Don't Drink the Grog!

Yacht Rock had a nice little show Monday night, doing our Beatles tribute (Please Pleaserock Me) for a foodie event at the Buckhead Theatre.  As I've said before, the PPRM gigs can be hit and miss with me because there's not always much to do, especially when things lean more towards the earlier stuff that doesn't involve horns.  I end up with tambourine, cowbell, and hand claps.  Gotta love the load in, though;  here's my gear for the night.

This one turned out to be fun;  I guess I was in the mood to play a gig where I had almost no responsibility.  We did play Whatever Gets You Through the Night (I was sure it was going to get cut, but no!).  Mostly I just hung out and watched the other guys.

Some guy afterwards tried to convince Nick and me that lead singers and sax players get all the women;  bass players and drummers are screwed, he said.  Riiiiiiiight.

Soprano Time

Ahh, Bryan Lopes,  I love you so.  Thanks for putting my soprano sax back together in time for me to play my church gigs today.  Both AM and PM gigs were heavy on the straight horn.  It would have been a drag dealing with my leaky horn for another week.

The AM service was good.  The church was struck by lightning Friday, and it blew out some of the audio systems in the sanctuary.  That meant no monitor for me, but the playing was good, so no biggie.  I did a couple of things on tenor, then soprano for a hymn, clarinet for a hymn, the soprano for the big song of the day, which was cool because there were some nice spots for me in the intro and the breakdown.

My PM service was fine, but nothing particularly exciting.  I played a lot of soprano on this one, too, but the band seems to be getting quieter every week, and it's harder and harder for me to hear the piano.  I could use a monitor, or else I may cut back to just flute.

Prom at Park Tavern

Yacht Rock began our summer concert series at Park Tavern last night with the Reagan Rock Prom.  Midtown was packed all afternoon (mostly because of the Dogwood Festival), but we still had a good turnout.  It didn't sell out, though that was probably good because the tent never got so packed that things got out of control.

We played I Keep Forgetting again.  That in itself made the evening.

Our second try at Kokomo got a better reaction than our first.  Here's my transcription of the solo.

My worst moment of the night was the Get Out of my Dreams solo.  This must be a comped solo--there's no place to breathe!  About halfway through, things got a little loose, and I kind of fumbled rest of it.  By the measure:  yep, yep, yep, oops, yep, fuck!, dammit!, ok.

We've got a busy week ahead:  Monday night at the Buckhead Theatre, a private event Thursday, Friday at the Variety Playhouse, and a private event Saturday.  Stay tuned!

Springtime at Summerour

Yacht Rock had a show at Summerour Studio--Springtime in the City, which is a benefit by Peachtree Presbyterian for the Adaptive Learning Center.  For us, it was also a good tune up for tomorrow's big show at the Park Tavern.  Nice, easy gig with a good crowd and easy load in.

Two great things about this gig:

1.  We got to play I Keep Forgetting.  I love to play that one--it's one of my favorites, but unfortunately it's a tough one to sing, so we play it three or four gigs a year.  Such a hip song.

2.  We are debuting a couple of new Reagan Rock tunes this week.  One is Get Out of My Dreams (Billy Ocean) which is passable, though at 1988, it's pretty late in the genre.  The other is the Beach Boys Kokomo.  It's a pretty crappy song.  Also a 1988'er.  The band is pretty divided about this one--I think we all agree that it's pretty bad, but split as to whether or not it's so bad that it's good (another way to think of it is:  yes, it's bad, but we're going to make it sound so good that the crowd will love it anyway).

Here are the songs in the second set.  Let the pictures speak for themselves!

Kokomo

Raspberry Beret

My Life

What a Fool Believes

Brandy

Grease

Lady

Get Out of my Dreams

Night Fever

I Wanna Be Your Lover

All Night Long

Call Me Al

Footloose

I Want to Dance with Somebody

So, maybe it doesn't prove anything--it WAS the first song in the set.  Still, I felt immense satisfaction.  I'll just leave it at that.

What else, what else…

An eighteen wheeler flipped on I-75 just south of Delk Road.  It took me an hour to make it to my gig.  The ride home took just over twenty minutes.

We had a stage at Summerour.  Usually, we're just on the floor.  Stages are better--it makes for a nice boundary between the crowd and the band.

Greg Lee showed up with a brand new bass rig!

That's a Traynor head and Bergantino cabinet.  Also check out the new bass synth pedal.  There was a new Sunburst P bass, too (not pictured).  Nifty!

Mark Cobb was particularly inventive tonight, which made for a fun night for me.  Good stuff.  I dug it.

See you tomorrow at Park Tavern for the Reagan Rock Prom!

Trio Stuff

I played a great trio gig last night with Kevin Smith (bass) and Kenny Banks Jr (keyboard) at the World of Coke.  It was some kind of corporate dinner, so we did about two hours, had an hour break during the awards ceremony, and then played thirty to forty minutes to get them all back out the door.  Easy stuff.

I felt good, playing-wise, and Kenny and Kevin sounded great.  Here's audio:



Usually I record with a stereo microphone on top of my music stand, but for this gig we went through a PA, so this is a board mix.  Hence the lack of background noise.

Super awesome gig.  Check out Kenny's solo on Guitar Song when you get a second.  Also, my apologies for having no recollection of the form for Red Clay.

My Soprano Sax is Being a Bitch

Church day!  I had two in at the AM and one at the PM.

My AM church gig was pretty good.  It ended up by sheer luck that I really didn't need to play any tenor.  I mostly played soprano, with one song on flute and one on clarinet.  I played the preservice music (for five minutes on tenor) before the first service, and that was the last time I picked up the horn.

My flute felt great, clarinet felt…like clarinet.  I worked on my soprano (tweaking the right hand adjustment screws with the help of my leak light), and I think I fixed my leak.  The horn is fine in that regard, but I had trouble playing in tune (the story of my life).  Left hand was flat, right hand was sharp.  It took me most of the service to find the magic spot on the neck where I could pull the low stuff up and push the sharp stuff down.

I played the 1-2-3-6-5 "I'm lovin' it" McDonalds riff all over the main song, much to Matt the sound man's enjoyment.  In the second service, I played it backwards 6-5-3-2-1.  It's lovin' me?  The beauty of the major pentatonic scale…it works both ways.  Anyway, my overuse of these five notes (over the one, the four, and the five) probably got me into the Methodist Book of World Records.  Maybe I should have a go-to minor key riff ready…



The PM gig was ok.  My soprano seemed even more out of tune with itself.  The flute was fine.

We had a sub pianist this week (our bandleader is out on maternity leave).  No problems!  Nice work!

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)