Midwest Tour

Yacht Rock just returned last night from a triumphant tour of the Midwest!  Ok, really it was just a couple of public shows and a corporate event, but we played to a full room in Chicago--good enough for me!

taste the rainbow in Kentucky

Wednesday:  much driving.  Las Chalupas (Elizabethtown, KY) is not good.  Avoid it, lest your face look like this.

We got as far as the north side of Indianapolis.  On this trip, we were able to stay with the Cobb and Olson families around Indy, so we saved a ton of money on hotel rooms.  I snagged a very nice couch.

Thursday:  we slept late, and after a painfully long lunch, headed north.  In spite of the fact that it's almost June, northern Indiana was cold, overcast, and windy.  My wardrobe of shorts, t shirts, and sandals was…a poor choice.  Oops.

wind farm, northern Indiana

Gary, IN

Gary, IN

Anyway…Chicago!

I need a Kamera

Marina City--the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot buildings

Our first gig was the House of Blues.  Totally awesome experience.  There was a whole crew who took our gear from the underground tunnel up to the stage (and back again at the end of the night).  We got in a good soundcheck (we've added Daft Punk's Get Lucky to the setlist--it sounded great at rehearsal).

The show was really fun and the crowd loved us.  There were seven or eight hundred people there!  Wow!  The combined Chicago friends, friends from The Rock Boat, family, and the free ticket give aways made for a full house.  Super cool.

The band really rose to the occasion.  Great gig all the way around.  I wanna go back and keep playing there.  Even the after party was cool (though I was blinded by tequila).  We spent the night at the hotel across the street--the appropriately named Hotel Sax.  The lobby, the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot buildings, and the House of Blues all share the same space on the Chicago River.  Totally awesome.

Friday:  I got up and walked across the river to State Street in the clothes I'd worn on stage the night before.  It was the warmest thing I had.  After coffee, I bought a pair of jeans and a long sleeve thermal.

I am trying to break your heart

Back to Indy!  Our second gig was at Radio Radio, located in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis.  A much smaller room with many more friends and family, this one sold out before we got into town (three hundred people).  Still, very cool to be so warmly received.  The food across the street at Revolucion was fantastic.  So was Mark Cobb.

After the show, I had a chance to meet one of my heroes from college, Josh Silbert.  Josh was an upperclassman when I began at I.U.  In addition to holding down the bari chair in the top jazz band, Josh played in Johnny Socko, a very popular funk/horn band.  So cool.  What a treat to finally speak to him after all these years!  I think I talked his ear off about gear.  Oops.

Saturday:  we played a private event for Firestone at the Marriott in Indianapolis.  Due to the scheduling of the event, we had a ton of down time.  We walked around the city, eventually landing at the zoo.  Very nice.

Cartoon Butterfly

yep

The event was the usual corporate gig.  Those who stayed loved us.

Sunday:  more coolness!  We attended the Indy 500 as guests of Firestone.  How cool is that?  Very cool.  It's a pretty amazing experience--the sound is indescribable (especially in the tunnels under the track when the cars are overhead).  The people watching was also something to behold.  Quite a slice of America.

fried chicken and a vodka soda for breakfast

nice pants

We ended the trip with a cookout at the Cobb compound.

Monday:  we drove back from Indy.  A long day of nothing.  Here's Louisville.

Special thanks to Mark Cobb for the retro picture inspiration.


Come see us this Friday in Piedmont Park at the Legacy Fountain, performing all of Purple Rain (plus a set of Yacht Rock).  Tickets are going quickly!  Get yours here:  https://www.xorbia.com/e/yachtrock/purple-rain

Sazerac Session, Day 1

I had a great time recording horns tonight at Madison Studios, adding horns to a New Orleans inspired project called Sazerac.  Led by Greg Lee, the rest of the band is Mark Cobb (drums), Mark Dannells (guitar), and Mark Bencuya (keyboards).  Great stuff!

A few of the tunes had horns on the original recordings, but mostly these are my horn arrangements.

For this session, I played alto, tenor, and baritone sax, and a little bit of clarinet.  Everything sounded and felt good horn-wise (clarinet felt ok--does it ever feel really good?).  Good reeds are everything.

Four tunes in four hours is pretty good.  In a couple of weeks we'll go back in and record the four other, plus any solo stuff.

I was working up my arrangements last week at home.  Here's a little practice solo:

Sundazed

The Marriott Marquis atrium

After the late night at the Marriott Marquis and then Smith's Olde Bar, I went to bed around 3 AM.  Four and a half hours later, I was headed out the door again, this time off to my AM church gig.  Ugh.

The gig turned out to be pretty good.  For one thing, they've scrapped the V-drums and returned to an acoustic kit.  I don't think anyone was on in ears, either.  Whatever the sum of all those little things was resulted in the band digging in a little more and playing more cohesively, and the results were much more satisfying.  I played saxophone on two songs (both with some solo room) and one on unamplified/inaudible flute (not Matt's fault).  I also played clarinet on the closer.

We did two services…extra money!  though it did delay my nap.

Sunday night, I was back at the Marriott Marquis in the same room in the same spot (probably on the same stage) for a House Live gig.  The one on Monday was pretty fun, but this one was rough.  The main problem was that there was no monitor, so I heard nothing that was going through the PA except for the reflection off the wall across from us, and that was pretty quiet.  Mostly it was me noodling against two drummer/percussionists who were also noodling.  Boring as hell.  Paid well, though.

Strange to be on a four man (DJ, 2 percussionists, me) with TWO lighting guys.  The funny thing was that the client vetoed any light changes or movement, so both those guys set their lights and then sat there for three hours.

More Gigs

The gig train just keeps rolling.  Yacht Rock was at a corporate function last night.  Typical stuff--we've played this same gig two years previously, so I guess we were undeterred by the absence of any crowd response whatsoever until the last hour.  At the end, they were really into it.  And the mayor gave us a shout out, which is usually probably hopefully cool.

A couple of other things…

Jovita Moore is even better looking in person.  Wow.

We loaded in at 4 (all seven us with all our gear), and were set on the stage by 4:40.  Then we waited as the sound guys did their stuff (miking things and running lines).  Waited…waited…waited…at 6:40 we finally had to bail on the first ten minutes of our soundcheck so we could eat and change and start playing at 7 PM.  Not cool.  Not impressive.

Moontower!

From this gig, we ran over to Smith's Olde Bar to close out Five Hundred Songs for Kids, performing James Brown's Sex Machine.  I think we nailed it!  Unfortunately, there were probably fifty people in the room.  Ouch!  Hopefully they made some money.  We played I Wanna Be Your Lover as an encore;  the gig ended with a whimper.  At least it wasn't crowded backstage.

Almost Famous

Yacht Rock played Turner Field last night.  It's always a cool gig playing in the plaza--a quick fifty minute set and then you get to pack up and watch the game in a suite.  Nice!

Friday night games have fireworks, and we were also invited to play a short three or four song set on the field on a little stage.  We opted for songs that didn't require me to play keyboard (due to the space constraints), so all the songs turned out to be sax features.  Unfortunately for me, the rains came, so we ended up not playing.   I was almost famous.

Oh well, still fun and easy, and the Braves won.  Cool gig!

All of that was awesome.  You know what wasn't awesome?  Trying to drive away from the stadium.  Buullllllllshiiiiiiiiit.  You can't make me believe there is any kind of plan for funneling traffic away from Turner Field.  All the stop lights are turned off, random streets are blocked off, and cops are standing around in the street waving their flashlights at the ground (which I think means "My toes are right here. Please don't drive over them.")  It took forty-five minutes, several apoplectic fits, and multiple figure-eights around The Ted and the capital before I finally found away to head north.

How long have the Braves played here?  And it's still a mess?  Has anyone ever proposed that instead of trying to manage the situation, we just let traffic operate normally?  Let the stop lights do their job, let the streets go in both directions, just like a regular day.  Maybe I won't have to make a u-turn at Fulton and Capital.  Maybe I won't have to merge around a random police car stopped in the middle of the street.  Maybe y'all are doing more harm than good?  The outcome couldn't be worse than what I saw last night.

Anyway…

Tonight we will be at 500 Songs for Kids (at Smith's Olde Bar) following a private gig.  Next week we'll be on the road:  House of Blues in Chicago on Thursday and Radio Radio in Indianapolis on Friday (then a private gig Saturday and the Indy 500 on Sunday!).

May 23, House of Blues (Chicago, IL)
May 24, Radio Radio (Indianapolis, IN)
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 15, Ziggy's (Winston-Salem, NC)
June 28, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
June 29, Yacht Rock Schooner Steely Dan Tribute @ The Strand (Marietta, GA)
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)

House Live

House Live had a nice little corporate background gig at the High last night.  Three hours of it is just about right--any more and I lose my mind.

Since most of the gig is practice in a way (and whatever house music the DJ is supplying is the metronome), I used this gig to work on my flute articulation and the interval of a fourth in my saxophone improvisations.  Later on I also tried to play Take Five in different keys.

So…nothing musically revolutionary, but a fun hang with Wayne and Jeff, and a pretty good night of playing.

Hello Jacksonville!

Yacht Rock played a big show for the The Players Championship, which (in case you don't know) is a big PGA event (Tiger Woods won it this year).  We played a private party in a huge tent.

The gig was good, but just a run of the mill corporate event.  Nothing particularly exciting to report, though the drink runners were mighty fine and load in was extremely easy (off the stage and through the flap).  Daniel Morrison subbed for Mark Cobb.  Even the sax mic feeding back seemed to work out OK--I noticed it most when we played Too Hot (in C), and the note coming through the PA was a C.  I guess if there's got to be feedback…

Afterwards, Jim Furyk invited us to go hang out at his house!  How cool is that?  Everybody was pretty wiped out from a full day of travel (and we had another the next day), so we declined.  Still--how cool is that?

The next day, Mark Dannells woke up with a terrible pain in his eyeball, which got progressively worse throughout the trip home (like icepick in the eyeball kind of pain).  It turns out he has a corneal abrasion.  Ouch!  We tried to find a clinic in Tifton, GA that could treat him, but nothing was open.

He'll be back to normal in about a week.

My Sunday evening church gig was not too bad.  In spite of not warming up, I played pretty well.  It's a miracle!

Trio Tour, Day 2

Congratulations to us!  We played our five hundredth corporate awards dinner last night, which earns us an honorary MBA from Juilliard.  Over the course of playing thirty-some-odd walk ups (really?), I got really comfortable with leveraging new growth, P and L forecasts, and the outlook for FY 14 (which looks great).

Here's the fun part of the evening.  We had a great time playing together again.



Unfortunately, our tour had to end.  Our next gig is Sounds from the Underground June 24 at Elliott Street Pub.  Come see us play a public gig!

Trio Tour, Day 1

In the midst of loading in for the Yacht Rock gig Saturday afternoon, I got a call for a last minute trio gig in Atlanta.  Two days later, we were set up in the corner of a hotel ballroom downtown, ready to provide music for eating.  The room was set up to look like a giant southern family meal under an oak tree, which launched us into a conversation about what percentage of southerners actually drink ice tea from mason jars.

Easy stuff for us.  We played about a half hour, took a forty minute break, played about forty minutes, took a twenty-five minute awards break, and played about twenty-five minutes.  The gig ended an hour earlier than contracted.  Yes!

It's always fun to play with Kevin and Tyrone, both of whom were outstanding.  We played a couple of new one tunes and a bunch of the usual stuff (mostly my tunes--who else is playing them?).  I lucked into playing a half hour of solo saxophone in the pre function area outside the ballroom before the doors opened, which provided a good warm up.

Surefire way to tell the gig was over:  production guy, eagerly wrapping a cable, wiggled between Tyrone and his amp while Tyrone was soloing.  Nothing is sacred!  Another guy walked between Kevin and me during the bass solo.

As soon as we stopped playing, the pipe-and-drape guys were in there taking down the backdrop.  One guy was pulling the drape part through the band as we were frantically trying to pack up and get out of the way.  He narrowly missed pulling my new soprano over.  Not cool.  Five minutes would have been enough time for us to get out of the way.

Anyway…I thought my recording was going to be good because we were running into a mixer that was patched into the PA, and I had my recorder coming out of the mixer too.  Unfortunately, I plugged into the wrong jack on the recorder…foiled again by my own stupidity.  Here's audio from my camera instead.

Workin' for the Weekend

Yacht Rock played a couple of big shows this past weekend.  Friday night we played the Georgia Theatre in Athens, and the following evening found us in the Cannery Ballroom in Nashville.  Big crowds for both nights!

Friday:  We haven't played the Georgia Theatre since last October.  It's good to be back!  Such a great room with a cool staff and a fantastic audience.  Not quite a sell out, but we came pretty close.  The last time we played was immediately following a UGA football win;  this one was at the end of finals week.

This was a really fun gig for me.  I had a great time and played really well.

I had good solos on LA Lindsay and Reminiscing (though my alto was out of tune).  We also played Baker Street, which is always a really fun feature for me.  In the second set, I finally got the Hip to Be Square solo correct!  It's about time.  I may need to tighten up my slap delay, though.

This was our debut of Steely Dan's Bodhisattva.  I'm not sure the crowd was really into it.  What would it have been like if we'd played it back to back with Kokomo?  Hopefully, we'll never know.  Awesome work on the former by Mark Dannells and Mark Bencuya.  My part was easy.

I played piccolo on You Can Call Me Al for the solo instead of keyboard.  It definitely gets a crowd reaction, and I am also more accurate.  That's the way to go.  Cartage for me!

Monkey had a bad night.  He was NOT happy, though his second set was better than his first.

Saturday:  After a short night's sleep, we were on the road at 8 AM, headed for Nashville.  Yacht Rock was hosting our Smooth Revival up there, so we had to get in and get set up pretty early in the day.  We took over the entire Cannery Row, with bands in the Mercy Lounge, the Hi-Watt, and the Cannery Ballroom. 

Performing with us at this show were John Ford Coley, Peter Beckett, Walter Egan, Robbie Dupree, and Bobby Kimball.  We'd worked with everybody except Bobby, so most of our soundcheck was dedicated to a run through with him.  He was a hundred miles an hour right from the get go.  After ripping through the Toto stuff and Bodhisattva, he gave a little piano showcase (some crazy blues piano into Big Chief into Burn Down the Mission).  I'm totally jealous.  I can't do any of that.

Nashville's Space Capone played before us.  They're really cool and sounded awesome.  70s disco funk!

I had a bad night of playing.  My alto reed kept choking off, I played a bunch of wrong chords, and by the break I was pretty brain dead.  They should have taken me outside and shot me.

The stage was back lit with several motorized LED lights mounted on poles on the back of the stage.  They were constantly moving and changing, and in combination with the haze machine in the corner,  it looked like we were hosting a rave.  There wasn't much light shining towards us from out front, though, so I wonder of we were silhouetted the entire night?  

The great Kip Conner ran sound, which means that everybody probably heard every note of the bullshit I was laying down.  Great...

We loaded out in the rain.  

Sunday:  I got home, unpacked my gear, ate lunch, and headed out the door again to my PM church gig.  Not too bad, though I was kind of worn out.  

I bought a new/old soprano last week (a mid-80s Yamaha 62 purple logo--same vintage as my alto), and this was its big debut.  I like it so far, though I want to have Lopes check it for leaks and adjustments.  My other soprano is a Yamaha 675.  The 62 is lighter weight (my thumb appreciates that), has better tuning between the left and right hand notes, and has a lighter sound.  

I have two jazz gigs this week, so stay tuned for audio from those.

End of the Week

I woke up at 7 AM Sunday morning, drank a cup of coffee, put on a suit, and left for work.  I hope I  never do this more often than once a week.

I walked into my AM church gig to find it set up for the orchestra instead of the usual small group.  I wish I'd known I could have left three of four instruments at home!  Oh well…middle school level saxophone parts are easy on my brain first thing in the morning.

While we were rehearsing, I got a text message from a friend who works as a pilot for Delta.

My big excitement of the morning was when my tenor sax/T.C. baritone (treble clef) part was flipped over to reveal the B.C. baritone (bass clef) part.  That's an exciting transposition!  Change clefs and up a whole step!  I flipped it back over and went back to sleep.

We lucked into playing both services this morning, so double the money!  Yay!

In the afternoon, I somehow avoided taking a nap and instead ran errands and worked on stuff for a Tuesday morning rehearsal.  We're learning Bodhisattva (Steely Dan) for our show in Nashville this coming weekend.  I found this amusing anecdote about the part I am covering (from steelydan.com):

This reminds me of a certain Arp Soloist you can hear on Countdown to Ecstasy. It was used for that melodic passage in King of the World but I am thinking now of the four part harmony in Bodhisattva that feels somewhat like for saxophones playing together. Now, the Arp Soloist was a small plastic keyboard that could only play one note at a time. It had on tiny plastic knob that you turned between your thumb and forefinger to tune the entire unit.

The only way to get four part harmony out of this synthesizer was to record four parts on four separate tracks, one at a time. By the time we progressed to the second of these tracks we could hear tuning problems. "I could swear I had it in tune," said Donald. "Maybe it's just certain intervals," said Walter, proud owner of a book by Hindemith on music theory. So we began tuning and patching bits and pieces of each part. Sometimes we returned to a previous part to repunch a note or two. The air grew thick, and Donald's fingers were getting sore from turning that little knob. This affected his performances so the each bit required more takes. He began saying "I'm gonna kill this thing" every time he had to retune. Then he started saying it whenever the tape stopped rolling.

Then it was done. The last part had been played and played back. The look on Donald's face was one I will never forget. He yanked the wires out of that Arp Soloist and headed for the door. We all followed. Outside the door was a hallway that led to a balcony and stairwell that let out on a courtyard down below. Donald threw the synthesizer down the stairs as hard as he could. He then chased after it and started jumping up and down on it. Several of us joined in with a few kicks and thumps. Roger got some alcohol from the studio and we proceeded to set the thing on fire! That [sic] we a warm glow.

That studio was in the same building as ABC Dunhill headquarters. It was therefore no surprise and no accident that the wreckage was discovered the following morning by some men in grey suits. Their response, however, was something else. It must have touched a raw nerve, because they had that twisted lump of burnt plastic framed and mounted on a wall with an engraved plaque. I don't remember the inscription but it said something about Steely Dan, men and machines. 


The drive to my PM church gig was pretty harrowing considering the rain, my bald tires, and the fact that I kept nodding off.  Somehow I made it, and managed to stay awake through the entire service.  I'd even go so far as to claim that I played well and my mix was pretty good!

I made it home, ate, and passed out on the couch while trying to watch the Braves game.  At 3 AM, I finally crawled into bed, where I laid awake for a half hour, trying in my head to play the eight bar sax solo to Hip to Be Square.  I couldn't do it--probably the reason I can never get it right at our gigs.

I nail it at soundcheck, though.

In other news, I've been listening a lot to the new Jeff Coffin album, titled Into the Air.  Great stuff!  Here's one:



Also, the latest Dave Douglas record Time Travel.  Go Matt Mitchell!



The record before that was the same group plus a vocalist, called Be Still.  I love that one too.



Big Yacht Rock shows at the Georgia Theatre in Athens this Friday, and our first Yacht Rock Revival in Nashville on Saturday!

P.S.  I am majorly procrastinating, thus the long post.