Helicopter Rides and Gigs

I had a House Live gig at Ventana's last night.  The people who hired us wouldn't pay for staff from the sound company;  wouldn't pay for a stage;  wouldn't pay for food.  We soon found out is because they'd spent all their money on HELICOPTER TOURS OF THE CITY!!!  For three hours we played and watched the helicopter come and go.  Wayne and I got close--we were in the line at the top of the stairs, ready to get on the next helicopter, but then some other people showed up and we thought we should let them go (and Wayne got a lil chicken--I think the danger that we would get busted, not the helicopter part).  Anyway, we did NOT get in the helicopter (though I added lyrics to lots of our improvisations that dealt with our misfortune).  Next time?

The actual helicopter in which we did not ride:

I've spent all day trying to get my hands to play both the synth part and the string part of What a Fool Believes.  I don't think I'm ready, but I'm going for it tonight.
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Trio

I played a lot of bullshit tonight, but I looked damn good.

Tonight was a weird trio gig at the Marriott Marquis downtown.  It was supposed to be 6 to 9, but at some point I was informed it would begin at 6:30.  No big deal;  we hung out.

When we finally got started playing, I don't know if it was because Kevin was exhausted from a long weekend or we were in a dead spot in the room or what, but it felt like we were playing into deep space.  I mean, the room just ate our sound and took all the energy with it.  There seemed to be nothing I could do to kick us into gear.  Thus, I played a bunch of crap, trying to force some excitement.  Maybe when I go back and listen to it tomorrow, I'll think differently, but it felt like I wasn't making any sense.  My reeds felt stuffy and my hands wouldn't work.

My contract said dinner/awards, so we played about an hour and twenty minutes waiting for the awards ceremony that never came.  When people started leaving for the night, we took a break.  The second set made it about fifteen minutes--during the second tune, I had my eyes closed while I was playing, and I opened them to find my client two feet in front of me.  What the hell!

She told us we were finished (at 8:30 PM), but then asked if she could "borrow" Tyrone to play a song in the hospitality suite--they had a grand piano up there.  He returned after 9 PM.  It's always an adventure.


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More Newcastle!

Last night I began the Yacht Rock festivities by ordering a Newcastle and declaring the possibility that I might get rip-roarin' drunk (to which Nick replied, "Like last night?")  I'm really not that bad.  I in fact did not get drunk, but I was buzzed for the entire night.  It was that kind of night--I hate to say it, but I didn't care.

The crowd was good (and good lookin'--wow!), and pretty appreciative of what we were giving them.  I was surprised at the end of the night that the final count was so high--in front of me there were times when it was thin.  The room must have turned over more than usual.

I was on a pair of great reeds last night and I could hear my monitor really well, so I just went for it.  Things like Baker Street got a little extra sauce;  maybe it was the beer?  I just had to do it.  Kind of givin' it all the finger.

On the other hand, my laptop (the old one) gave me the finger a couple of times!  Something happened a few times--the EWI would transmit MIDI info (I guess?) that muted Logic on my laptop, and so I'd tried to play something and get NOTHING.  Very, very, very irritating.  Thank god I was in a "f**k it" kind of mood or I probably would have gotten very upset.  Instead I just banged on the space bar and/or enter until it was cleared up.  Here's to gear that doesn't do this!

That was the last straw.  I spent all of today getting my sounds together on Mainstage (on my Macbook Pro) and making sure it all worked.  Now that I'm up and running, I am wiping my old computer (the G4) clean.  There's no going back!

I really am pretty sick of dealing with the EWI.  I'm cool with using it as another "voice", say the way Bob Mintzer uses it in the Yellowjackets, but I'm sick of dealing with it as a MIDI controller.  I guess I should have taken piano lessons more seriously!
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Newcastle

Last night was Please Pleaserock Me at Smith's Olde Bar.

It was a low energy kind of night.  We've got to figure out a way to get more people to come through the door, I guess.  The crowd last night was ok, but they didn't give us much--it was almost like they were stunned by what they were seeing.   At no point did it feel like they were all the way with us.  I wish there had been a little more unabashed enthusiasm.

The first set I was not busy, so I spent most of my time focused on the awesomeness of Mark Cobb (who is awesome).  He was killin' it.  I haven't seen much of him because he's been out of town and Yacht Rock has been kind of slow at the moment, but he really kicked ass.  

Paul Poovey played trumpet with us last night (Jason Pellett is on vacation).  Paul was outstanding!  He walked in and played the gig with no rehearsals or anything.  

Greg Lee played alto last night, and I think it made the tunes we did last night sound better.  Previously he had been playing bari, and a few times we ended up with a big gap between him and us.  Now he's right up in the middle of us--much better.

The second set featured Newcastle in the beer tub back stage.  I like Newcastle a lot.

When you listen to the recording from last night you'll probably hear me destroying She's Leaving Home--it's because I couldn't hear anything I was playing.  I will not blame that on Newcastle for that.  My hope is that nobody else could hear me either.
Newcastle is also not to blame for the end of Jet.  The jump from the bottom of the horn up to an altissimo B for the solo is hard to do.

I was much busier in the second set and could not get backstage to fetch another Newcastle.  That's the way the gig ended.

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Chattanooga

I played a really easy solo sax/quartet gig in Chattanooga last night--a private party for a couple of hundred lawyers at the Hunter Museum.

The gig included Trey Wright (guitar), Louis Heriveaux (piano), and Kevin Smith (bass).  Dan Baraszu was originally on the gig, but he ended up playing with Will Scruggs for a CC Booker III gig (cool organ/sax stuff with David Ellington and Marlon Patton).

So the gig...I played solo saxophone for an hour in one part of the museum and the trio played in another.  After a break, we played the remainder of the time as a quartet.

These people were LOUD.  While the four of us were eating, the question was posed--why hire us?  I mean, these people didn't need background music.  They couldn't have cared less!  All we did was contribute to the volume.  I don't get it.  Anyway, we had fun in spite of them.  At the end of the night, one of the bartenders came up to sing "If I Ain't Got You" by Alicia Keys, so I ran like hell to get out of there.  I bet I was on the road before she finished!

I hadn't played with Louis in a while, and I'd never played with Trey.  Both play really well.  We got along great and everybody's styles meshed well.

Here are mp3s of the quartet for your enjoyment:



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Typical Thursday

Yacht Rock played our usual Thursday night at the 10 High.  I have nothing more to say...it was business as usual.  I had good reeds on both saxophones, and I integrated a better fingering for a piano part.  I wore one of my new shirts.
See--I told you I had nothing.
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The Lucky 38

We had 38 paid attendees at the Yacht Rock Roller Disco.  Ouch.  After my personal triumph the night before, I came crashing back to earth.

What else can I say...I drank multiple beers before we began, and so I assume that the sound was only weird to me.  Ganesh filled in for Mark Cobb (!) on drums, and it felt like the gig was him and me playing in the Bat Cave.  The sound didn't get any better as I gradually returned to sobriety, though, so I think that's just the way it is.

Let's talk equipment problems, shall we?

1.  My effects pedal for my saxophone croaked.  Really, it was only the power supply that died.  It's an easy fix, and I think I only played saxophone on three songs, so it was no biggie, but it does mean a trip to the music store.

2.  My brass sound in my EWI rig (computer!) has gotten all out of wack.  I'm not sure how, but it just sounded terrible and splatty and distorted.  Fortunately I am days away from having my "Mainstage" version up and running, but I did waste some valuable time screwing around with it (to no avail).  I wonder why one sound in my setup got so mangled, but everything else is fine.  I guess it's the final push to get me to finish building my new virtual rig.  I've been holding onto Logic 7 for too long!

38 people?  Are you serious?  I predict that rollerskating at the Masquerade is on the way out.
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Chris Burroughs Collective

I played a really cool with drummer Chris Burroughs at the only jazz club in Atlanta, Churchill Grounds.  I thought it was going to be a public gig, but it turns out it was a private event--somebody had rented out the room and hired us.


It's funny going into Churchill again.  Back when it started out, I used to go and sit in with a couple of friends (Dan Furman and Joseph Patrick Moore), back when the stage was in the front window.  Later on, I used to play at the jam session just about every week.  For a while, I was playing some gigs there as a leader.  At some point, I fell out of favor with management and they stopped hiring me.

Once they opened "The Whisper Room," I went to one last jam session there.  A few years after that, I stopped by one night and sat in with Joe Gransden.  Since then, I have not been in the room.

This being my third time, I would say it was charmed.  The gig also included Tyrone Jackson and Joel Powell (bass).  I had a wonderful time.  I was sort of worried about playing a jazz gig where I might have to think about lots of tunes--the jazz gigs I do are dominated by my own tunes.  No problems, though.  Everybody was cool and I could relax and play.

This gig felt huge to me.  I am always worried that I am busy off doing my own thing and nobody will remember me for jazz stuff.  I would do gigs like this for free!



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Peg in Charlotte

Here's an audience video of us playing Steely Dan's Peg in Charlotte last Thursday.



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Park Tavern

Yacht Rock played at the Park Tavern in midtown last night--part of the Summer Concert Series there.  This particular gig was our Reagan Rock show--all music of the early eighties.  We like to think of it as a continuation of the smooth seventies hits into the next decade.

This gig was insane.  It sold out--they were turning people away!  Very cool and very surreal.  Lots of people saw us for the first time.  More and more, I don't recognize hardly anyone in the audience.  The thing just continues to grow--business is improving!

Other than that, it was fairly uneventful.  There were a few rough spots, which was understandable considering we hadn't really played most of these songs since the Variety Playhouse gig.  I felt a little more mentally aware than I did in Charlotte--in other words, I didn't feel as crappy about my performance as the previous night!

We had a different sound guy than we usually see at the Park Tavern--last night was Kip Conner, who usually runs sound for Shawn Mullins.  I think the board was frustrating him (and us).  Things that he would turn down would get turned back up, and other things would disappear.  We made it through ok, but  he seemed pretty pissed about it afterwards, and I can understand why--he's a total pro sound guy, and the thing made him look bad.

It's becoming apparent to me as we play larger venues that my little powered speaker is not powerful enough to keep up with the stage volume--it's fine when I'm right on top of it, but even six feet away is getting too far.  Right now I'm using a Mackie SRM350, and I usually use it wide open.  I think I need to jump up to the SRM450 so I can have it loud enough without the sounds distorting.  I thought about buying a big keyboard amp (since that's mainly what's going through it), but a 450 is around the same price, and I could also use it as a main speaker on gigs where I have to supply a PA.

After the gig, I was explaining the EWI to a woman, and I explained that it was a synth, but instead of having piano keys to tell it what note to play, it has saxophone fingerings.  She said, "You play saxophone?"  Ouch.
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Alive After Five

The Yacht Rock Revue played Alive After Five in Charlotte last night.  It went pretty well.

We all met at the office around 10:30 AM, loaded up, and headed up I 85.  Along the way we had the usual stops for food and gas, and rolled in around 4 PM, I'd guess.  From there, we loaded in, set up (on a really nice outdoor stage), soundchecked and ate.

The gig was not too good for me.  I'm still trying to get used to the new keyboard;  the EWI had another moment of playing itself;  mostly I was mentally unavailable for the beginning of the gig!  I just couldn't get my mindset into what we were doing.  It was like I was spaced out, and I was trying to force myself to pay attention (with limited success).  While that was happening, I was thinking about things like "the split on this keyboard needs to be tweaked" and trying to play around that (and tripping all over myself).  The EWI started playing itself again--it was still registering breath pressure even though I wasn't playing it, which caused it to do some strange stuff for a second.  I'm not sure what that was--it was not terribly hot or humid--maybe barometric pressure?  Altitude?  I don't know.  It worked, and then somehow I sent MIDI information that muted everything...I don't know.  I turned the sensitivity down and everything was fine for the rest of the gig.

Anyway, if you were there (either on stage or out front), my apologies for not being on it.  I just didn't have it yesterday.  

We drove home after the gig (I slept a good bit of the way).  I got home around 4:30 AM, wide awake from having taken a three hour nap!  I was up for a while longer before I crashed again.

We're at the Park Tavern tonight.

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