We've played several of these, so it's not really a big deal anymore--I don't think there are any nerves involved.
We did a few quick segments (going to commercial), an interview, the weather, and two longer segments (Maneater and Can't Wait for Summer). Here's the latter:
Pretty cool! Too bad my solo at the end didn't make it. Actually, maybe not. I didn't play anything worth hearing again.
After that, I went home and taught lessons. Yuck.
Wednesday night, Yacht Rock took a field trip to Chastain to watch Huey Lewis and the News and Joe Cocker. Good stuff! Huey played all his hits; Joe had a better front of house guy. Huey had three sax players (and an obnoxious trumpet player); Joe had one. Huey had a bari and two tenors. Huey wins.
Ugh. It's a week of not sleeping at normal hours for me. Sunday morning, I was up early (after getting home late) to go play my church gig. In between the AM and PM gigs, I worked in the yard. That night, I stayed up until 4 AM working on Yacht Rock tunes for a Tuesday rehearsal. I got up Monday morning at 10:30 and continued working for most of the day, finally going back to bed at 5:30 AM. Tuesday. I got up three hours later and went to my rehearsal. I came home just before 2 PM, ate lunch, and went to bed. I woke up at 8 PM, ate supper, and did some stuff (worked on reeds, packed clothes and gear for tomorrow morning, took a shower). I'm headed off to bed now (2 AM), but I'll be up at 6 AM to play CBS Better Mornings Atlanta. 7 AM load in. Ouch. I'm totally out of my groove.
Actually, there was a problem with the lectern microphone. It runs through the church system and not my mixer, and for some reason it was not on. After the first reading, the reader was looking at me, so I went in the back, found the mixer. It was definitely getting signal. I turned the volume knob up, and the band started distorting, so I put it back where it was. Somehow, that fixed the lectern microphone, too. I am a genius. Dave saves the day.
Yacht Rock played a wedding yesterday at the Botanical Garden. We were in the Day Hall, which is really just a high school cafeteria without the fold up picnic benches.
I guess we were more Constantly Awesome--some Beatles, some Yacht Rock, some bar covers (Honky Tonk Women, American Girl). Not much to report…the usual wedding stuff.
I've developed some kind of serious mental blockade against the first few notes of the Africa solo. It could be anything, and then three beats into it, my hands snap to the right place, and the rest is fine. That first note, though…I can't find it to save my life.
I recorded today for Ben Allen, who is producing a record by the Belgium band SX. The song was called Beachmaster--sort of an 80s thing. I was copping a previously recorded sax part which followed the vocals. Mark Cobb has been laying down drums for them for the past week.
Really, I thought I'd be better at it. I had my chart and I was ready to go, but still took me forever to nail the phrasing of the chick and the time feel of the original sax. Way longer than I thought it should. I thought I'd be quicker at it.
So it goes…I was in and out in under an hour, and everybody seemed happy with it. Success!
I have mixed feelings about salsa gigs. I get to play a lot, I like the music a lot, and it's not a wedding reception/micromanaged event, but it's kind of a rule that the circumstances surrounding the gig will be ridiculous. This one proved to be no exception.
I have done five gigs with this band, and for every gig I have had to write charts for everything (with the exception of one tune that carried over from the first to the last). It's usually about a dozen tunes, and I'd guess that I spend, on average, an hour per chart. For this gig, I wrote ten charts. Three songs were changed at rehearsal, so I wrote three more charts. On the gig, the singer couldn't remember the words to a song, so we skipped that one. So that's four charts (and four hours spent) that we didn't use.
our stage lighting was blinding
I showed up at 9:15 PM. We did some kind of sound check. It was a mixer and monitors tied into the house patch situation (we used the bar's main PA). A Berringer mixer without enough inputs, so half the microphones used those low Z/high Z turnaround things into quarter inch inputs (with no gain control). The piano and the bass ended up each stuck into one side of a stereo channel--I'm pretty sure that doesn't work. A Peavey floor monitor and a Peavey Escort speaker on a tripod were the monitors. We had major high end feedback--at first it was out of control, but later on it only built up if we took too long between songs.
Then, the waiting began. Where's the piano player? (Donde esta el pianista?) Ahh, he has a gig that ends at 10 PM, but he's five minutes away. So…we waited. Mentally, I drew a line--no piano by 11 PM and I'm leaving. Fortunately, there was no audience, so nobody noticed us. Waiting, waiting…who would show up first, the crowd or the piano? At 10:45, he finally made it and got set up. We began at 11 PM, playing for maybe ten people.
Things were OK. In performance, the new tunes that I had charted didn't exactly follow the recordings (thanks a lot for that)--they were kind of bar band-ish, with hand cues and eye contact. There was a big section in one tune that we skipped. We skipped an entire tune because the singer couldn't remember the words. We ended the set with a merengue where the vocalist missed his entrance, so we had to go around again and pick him up, and then once we got to the instrumental break, he wouldn't come back in, so we collectively just bullshitted parts over two chords. I finally just stopped playing. The rest of the rhythm section eventually faked an ending.
At the break, I still wanted to make a run for it.
The second set was short (thirty minutes) because we'd borrowed a tune for the first set. More of the same…sloppy playing all the way around with a bad PA. The crowd was still in the teens. The gig ended, and I hustled out of there. I guess on a good note, I kept my bag right next to me on stage, so packing up was easy…
I finally found an opportunity to do an organ trio gig with David Ellington! We'd done a duo thing at a restaurant last December, and we talked about playing some more, but it just never seemed to come together. I got a call about doing a jazz gig and then doing one of those House Live gigs with a DJ right after that, and they wanted to have the percussionist for House Live also play on the jazz part. Sax, drums, and keyboard sounds like organ trio! Yay!
So…here we are! Ellington on organ, Phil Smith on drums, and me, trying to keep the Microsoft people happy by playing impossibly quiet in the acoustical nightmare that is the High Museum atrium.
The House Live gig was easy…supposed to be two hours, but nobody showed up for the first half hour…thankfully, because I was not in the mood. My alto mouthpiece played great, though!
Yacht Rock was in Athens finishing up last week's recording project at David Barbe's studio. Rewind!
Sunday: I played my two church gigs. The AM church gig had no horn section--just me. It also featured a guest vocalist from Nashville. I guess the music department is doing different things (weekly) while the main pastor is not around. The previous week featured a bluegrass band (and therefore, none of us). Anyway, this chick sang about half of her stuff to tracks, so we stood around a lot.
P.S. Singing to tracks in front of people is karaoke, even in church. Totally weird.
The PM gig was fine. Lots of vocalists. I was tossed a solo on a tune on which I had no intention of playing, and I played two really horrible wrong notes before I found the key. It felt like F, but they were in F#. Ouch.
Monday: Big day at work! My day to record for the new Yacht Rock song. We first laid down the trombone parts (with a guest trombonist, though I did write the chart). I think it turned out fine, but it was kind of weird because I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be the one coaching him through it. On top of that, I didn't know the guy at all. We got what we needed out of him, though.
Next up was my stuff. Bass clarinet went by quickly--first complete take. The flute stuff didn't take long. The clarinet stuff was super awkward to play (in C#), and it took me some time--we had to bring things to a halt so I could practice the part, and then we still pieced it together a measure or two at a time. That was pretty embarrassing. Definitely something I should have prepared instead of trying to sight read (up a whole step) on the spot. Way to go, dumb ass.
It sucks that my ears are good enough to hear the intonation problems after the fact, but not good enough to correct the intonation problems as they are occurring. Listening to the flute/clarinet combination in the control room, things sounded wildly out of tune to me. Not good! I stewed over that for the rest of the day. It surprised me that nobody else mentioned it.
Tuesday: Nick and I went back to Athens to add a soprano sax solo to the end of the song. The second take was the keeper. That's more like it!
Before we got into mixing, I asked Barbe to autotune the clarinet. He took a look at the pitch, but it was just about right on. Hmm…maybe it's the flutes? He looked at that, and it was just about right on. I think I was worried for nothing about the pitch. It must've been the timbre of the two together.
In other news…my Sakshama alto mouthpieces arrived in the mail! Sweet!
I played a jazz quartet gig yesterday morning at the Green Market in Piedmont Park. We made lots of fans--I gave away all my homemade DVDs and business cards.
The band was comprised of Louis Heriveaux on keyboard, Kevin Smith on bass, and Chris Burroughs on drums. Everybody played pretty well, though 10 AM is really early to start a jazz gig. I felt like I couldn't get anything going, and I tried to inspire the other guys to play more aggressively (which would hopefully get me going). In some spots, it definitely sounds like we're at odds with each other--I'm going nuts and the band is really playing it cool. In the second set, I think we got a little more together. I always feel like I'm failing when the band doesn't read my playing as I think they would; maybe I need to go with everybody else instead of trying to drag them in a different direction.
It's been a pretty low key week for me. Here's a quick wrap up:
Sunday: my AM church gig was cancelled, but I still had the PM gig. It was pretty solid; Beth sang with the group. I had a good sax solo on one tune.
Tuesday: I have a salsa gig coming up next week, and we had a rehearsal. Usual stuff…I wrote out maybe fifteen tunes, only to show up and and find out that three of them we were no longer doing, but they chose three more, so now I've got to write three MORE charts. At about an hour a chart, that's not cool.
Jose Manuel Garcia is playing piano for this gig. I hadn't seen him in a long time. He's a super nice guy and a terrific pianist. Check out his website! Good stuff.
We also have a really good bassist, using one of those Ampeg baby basses. He really knew all the tunes well. I was thankful that he kind of ran the rehearsal--no bullshit from that guy.
Two mixes from previous sessions were finished, and the rhythm section recorded their parts for the next tune. I rode the futon for the whole day. I also played some ping pong and took a nap. My stuff happens next week.
Wednesday: the Yacht Rock Revue got up waaaaaaay early (for me) and flew to Baltimore to pick up our gear, all right where we left it. From there, it was onward to Washington DC for our next gig.
The show in Washington was at Kastles Stadium, which is a tennis stadium right on the Potomac River. It was broiling--really uncomfortably hot. We shared the (thankfully covered) stage with an opening band, and neither they nor the audio company knew quite how to get their stuff together, so even though we were a little late getting there, we stood around and sweated for a while before things finally got moving. Thinking about it now, I'm kind of surprised that one of us (in YRR) didn't get annoyed enough to start telling everybody else what they needed to be doing.
We waited in an air conditioned portable office. Short on seating, but it beat standing in the heat.
The show was pretty lukewarm. I don't think we played poorly--in fact, the playing part was a lot of fun--but the crowd was there for the all you can drink and the fireworks, and really didn't care that much about what we were doing. The heat also crushed some of our enthusiasm. We played for about an hour and a half and then the fireworks began (we had a fine view of the show in between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial).
On the way to our hotel, we listened to board tapes (CDs) from our show at the Canal Room in NYC last week and made some sound adjustments (and also had some good laughs at our mistakes). I really liked hearing that--not just because it sounded good, but I could hear how different things were coming through the mix. My organ playing is reaching the point of obnoxiousness.
Thursday: up early again! We drove all day to get from DC to Asheville, NC for our gig at The Orange Peel. Cool!
This might have been the best room we played on this tour. The Orange Peel is pretty legendary--when you tell people you're playing Asheville, they ask if you're playing at The Orange Peel. We pulled up, and they had a crew of guys to haul our gear to the stage. Hell yeah! While they were bringing up gear, we had the opportunity to check out the Moog exhibit in the lobby.
After soundcheck, Andy Elliott from Elliott Guitars asked our guitar hero Mark Dannells to try one of his custom guitars. A very cool experience, even though I was just a bystander.
The show was a lot of fun. It's a big room with good sound. We played some good shit in there, though I spaced out for a while mid-set. I was watching some hippie girl watch me, and it dawned on me that I was supposed to be playing saxophone.
The audience was WAAAAY into the music. Small in numbers (200 people?), but mighty in their enthusiasm. We had crazy hippies, people dressed in YR clothing (one guy who I thought at first glance was Jim Ramsdell!), friends and family, and some guy who'd discovered us on YouTube and had been waiting a year to see us. Neat!
In the middle of our set, our friend (and trumpet player for Please PleaseRock Me) Paul Poovey walked in with John Bryant (another IU guy) and a couple of other guys! A crew of wild brass players in town for JB's wedding. Great to see familiar faces!
After the gig, the crew loaded our gear back out…rock star treatment!
P.S. It was 77 degrees that evening when we went to eat supper.
Friday: an easy day, by comparison. We got up and walked to brunch (where we once again ran into Poovey, JB, etc). On the way back, we had several people in town ID us as Yacht Rock and congratulate us on last night's show! Cool! We'll be back!
Walter Eagan was gracious in joining us for a couple of songs. He said it was like he was back in the seventies, but with hotter women.
We played his songs, beginning with Only the Lucky. Before Magnet and Steel, he announced "Here's a song I wrote about Stevie Nicks." We followed it with Go Your Own Way, also written about Stevie Nicks!
We loaded our own gear out. Boo.
Saturday: we boogied on back to Atlanta for a show at Riverside Park in Roswell. I heard the estimate on the crowd was 3,000-3,500. Nice! It's good to be home. People in the suburbs like us, too!
There was rain passing through about a half hour before the start, which probably kept some people away, but on the whole it was wildly successful. We had another good show (though the sax mic had some feedback that the front of house guy never could solve).
Yay! Another successful tour. We're doing some recording in Athens, but otherwise it's a pretty slow week ahead.
