I had the pleasure of playing a nice quartet gig at CNN Center Wednesday night. The band this time was Louis Heriveaux on keyboard, Kevin Smith on bass, and Marlon Patton on drums. Great playing! It was a real pleasure to have these guys play with me--each one has a strong personality on his instrument. There were lots of creative moments…and I tried to keep up!
Here's audio from the gig:
For the most part, we played to an empty room (it was more like a canyon). The first set was supposed to be a cocktail hour, so the crowd was off to the side. The second set was a buffet dinner, but even then it was only a couple of hundred people spread out. It didn't feel like much.
They ignored us; we ignored them. A lady who got on the elevator with me after the gig asked where I was playing, and her friend said "He was playing the whole night!" The first lady replied, "I must have missed it." Yep.
Yacht Rock returned to Atlanta after a tour up to the northeast. Along the way we dealt with technical difficulties, tension conventions, and the silliness of being in a van all day.
Wednesday: we met up at the office, loaded the van and headed to North Carolina. Our first gig was in Greensboro (or as we came to find out, Greensboring) at the Blind Tiger. The room looked great; I think the capacity was something like four hundred. The PA was bigger than the Variety Playhouse's (capacity of 1,100). The stage was a good size.
So…guess how many people showed up? Maybe twenty over the course of the entire evening. Actually, make that nineteen plus a dog. Ouch!
the last cigarette machine in the universe
From what I understood, the Blind Tiger used to be located in the midst of a bar scene with lots of foot traffic, but they moved to this bigger/better location. Plus, it was Wednesday night…anyway, not the most exciting gig of our lives (though everybody held it together and played well when we could have blown it off).
Thursday: we got up and drove to Washington DC to play at the Mason Inn.
Just south of Richmond (in Petersburg), we stopped at a BBQ joint called Saucy's that had been constructed out of a steel shipping container. It was crazy good (just for the record: me=Memphis guy, so pork or chicken please, and none of that North Carolina vinegar BS). I had a third of a rack of ribs. Dannells did too. It turns out that the guys who run/own it are musicians too, so we hung out for a minute and traded stories. The ribs were so good, I licked the sauce out of the aluminum foil when I was finished.
We were supposed to play here last time (when it was called the Gin and Tonic), but they were renovating so we were moved to Saloun (you can read about that here). Just like last time, we snagged a parking spot right outside the front door. Nice.
That was the last sane thing that happened.
We walked in, and immediately noticed that they'd just painted the stage, maybe the night before, and it was still a bit sticky (and wet in some places!). Hmm. We let it dry for another hour, then came back and loaded in. Still sticky.
I was not able to set up much because the guy with the PA (we'll call him Vincent) showed up with his PA to set up. Vincent set up gear like the gig was happening in twelve hours instead of three. I'm not sure if he was trying to be thorough, or maybe he'd only set it up once before, but he was not swift. Mentally, I murdered him at a much quicker pace.
Vincent, steadily impeding progress
my gear, not on the stage
hurry up Vincent!
So, the gig was supposed to start at 9:30 PM. Vincent started loading in at 6…at 9 he still hadn't run microphone lines. At 9:40 we were crammed on stage (Cobb in the corner, Greg in front of him, Bencuya next to me, Dannells in front of us--facing me--and Nick and Ganesh back to back with him). Nick finally flipped out on Vincent at 9:55. Ten minutes later (after Nick had pushed Vincent out of the way and taken over the line check/level set) we were up and running.
This gig went great. It was super loud and the set up was totally weird, but people loved it and we played well. The capacity of the room was somewhere above two hundred, but the door guys (we'll call them security) kept sending people in. They admitted later that there were over four hundred people in there. Some of them were insanely hot women.
Cool! Awesome gig! We loaded out like there was some kind of time limit, with cases on the sidewalk and gear coming out one piece at a time. At one point I was loading the back of the van while a drunk guy was peeing on the street-side front corner of the trailer. I'll leave that to your imagination--no photos.
We drove off into Maryland to spend the night and nearly hit a deer that was standing in the middle of the highway.
Friday: we piled into the van and drove to New York City for a gig at Brooklyn's Knitting Factory. Kind of a big deal…we got to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn early in the afternoon, parked the van under the BQE in an unattended lot, and wandered off to find pizza (Dannells' choice). We ended up at some hipster pizza place. The pizza was ok. It did get great reviews on Yelp!
After a quick check on the van, we did another loop through the neighborhood. It was a hipster paradise.
We loaded in, set up, soundchecked. Every club should be like this! They had a direct hallway from the room to the street, so no dragging gear through the crowd. Nice. The whole place was like a nicer, slightly larger version of Smith's Olde Bar (without the stairs).
After some food, we got dressed and played. I think this might have been one of our best gigs ever. Everybody played well. Everything sounded good. We were something like eleven people shy of selling out the club. Hell yeah!
We finished right at 11:30 PM. The room was cleared, we loaded out (again in record time), and the DJ began (and presumably the room filled again, but we were long gone). We got a spot on the street right in front, so we loaded the everything in the trailer and walked across the street to the Fat Sow to celebrate. We drank, we ate (more insanely good BBQ). Dannells got crazy.
ordering whiskey
the execution
Back to the van! We grabbed our suitcases (Dear van, please be here tomorrow with all of your doors and windows intact, and a trailer still attached to your hitch) and headed to our hotel across Brooklyn.
Saturday: we woke up around noon to heavy, wet snow falling. Uh oh. As quickly as we could, we cabbed/car'ed it back to the van to begin making our way to Massachusetts for the big private gig that was supposed to fund the bulk of this tour.
Video!
We got in the van and headed north out of the city. At our first pit stop for gas, urine, and coffee, the van would not restart. Uh oh. We sat there for about ten minutes, and then it started. Back in business!
The snow got heavier and the roads got worse. In the NYC suburbs, Nick made the call to the client to inform him that we would not be able to make it. We got off the interstate at Bedford, NY. The van got stuck in the snow. We got unstuck, tried to get up the entrance ramp southbound, and got stuck. We backed up and headed off on a secondary road, where we once again got stuck. We backed down to a gas station and waited it out for a few hours (the whole time with the engine running out of fear that it might never start again).
At dusk, the decision was made to try it again. We headed off on the same road and made it over the first hump. About a mile down the road, we got stuck on an incline in a curve. Traffic at this spot (probably a little two lane country road in real life) was crazy--some people blew past us with no problems; some got stuck and then got unstuck. Some nearly slid into us; some slid into the ditch. We tried to pay off private snowplowers with cash, but nobody would do much to help us. Eventually we got unstuck; made it down the street a little bit and got stuck again. Firetrucks blew past us. Ambulances streaked by. We got unstuck again. We made it another mile or two, then got stuck. We got unstuck and trudged on, only to take a wrong turn! Uh oh. Finally, the interstate! Yay! I think it took us about six hours to go five miles.
The main roads weren't too bad, so we made our way back to Manhattan and unloaded Mark Cobb, Nick, and his wife, Elliott in Tribeca.
The remaining five of us slept in Secaucus, NJ. None slept harder than our heroic driver Greg Lee.
Sunday: we woke to clear skies and melting snow. The van would not start--it appeared that we might have run out of gas (perhaps the gauge wasn't working?). Ganesh and I walked to a gas station and purchased a can and three gallons worth of fuel. We got back, started the van, and away we went!
First order of business: get Mark Dannells to the Newark airport. Done. The remaining four of us (Mark Bencuya, Greg Lee, Ganesh, and myself drove to Charlotte (with a lunch/fuel stop south of Baltimore). The van began behaving normally. We even shut it off! How about that!
By Sunday night we were going insane. At one point Greg was expounding on the virtues of trail mix ("M & Ms…peanuts…raisins…genius!").
Monday: we did the four hour trip to Atlanta without any problems. A quick stop at the office to unload gear, and we went our separate ways.
