Rock gig.  I set up and soundchecked and split.  At one point, I was playing Lonely Boy (of course), and the soundguy kept turning it up in the PA because he wasn't getting enough signal from me.  He moved me to a different line in the snake, and suddenly there I was!  He had the gain open all the way and the channel fader up all the way.  Needless to say, I was so loud that I bet Andrew Gold could hear me in LA!  My apologies to LA.  Anyway, I just kept on playing, indifferent to the damage the sound was causing my ears.

My first gig was a wedding in Tyrone, GA.  We (piano and sax) only played the cocktails and the dinner, and the a DJ took over.  I like the format!  That way nobody's expecting us to magically play dance music.

From there I boogied up I-85 to the Park Tavern to intercept a Yacht Rock gig already in progress.  They'd started with a Zepplin vs. Who Rock Fight, so I only missed around eight songs.  It was packed, though!  Very cool.  I played the last 45 minutes of the gig.

Saturday:  Yacht Rock played a wedding in Seaside, FL, in the Florida panhandle.  It was pretty cool.  We were in a tent between the hotel and the sand dunes--a really sweet setting.  The crowd wasn't that into it, but the band had fun in spite of them.  The gig was at Watercolor--where The Truman Show was filmed.  Mark Cobb was flipping the beat around at the end of the night (backbeat on 1 and 3), making me squirm with delight.

Sunday:  We are off until tonight, when we make our debut at Spinnaker in Panama City Beach.  My family is here on vacation with me, braving the oil!

I hate to say it, but I'm a bit nostalgic for Florida.  I lived here in middle school and high school, and I was happy to move to Atlanta and get away from all of this.  Coming back, I see so many reminders of those years.  I miss it much more than I ever thought I could.
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Kevin Smith's finest hour (and a half)

I played a short trio gig at the Loews Hotel in midtown this evening.  The group consisted of myself, Tyrone Jackson on keyboard, and Kevin Smith on bass.  I can't remember off the top of my head who the client was--I suppose it doesn't really matter.

We had a wonderful time, and though we all played well, I think Kevin has probably never played better on one of my gigs.  He was super groovy, had a great sound, and played logical solos.  Tyrone had an exceptionally good night too--we've played together for so long that he knows exactly the right thing to play.  He never fails to amaze me.  This was one of those gigs where I loved every second.  My dream would be for this to happen every time I played a gig.

The first twenty minutes of the gig were played to an empty room--I guess the guests were still in meetings.    Good for us!  We could hear each other, and the result was a really relaxed performance.

After our set of an hour and a half, we ate off the buffet, which ended with some crazy chocolate dessert.

The parking was free--did I mention that?  What a gig!  Not bad for a Monday.

Here's the audio:



Here are some photos:

my new suit!

the room

my friends Tyrone and Kevin

Jeff

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Weddings

Last night (Friday), I did a wedding with Yacht Rock at King Plow.  I arrived determined to avenge myself for Thursday night's fiasco, and I must say that things were much better.  Neither song got me, though Stayin' Alive is still very confusing at the end.  I knew where I was (I was reading my chart), but I could have easily been pulled off course.  You Should be Dancing was fine--back to normal for that one.
I got in a couple of good sax solos last night.  Both horns felt good and I was directly in front of my monitor, so I was really comfortable.  We began the gig with Reminiscing, and right before we went on Bencuya dared me to quote Hava Nagila in my solo, which I did-twice! but he never acknowledged it.
After the gig Greg Lee gave me some unnecessary B.S. comments--something to the effect of me being exceptionally slow at packing up.  Hopefully Greg can figure out a way to scale down my setup so I can finish sooner.  Another option would be for him to shut the hell up.

Today I played a wedding with Yacht Rock Schooner at the Botanical Gardens.  An early gig!  Wonderful!  A couple of us played the wedding ceremony (flute, guitar, piano), wilting (dressed in all black!) in direct sunlight.  From there, I moved on to the cocktail hour where I played saxophone in a quartet (sax, piano, bass, and drums).  Both of these were fairly easy.  We then had a scheduled hour long break for lunch, which was bizarre--usually people have the "we're paying you too much money for you to ever take a break!" mentality.  Affairs to Remember has new vendor meals, and though it was still the cold chicken breast, fruit, and a brownie, it was not bad.  They had some beans with jalapenos which were really good.  Also, the entire container is biodegradable.  Much better than the all plastic containers they used to use.

I think we ended up playing about an hour and a half of Yacht Rock in the Day Room (which looks remarkably like a high school cafeteria).  After that, it was a race--who could get out that fastest!  I was home by 5.
That room is really horrible--hard surfaces everywhere.  When we soundchecked, the guy running sound decided to only put vocals in the PA.  Once we started playing, however, it was apparent that I would never be able to hear myself (or be heard) over the crowd and the band, so he put a microphone in front of me and ran it through the monitor (just a little bit--I really never got enough).  It helped, but I get the feeling that only the few people directly in front of me heard any saxophone.  I don't remember the sound man ever walking out in the room once the crowd arrived, so once the noise and the body count went up, things changed drastically.  To confound my fears, I went across the room during a song in which I did not play, and could only hear vocals, drums, and bass.
Once again, I wish that I'd brought some sort of speaker as a monitor.  Every time that happens, I curse myself because I can't hear.  I need something to bounce my sound back towards myself.  Otherwise, I end up overblowing and playing poorly.  I guess when I eventually get around to it, Greg Lee will give me crap about bringing that, too.
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(Not) Staying Alive

Last night at the 10 High was Yacht Rock at full strength.  For the past few months, I think at least one person in the band has been out on any given Thursday.  We're back!

We were sailing along quite well until the end of the first set, when two Bee Gees songs leapt up and bit me in the butt.  The first was Stayin' Alive, which appears to be a simple song--I don't think it's much more than F minor, Bb7, and Eb.  The form is really weird, though, particularly later on in the song.  There's a tag after the second chorus, and then after the third chorus it does a similar (but different) series of tags, every other one being longer.  To further complicate my problems, I'm playing the brass part on EWI and the string part on keyboard, and during those tags it jumps back and forth.
All of this is a bullshit excuse, anyway.  I failed miserably regardless of the reason.

Immediately following my own little disco Hindenburg, we went into You Should Be Dancing, which should have been fine because we've played that one a good bit, but the voice in my head was still flipping out about Stayin' Alive, and I couldn't get my head into the next song.  All I wanted to do was get off the stage.

I was pretty furious through the break and most of the next set.  In two songs, the gig went from something I was excited about to something from which I wanted to run away.

After the gig, Pete came by to ask about all the things I messed up, including a couple of gacked notes (the high F# in Who Can it be Now? being the usual suspect;  if I had a setlist in front of me, I could tell you every mistake that I made).  That was a fun conversation.  It certainly does wonders for my confidence.

Today I'm trying to get Stayin' Alive in my head.  I think I've got it (but do I really have it?  if somebody else flinches, will I follow them?  this remains to be seen).  Dealing with this means that I'm not practicing ceremony music for tomorrow's wedding ceremony.  Not good.  I need a week to reload.

We're playing a wedding reception tonight.  I've got to get my head together quickly.
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Don't Stop Believin'

I'm back from Las Vegas.

The first night we were there, we stayed up really late drinking.  Somewhere around 3 AM local time (6 AM to me), I was convinced to go get my horn and crash the dueling pianos bar in our hotel (New York, New York).  Here's video:

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