Church Stuff

I made it to both my church gigs yesterday…

Church gig number one had a different drummer again.  I'm not sure if the usual guy has not been available, or if the church is shopping for a new guy.  This week's guy was pretty good.

We had Tommy Dodd, steel guitarist extraordinaire, once again.  It didn't appear to be a special occasion…I'm guessing they'll bring him in whenever they feel like it.  Evidently the budget can handle it.

Other than that, it was pretty ho-hum.  We had a piece with a children's choir and a couple of pieces with an adult choir.  Not much for me to do.

Last week was the big holiday show.  I was not invited to participate.  The rest of the band wanted to know where I was.  I said, "At home."  They said, "Your name was in the program."

Church gig number two was ok.  I was informed that the ushers complained of multiple instances during the past few weeks of distortion when the band was playing.  Maybe that was happening when I wasn't there, but we've never had distortion when I was running the board.  Once the band got up and running, and walked to the back of the church.  One of the ushers was there.  I said, "Is it distorting?"  "No."  "Right.  So go to hell."

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House Live

I would have thought that this Saturday (December 10) would be a big date on the calendar--one of those Saturdays when everybody in the world would be working and I would get a couple of calls.  Maybe I'm so up to my eyebrows with Yacht Rock stuff that people assume I'm unavailable;  I don't know…maybe there just aren't that many gigs to go around right now.  Anyway, I had this prime date on my calendar wide open, and I was fortunate to pick up a House Live gig (sax/flute, percussionist, DJ playing house music).

It was a long gig--5 hours--but the money was good, and it was coming at a good time.  Not only did I want to work, but these sort of gigs are a good chance for me to play a lot of sax and flute.  I get to practice, more or less the whole night, because the gig is so open--I can take an idea or a pattern or an interval and play it over and over;  put in on different parts of the beat;  flip it around.

Last night was a good exercise for the first three hours…the problem was that the gig went for five!  It got even more difficult when the DJ stuff changed from house music to pop music--what am I supposed to play over PYT, Don't Stop Believin', Let's Groove Tonight, or You Give Love a Bad Name?

Just when I thought we were done, they extended the gig a half hour.  I limped through that.  Eighteen drunk people on the dance floor held us hostage.  At 12:30, the lights came on and I started packing up.  They extended the gig ANOTHER half hour.  It was brutal.  My bottom lip felt like hamburger.

By 1 AM, we were a wreck.  They were drunk, we were tired.  People were auditioning for the percussion part.  The client was WASTED…she was talking to the DJ and the percussionist at one point, and she said, "I like that long thing with the ridges that you pull the stick across…hey look he's got a cowbell…have you ever seen that SNL skit with the cowbell?"  Ugh.

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The Holiday Show

We did it!  The Third Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special was a huge success!

This year we did it at the Buckhead Theatre.  It's really nice!  Much better than the Roxy was.  I liked the stage size, and the sound seemed good to me (at least where I was, though Greg mentioned that the slap off the wall was really bugging him).  All my stuff went well--no problems.  The different alto mouthpiece worked much better, and my sax solos in general were better than usual.  I think my biggest problem (other than showing up an hour late for load in) was that I kept trying to play Your Momma Don't Dance in F instead of C…played it too many times on tenor and not enough on bari!

Yay for us and congratulations to Pleaserock (Nick, Pete, Esther, and Kristen) for once again organizing an awesome event!

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Christmas Show Dress Rehearsal

Yacht Rock played our 10 High gig last night--it happened to be the big dress rehearsal for the Big Christmas Show We're Not Quite Ready to Play.  Traditionally, we've kind of sucked real bad at the 10 High the night before a big show, and then we play the big show and nail it.  Last night was kind of…fine?  No disasters…I for one am just not comfortable with the everything yet.  I kind of know my stuff, but it feels like I need another week or two to digest it--my brain's not there yet.  Like, I can't spot anything on the set list that scares me (except for hearing my voice on We Are the World--I can't wait for that to be over), but I don't feel like I know what I'm doing.  The past month has been such a blur that this show feels like something else to get through.

So…my alto was wildly out of tune.  I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but I'm going back to an older mouthpiece (a Chinese copy of a Guardala).  It's more comfortable.  I feel like I've been fighting the ARB for a while, and the pitch thing is driving me crazy…left hand is flat, right hand is sharp.  I think I probably just need to aim my pitch better, but I recorded a few things last night and I sound BAAAAAD…like so bad that I'm not posting them here!  You know that's bad, since I love to share my latest failures.

My tenor had a great reed--it's a great reed that's still new, so it has a little resistance that you can blow through and then the sound is there.  I love it.  Too bad my tenor solos were both so damn vanilla…no horrible wrong notes, just boring boring boring boring boring.  Felt great, played bleah.

Tonight will be better…or else!

If you're looking for something to do, the Third Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special is tonight at 9 PM at the Buckhead Theatre.  It only happens once a year…

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Too Much Too Early

I think it's a sign of how busy things are that I have to look at my blog to see the last time I checked in.

Thursday night, I got home around 2:30 AM.  I got up at 8 to play a Yacht Rock rehearsal for the upcoming show (this coming Friday at the Buckhead Theatre).  It was a little rough.  Nick had (I think) fifteen songs that we were learning or reviewing.  I had charts for stuff, but I hadn't played any of it (except for the review tunes, which I hadn't played in six months--since Christmas in July).  We hacked through stuff until we ran out of time.  It wasn't terrible, but I didn't feel adequately prepared.

Friday afternoon was spent catching up on things at home--laundry, cleaning, bills, computer stuff.  I got in a little practice on the YR stuff.

Saturday morning, Yacht Rock was up early to drive to Greensboro, NC to play a corporate party.  That took all day.  It was a relatively painless gig, though the crowd obviously didn't quite get what we were doing--multiple requests for Brick House.  One lady yanked on my suit jacket while I was playing to make a request.  Not cool!

Sunday, we got up early and drove home.  When I got home, I ate, put my stuff away, and it was just about time to go to my evening church gig.  That went fine.

Monday morning we were up early to play on CBS Better Mornings.  No big deal--I don't think we even bothered to take pictures in front of the weather or anything.

The gig itself was a little rocky.  There were some wrong notes floated over the airwaves!  After the morning show, we had a rehearsal at the studio.  Once again, it was pretty rough--I didn't feel like I was prepared, and I wasn't sure what songs we were working on.  I had charts and I thoughts about how I wanted to play things, but I hadn't actually practiced stuff for the rehearsal.  Not good!

I got home, exercised, picked up my repaired horns from Lopes, did laundry, vacuumed the house, bought a Christmas tree...

It is now Tuesday morning…woke up in my clothes.  Time to go to another rehearsal.  Guess what…I'm not sure what we're playing, and I'm not really prepared.  There's just too much going on.

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Thursday 5 and 7

Yacht Rock played a weird, pieced together gig last night at the 10 High.  Nick, Pete, and Cobb were off somewhere else playing a non-Yacht Rock gig, so we had Ganesh and Kevin Spencer up front and Daniel Morrison in the back.  Ganesh and Kevin were off somewhere else playing a non-Yacht Rock gig until 10:30, so the other five of us (Bencuya, Greg, Daniel, Dannells, and myself) played about half of the first set without them.  No big deal, but it was strange, mostly I think because there wasn't the usual volume coming out of the center and right monitors.

Once we got going…it never really got going.  The crowd was indifferent and we were indifferent.  Dannells played his ass off, though, and I enjoyed playing a few tunes (Kiss You All Over and Lonely Boy) we never touch with Nick and Pete  up front.

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More Recording

Yacht Rock spent two days in Athens at David Barbe's studio, recording two of our original songs.  I'd never done any kind of recording where I sat through the creation of all the parts before. For me, it involved a couple of days of sitting in the control room and about thirty minutes of playing.  Normally when I get hired to play on a session, I walk in and the song is waiting on me.

I played flute on one song and sax on the other.  Neither solo was really worth a damn.  As much as I wanted to summon something really awesome--something spellbinding and hip, I just couldn't do it.  We ended up with some pretty safe/average stuff.  I don't know if it was because I'd just been sitting there too long or what, but I had no magic.  The rest of the song sounds good, though!

I got home Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 1 AM.   I was up at 8, headed across town to a studio in Snellville for a 10 AM session.  This one was more of the usual thing--the guy asked me to add some "80s tenor" to a couple of songs he's producing for a chick singer.  It went quickly.  For some reason I was more comfortable on this stuff--I felt a little better about it.

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The Usual

I did my two Sunday church gigs.  The first one was kind of a special show, with lots of extra stuff while they decorated the church and lit the trees.  It was the usual kind of frenetic rehearsal and a pretty good performance.  No sweat.  The second gig was not too bad until the last song--the leader decided that the beginning verse and refrain should be a cappella (on a really lukewarm gospel song).  By the time the band entered, all the energy had gone out of it.  We did another verse and refrain (and no tag!) and it ended.  It was a really weird way to end the service.  So much for that!

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Black Friday

Yacht Rock played Atlantic Station last night.  We were set up on a stage in between the Rosa Mexicano and the movie theatre.

It was kind of a strange gig.  We showed up while the band before us was playing--an Atlanta wedding band string of songs:  Cupid Shuffle, Electric Slide/I'll Take You There, the PG version of Cee-Lo's Fuck You, and then It's Tricky/Funky Cold Medina/Oye Como Va.  It's hard for me to say whether or not they were even any good.  Those kind of lowest-common-denominator set lists are such a turn off, and it's not like they were trying to get close to the sounds--it was the same acoustic piano/guitar/bass thing for all of it.  I walked away.

While we were setting up, Georgia Tech held their pep rally.  That was kind of odd.  We kind of worked around Buzz while he was throwing out free t shirts.  The cheerleaders and a smaller version of the band were also in attendance.  When that finished, the crowd dispersed.

Our sets were pretty good.  We had three subs from the Schooner:  Kevin Spencer out front, Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums, and Tom Young out front on bass.  We got to play a few tunes we'd never touch with Nick and Pete leading--Love is Alive, Lonely Boy, and Thunder Island, so that was cool.  Other than that, it was business as usual.

We played two sets beginning at 8 PM…we were cold and there was nothing to do and the crowd seemed confused, so we were finished by 10:15.  The advance for the gig said we had to stop no later than 11 PM.  I guess that was ok?  I was home by 11:15.  Not bad!

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Turkey Eve

Yacht Rock played our now annual Turkey Eve show.  This year's event was at the Park Tavern in the room upstairs (not in the tent, which now holds the ice rink!).

We played two shows.  I think both went pretty well.  The first one was just about sold out;  the second was not quite there, but still maybe five hundred people.

I really don't like playing that room very much.  Acoustically, it's a big glass shoebox;  once the sound starts bouncing around, the only thing you can do to hear yourself is to push your own volume up above the natural reverb.  It's funny that it feels the opposite downstairs--there's not enough reflection in the tent, and so I NEVER feel like I'm in the PA.

The stage has also been an issue in the past when we have played this room--the never make it deep enough and instead try and make these worthless one-stage-square wings.  When we played our Christmas show last year, all of my gear was crammed up against me, and then in the course of trying to hear myself over the room noise, my sax started feeding back.  This time, they gave us the same stage we have downstairs--much better.  I was pretty comfortable.

Anyway, I could hear OK, considering the situation.  The sound guys were pretty miserable, though.  One told me that while we were soundchecking, they pulled all the faders down and couldn't hardly hear any difference.  Ouch.  Mix that!

We debuted Your Momma Don't Dance tonight, so I brought out my bari.  I'll bring it to the Christmas show,  and then do it on tenor from there on out.

We're off tonight (no 10 High!), but back on at Atlantic Station on Friday night, 8-11 PM.  Come check us out!

Here's a little clip of Rosanna from last Friday's show at the Strand.  Worth watching for Pete's dancing.



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Sundaze

After the fun of this weekend's stand at The Strand, I was up early Sunday morning.

My first stop was church gig number one.  Not too much happened…I don't if it was because I'd played a lot the day before, but it didn't feel like I contributed much.  I think part of the problem is that the on stage sound is pretty poor, so it's difficult to cut loose--if I play too much or too loud, I can't hear what else is happening.

When I was putting my clarinet together, the cork in the center joint disintegrated.  Great...

While we were on break we were served with a big packet of papers.  Beginning next year, we will be considered employees of the church;  taxes will be taken!  I asked if we'd get health care, but they said we were part timers, so no.  We do get background checks and drug tests.  It seems like a lot for a hundred bucks a week.

There must be some angle that benefits the church (though they made it sound like this was something they "had" to do).  My other church gig isn't doing this;  Yacht Rock/Pleaserock isn't doing this, and I make way more money with them.  Guess we'll have to wait and see.

When I was packing up, I knocked over my sax stand and messed up my tenor.  It still played, but the side of the bell was bent.  Ouch and nice going, idiot.

My second stop was at Wonderdog Sounds in Marietta for a recording session for Moontower.  Super cool place, super cool music, super cool guys.  I played on two tunes--one on soprano and one on alto.

I really suck at recording.  I don't know if it's because I'm alone or can't get the headphones quite right or what, but I just can't seem to make it happen by myself.  At this session I started fixating on my intonation problems, and it got harder and harder to hear anything else.  Then I started screwing up the form and missing landmarks I was trying to hit, and then I had to go in after I'd not quite gotten stuff right and hear it again...I don't know…things I played sounded fine--it wasn't like I played a bunch of wrong notes, but I didn't nail it...it's just difficult for me to kick ass in a studio setting.  I feel better about live stuff.

I got to church gig number two a little early, so I fell asleep in my truck for a half hour.

Number two was another non-commital performance by me.  It felt like there was no room for me to play, so I laid back a lot and played whole notes.  In a related story, my flute playing sucked real bad--another reason to take it easy!

I crashed on the couch.

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