Glass Cactus

Yacht Rock had a one night stand in Grapevine (Dallas/Fort Worth) Texas last night at a place called the Glass Cactus.  Pretty cool!  It's a nice room (holds maybe 1,500 people?) attached to the Gaylord Texan, which is a humongous hotel and convention center kind of near DFW Airport.

Fun gig!  We flew out of Atlanta Friday morning…early.  This was my first time flying with my Battle Cases sax case--the idea being that instead of lugging two saxes and my EWI, plus my laptop and all the pedals and crap around, I'd check my horns and let somebody else carry the weight.  Before I bought the case, I called Delta twice (since we almost always fly out of Atlanta on Delta) to see if I could check a case like this without paying extra charges for size and weight (total linear dimensions of 81 inches and sixty-three pounds).  The answer was yes.  After I got the thing, I called Delta twice again, asking the same question.  Still yes.  Thursday night, I was on hold with Delta for an hour and seven minutes, checking with them one more time.  They said yes again.

At the airport, I put the case on scale and said "It's a musical instrument," expecting some kind of battle.  The guy at the counter was totally cool;  he said something like, "I ain't gonna mess with you."  My man!  Halfway there.  I also checked my suitcase with my wireless microphone and sax effects pedal in it and things were good--on my back was my backpack with my laptop and sax mouthpieces.  Way better than trying to go through security with two gig bags plus the backpack.

I slept on the plane.  Yes!  I sat next to Mark Dannells, who spent the duration of the flight drawing mustaches and tattoos on the people in the Delta Sky magazine.

DFW looks the same to me as it always has.  Funny how some things stick with you--as soon as I see the revolving doors between the gates and baggage claim, I vividly remember picking my dad up at the airport (probably like 1980-81) and getting pinched in the door.  It's never going to go away.

We picked up our luggage (saxes made it just fine), and the Gaylord Texan drivers took us to the hotel. We had lunch and then went over to set up and soundcheck.  Nice place!  Good backline gear (even though I got stuck with a Nord 2 instead of a Nord 3).  The only thing I forgot to bring was a charger for my laptop, but fortunately Pete let me borrow his.

We had some down time for a nap and nothing, so everybody went back to their separate rooms for a few hours.  Pete was sick and missed soundcheck, but he'd recovered enough by the evening to make the gig.

The show began at 9 PM.  At first, it looked like we were going to be playing for about twenty people, but there were more out there, and by the end of the night, the dance floor looked pretty good.  The lights out in the audience were very dim, so it was tough to estimate, but maybe a couple of hundred people were there.  Regardless, it was a fun gig!  Sooooooooooo much better than the crap we dealt with at the Final Four gig.  This one looked and sounded great.  Ninety minutes later, we were done.

At the end of the night, I packed up my horns and laptop and we caught the shuttle for the quarter mile ride back to the hotel.  One margarita later, I was ready for bed!

The flight home was easy.  At check in, the guy wanted to charge me for my case, and I said "It's a musical instrument."  He checked with a supervisor and let me go.  Two for two!

Hope we get more fly dates like this!  Good sounds, no van ride, and no loading gear--love it!

Upcoming public dates with Yacht Rock:

April 19, Summerour Springtime in the City (Atlanta)
April 20, Reagan Rock at Park Tavern (Atlanta)
April 22, Please Pleaserock Me at Buckhead Theatre (Atlanta)
April 26, Summer of Smooth at Variety Playhouse (Atlanta)
May 3, Georgia Theatre (Athens)
May 4, Yacht Rock Revival (Nashville)
May 11, TPC Sawgrass (Jacksonville, FL)
May 17, Braves Game (Atlanta)
May 24, Radio Radio (Indianapolis)
May 31, Purple Rain at Park Tavern (Atlanta)
June 8, Park at City Center (Woodstock, GA)
June 13, Lincoln Theatre (Raleigh, NC)
June 14, NC Music Factory (Charlotte, NC)
June 28, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
July 8 Cape May Convention Hall (Cape May, NJ)
July 10 Brooklyn Bowl (New York City)
July 11 Mohegan Sun (Connecticut)
July 12, Power Plant Live! (Baltimore, MD)
July 13, XFinity Live!  Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA)
July 14, The Hamilton (Washington DC)
July 20, Yacht Rock Revival at Chastain! (Atlanta)
July 26, Orange Peel (Asheville, NC)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
October 19, Thriller at Variety Playhouse (Atlanta)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)

More Gigs!

I was eager to wash yesterday's bad taste out of my mouth.  Fortunately, Sunday turned out to be a big gig day.  Check it out:

Gig #1:  AM church gig.  The usual stuff.  Very lightly attended--spring break has sprung here.

Tommy Dodd showed up to play pedal steel, which is cool but always makes me wonder what I'm supposed to do when he's playing fills between the vocals.  It turned out not to matter because the jack on his guitar died and he did not play at all.  No Matt running sound.

Gig #2:  I left straight from the church to the Renaissance Waverly over by the Cobb Galleria for a brunch gig for the University of Michigan (one more Final Four gig!).  This was a lot of fun for me.  It was a flute/guitar/bass trio, which I haven't done maybe ever (I have done some flute/guitar duos in the past).

We attempted my originals.  It was totally weird because I'm used to transposing everything for saxophone, so for a while I had difficulty NOT transposing--my hands/brain would not cooperate.

Anyway, a very cool, easy gig.  Loved it.  I had a fun time trying to play.  Unfortuntately, my recorder only caught the first two tunes before it went on spring break.



It's good to start off a Michigan gig with a tune dedicated to your favorite Michigan State grad.

I had a lead sheet ready, but (fortunately) nobody asked us for Hail to the Victors.
NAP.

Gig #3:  PM church gig.  We had a good crowd for the evening.  I played OK--I was kind of fried after everything in the past few days, and the pollen is bugging me, so maybe I was a little out of it.  I'm not convinced that my soprano isn't in need of a check up.  It may be time to go see Lopes.

Final Four

Yacht Rock had a pretty nice weekend of Final Four gigs lined up.  One good, one not so good.

Our Friday night gig was for coaches and athletic directors--lotta dudes.  Bonnie Bernstein was there interviewing people.  The gig was easy--two sets--and everybody there was really cool.  It was at Puritan Mill (great looking room) with Rick and Mark running sound (sounded good).  I think everybody in the band was in the mood to play, too, so the gig was really good and enjoyable, and I was home around midnight.  Yes!

Saturday was a mega gig--we were the opener for the big concert in Centennial Olympic Park.  Huge stage--the kind you see on the Palladia channel.  Biggest stage I've ever been on.  The big time!  It was us, then Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, then Ludacris, then Flo Rida, then Muse.  The crew loaded our gear from the trailer all the way to the stage.  Nice.  I went and set my coffee free in our dressing room trailer.

When we got there, they were sound checking bands in reverse order, so we waited and waited.  Finally we went and changed, and they were still trying to get the soundcheck for the other bands happening.  They let us setting up during the other guys' soundcheck.  Time was running out, and they hadn't dealt with our soundcheck or anything.

The gate across the park opened, and thousands and thousands of people came running at the stage.  It looked kind of like the Japanese tsunami videos.  Looks like we would do an awkward line check in front of twenty thousand people.

Once they finally started plugging our stuff in, things switched into overdrive, with the band and the monitor guy yelling and multiple instruments playing at the same time.  We never checked my keyboards or my saxophone (I found out later that I was completely inaudible on stage--which was maybe for the best).

And we're off!  There were lots of sound problems:  lots of feedback, insane monitor levels, microphones falling over, all kinds of trouble--a stagehand came over to Bencuya and wanted to unplug his keyboards mid-song because his levels were too hot.  When we got to L.A. Lindsay, there was no saxophone (and I knew there wouldn't be), so I had to play into Monkey's vocal microphone, which was blisteringly loud--just painful.  When the monitor guy caught on, he cranked that mic up in the side fills to the point where I could feel my ears buzzing--definite ear damage.  It hurt like somebody was jamming a screwdriver into my ear.  I made it through about four songs before I was completely miserable and watching the clock.  This gig couldn't have ended soon enough.

The sound was really tough and I played really poorly on top of that, in front of all those people.  What should have been one of our great triumphs turned into a soul crushing experience.  On the other hand, I heard that after the first few songs, the sound out into the park was good, so I guess it was only a mess on stage.

Lot of people out there.

Easter

It's been a while…

After finishing the AM church gig revival, I've done very little.  Easter weekend is not a good weekend for gigs (unless you've got an awesome Easter morning gig lined up), so I've been working in the yard and sleeping and watching YouTube videos.  I've also been working on horn arrangements for a funky New Orleans/Little Feat studio project.  Also, I fixed my EWI antennae.

Speaking of Easter gigs, my AM church gig did not want me there Sunday morning, so I slept in.  My PM church gig DID happen.  My mix was pretty bad, partly because the pick up on the piano has a short in it--it finally kicked on about two thirds of the way through the service, so we suddenly had lots of volume.  Beyond that, I haven't much to say.

This coming weekend, I return to a more normal playing schedule--two shows related to the Final Four stuff, including a big show in Centennial Olympic Park on Saturday.  Woohoo!

April 6, Centennial Olympic Park (Atlanta)
April 12, Glass Cactus (Grapevine, TX)
April 19, Summerour in the City (Atlanta)
April 20, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
April 26, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta)
May 3, Georgia Theatre (Athens)
May 4, Revival! Cannery Ballroom (Nashville)
May 17, Braves game (Atlanta)
May 24, Radio Radio (Indianapolis)
May 31, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
June 8, City of Woodstock Concert Series (Woodstock, GA)
June 14, Friday LIVE! (Charlotte, NC)
June 28, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
July 8, Stockton Goes to the Beach (Cape May, NJ)
July 11, Mohegan Sun (Montville, CT)
July 12, (Baltimore, MD)
July 13, (Philadelphia, PA)
July 20, Revival! Chastain Amphitheater (Atlanta)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta)

The Folding Chair

Last night of the big revival…

I heard a few giggles about me and a chair from the night before.  The soloist for the revival used tracks Monday night for part of the performance.  When the first track began, I thought to walk off stage, but nobody else in the band moved, so I just stood there, clarinet in hand, staring at my shoes.  I thought, "One song and then I can go."  That song ended and I started to walk, and then a second tune began.  Agh!  Stuck for two songs of shoe gazing!  Halfway through the second song, someone came up behind me and tapped me on the shoulder:  the pastor brought me a folding chair.  The second song ended and I looked for a sign that we'd all be leaving, but a third song began.  At least I had a place to sit for that one.

So…evidently I looked kind of uncomfortable.  It even came up in the sermon that the chair offered to me was an act of compassion.  Jeez.

Our last night was similar to Sunday night:  choir, full band, horn section.  Actually, we played with no trombone--I'm not sure what happened there--so it was just Paul Poovey and me.  That was fun--we play well together.  Some of the other things were very "seat of the pants"--songs that were called out after they'd already begun--but we played along just fine, I thought, doing our best to keep up with the music director and soloists.

Onward to Easter!

Revival Day 2

Day 2 of the AM church gig's revival was a different combination--no horn section and no choir, but a mandolinist and banjoist were added in.  Things kind of leaned more in a country direction and I had no idea what instrument to choose;  I ended up playing lots of clarinet.  Hopefully Matt turned my microphone off.

We only played a couple of songs.  The guest soloist sang three songs with tracks, so everyone was spared more of my bullshit.

One more night!  The horns are back, so I'll be playing saxophone, much to everyone's relief.

Double Duty

I had no Saturday night gig, which was a bummer.

Sunday morning I was back at the ol' AM church gig.  Nothing too exciting…just filling in the holes around the vocals.

Instead of heading to my PM church gig in the evening, I instead went back to the AM church gig for the first night of their revival.  Sunday night was a big production:  choir, usual band (church organ, piano, drums, bass, acoustic guitar, me), horn section (Paul Garret on trumpet and Gil Estes on trombone), B3 organ, and two vocal soloists.  Loudness!  Lots of organ was available at my spot on stage.  Wow.  Good thing our ace sound engineer Matt Sheren put a very nice AKG 414 in front of me.    I want one.

Party Time

Yacht Rock played a crazy country club party last night.  It's the inter-club mixer between several high dollar Atlanta clubs.  Uber-expensive cougars and the men who pay for them.

The usual stuff for us, which was good because we were all brain dead from Thursday's all-nighter (more about that later).  While we were eating, a party organizer came in with a contract saying he thought we would be playing 8:30-12:30 (instead of 9-12), and Nick gave him the "these are not the droids you are looking for."  We played 9-12.

Adam J filled in for Pete.  I wish I could think of more to say, but nothing's coming to me.

Helen and the Devil

Yacht Rock managed to scoop up a last minute gig in Helen, Georgia, so we never even took our gear out of the trailer when we got back to Atlanta Monday night.  Tuesday afternoon we off again.

I'd never been to Helen.  It looks like a little Octoberfest German town, which matches the only reason most Atlantans ever go up there.

The room was small, but the crowd was smaller--around twenty people!  Our smallest crowd ever.

Bencuya couldn't make it, so Eric Frampton subbed for him.  It was quite a beating/lesson for me.  I had to play a couple of Bencuya parts, and I did OK, but I'm still miles and miles and miles from providing the kind of playing that the rest of the band is used to hearing.  Ugh.  I played some wrong chords in Reminiscing.  Hey Nineteen went pretty well (I think I only played one bad chord), but I have no chops for soloing.  I began Doctor, My Eyes wrong, but once we got going, I did fine.  Somebody's Baby was alright, but the organ part is pretty similar to the piano part.

Frampton, on the other hand, tore it up.  I feel very small.  Present David Freeman needs to go back in time and tell Past David Freeman that piano lessons will be necessary!

This is post 666.

Road Trip!

Yacht Rock spent the past six days doing a run of shows up the eastern seaboard.  Not exactly a life on the road, but that's ok because I had limited underwear.

Wednesday:  travel day.  We drove from Atlanta to Washington DC and spent the night.  I can't think of anything significant other than a really good pizza I ate that night somewhere in Virginia.

Thursday:  we made the rest of the trip to Asbury Park, NJ, for our first date--Wonder Bar!  Asbury Park is still feeling the effects of Hurricane Sandy.  You can't even make it onto the boardwalk.

The Wonder Bar is cool because it's pretty legendary even though it's kind of a small room with a small stage.  We had a decent crowd--maybe a couple of hundred people?  It was sort of 10 High-ish.  I think we had a pretty good show, and it was good to warm up for the bigger stages later on.  There were some problems with the up front monitors, but the back line guys were generally satisfied.

The promoter for the show made all sorts of promises about the numbers…no such luck.  Everybody had a good time (especially the promoter, who got a little wild and was escorted out by security).  I was hoping for Marisa Tomei, but she failed to show.  Again.

New Jersey was cold and windy that day.  Still winter!

We were all well on our way to sleep when Greg discovered the Eagles documentary on Showtime, so the whole band stayed up until 4 AM watching.



Friday:  thankfully, we were not up too early--1 PM lobby call.  Unfortunately, Bencuya and I woke up at 1 PM.  Oops.  It was OK, though, because we ended up staying in NJ at a bar to watch the IU game.

Our next stop was the Theatre of the Living Arts in Philadelphia.  We've never played Philly.  Nice!

The word was that this show was destined to be cancelled because of poor ticket sales, but we had a good burst at the end (TLA also gave away some tickets to fill the room).  The final numbers were around three hundred--really good for our first showing!

TLA is cool.  I own a great Michael Brecker bootleg from the Tales of the Hudson band--Naked Soul--recorded at TLA, so everything was a "Michael Brecker was here" moment--Michael Brecker maybe changed clothes here, Michael Brecker maybe sat on this toilet.  Probably.

We had great pizza at a hipster pizza joint.  Afterwards, Mark Cobb and I walked the length of South Street.  Lots and lots of shoe stores we did find.

Our show was terrific.  Bigger stage, bigger crowd, bigger performance.

Saturday:  on to New York!  We got into Manhattan and drove around for about an hour trying to find street parking for our van and trailer--no easy task.  After that, it was lunch and then a bar to watch the IU game.

We loaded into the Gramercy Theatre that afternoon through the front door.  As we were opening the trailer, some guy walked up next to us and threw up some kind of red clay right into the street.  Welcome to the city!

This was THE major show of the tour.  We had a good soundcheck and got everything just right (due to space limitations, the monitor guy was in a perch overlooking the stage).  The only blemish was that the monitor guy knocked my EWI onto the floor and broke the antennae on the MIDI transmitter (just like the guy did at the Park Tavern a few weeks ago).  Thanks for that.

Before the show, we walked across the street to a restaurant called Stix.  Awesome Greek/Mediterranean food, and the owner had already sent the band a Facebook message welcoming us to the neighborhood, so when we showed up, he toasted us with two bottles of champagne!  The food was fantastic.

So, the Gramercy Show…HOLY SHIT!  The room was right about at capacity (600 people), and when we jumped on stage to begin, the atmosphere was electric.  It stayed that way for the whole night, and the band responded with one of our best shows ever.  Wow.  We were legitimate rock stars for the night.

A couple was thrown out of the show for having sex in the seated section.  That's inspiring!

Afterwards, we had to hurry up and pack up and get out--the stage crew cut the stage power, possibly damaging our electronic stuff (four keyboards, two keyboard amps, guitar amp, bass amp, recorder).  Someone on the crew knocked my EWI over AGAIN and left it on the stage.  I can't imagine them being so casual about knocking over one of our guitars or my horns.  Not cool!

We crashed for a few hours in our SoHo hotel before heading out again.

Sunday:  Washington DC!  Our last gig for this trip was at The Hamilton right in the heart of DC.  This is one of our favorite places to play--underground parking;  the crew helps load in and load out;  the stage is a good size and sounds good;  the lights look great and they put our logo on the back wall;  the room is super hip.  It's so easy to play a good show there.

I wondered how we'd do after the euphoric NYC show, but everything was fantastic.  The crowd was good (sold out) and the band was hitting on all cylinders.  Great show.

Those guys are so cool that they even shot two camera video of us and gave it to us, plus the twenty-four track recording files from the entire show.  Wow!  New promo!

After we'd/they'd loaded out our gear, they took us up on the roof for a look around.  Amazing.  We were a few hundred yards from the White House.  The guy said, "you can kind of see the snipers on the roof looking at us."  Geez.  Too cool.  Still rock stars!

Monday:  a long van ride back to Atlanta.  No more rock stars.  At least we missed most of the bad weather.  Great trip!