Sunday

Ouch.  On three hours of sleep, I wandered into my morning church gig.  Fortunately, it was pretty easy--all tenor (with a little bit of clarinet at the end), and the tunes had enough space for me to play a little bit.  My excitement of the morning happened in the introduction of the biggest song we did--the recording (I am told) began with a big trumpet fanfare.  The best I could do was to play it all up at the top of my altissimo range, beginning on a high C.  As we came up to this song in the service, my mind went blank, and I had no idea how to finger that note;  then I thought I remembered it, but there was no way to check if I was hearing the correct pitch.  It all worked out.

Having a late gig like the previous night with an early gig like this morning really messes me up.  I came home from my AM church gig and went back to bed for four or five hours.

My evening church gig was pretty good.  I think I've finally found a good spot on my soprano neck for intonation--things are coming together.  We also got another singer back from the summer break, which helped significantly with the vocal blend.

Upcoming gigs:

August 15, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Please Pleaserock Me show
August 18, Monday Night Brewing Company (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)
September 26, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Sazerac show
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 10, State Theatre (Falls Church, VA)
October 11, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
October 12, Rams Head On Stage (Annapolis, MD)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)
October 31, Georgia Theater (Athens, GA)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)
November 17, House of Blues (San Diego, CA)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)

After Party

Yacht Rock played an after party last night--not the party itself, but the AFTER party.  Wait…isn't the after party usually the drunkest of the drunk standing around the hotel bar?  Ugh.  On the plus side, this 10:15 PM-1:40 AM shindig didn't have four or five hours of down time between soundcheck and the gig.

Before we even got set up, there was an adventure:  I followed Monkey (presumably to go park after dumping our gear at the hotel loading dock), and we somehow ended up going into the underground parking for the office building next door.  There was a garage door at street level and a gate at the bottom of the ramp.  Security would not let us through the gate (no parking there), but the garage door was shut, and we had quite a time (after we made Austin Powers-esque ten point turns in this small space) trying to convey to an unseen security guard where exactly we were stuck.  "Please open the garage door at street level!"  was our version of "R2!  Shut down all the garbage compactors on the detention level!"  Finally the guard opened the garage door and I got out, but it closed before Monkey could get out.  R2!

Another small stage--it'll be good to head to the Georgia Theatre this week and not be crammed in a corner.

The gig was unremarkable.  I'd guess there were about a hundred people in the room.  One thing that was cool (due to Greg subbing for Nick on the front line, Rob Henson subbing for Greg, and Ganesh subbing for Cobb) was that we played a few different tunes--Moonlight Feels Right, My Love is Alive (soundcheck only, but still fun), Lowdown, Kodachrome, and  Hot Child in the City.

During our second break, the security guard for the building came around and started locking up--he said that they were shutting down the bar and killing the party at 1 AM.  Uhh, ok…Pete met up with someone from the client, and they agreed that we would cut the break short and play another half hour (ending around 1:15 AM).  Cool.

As we were changing back into street clothes (ten or fifteen minutes after the end of the gig), one of the other people from the party came in and wanted to know when we were going back on.  Say what?  Some kind of communication problem--he expected the party to go on until 1:40.  After another huddle between Pete and the clients, we agreed to come back out and play one more song.

I ended up in bed at 3:30 AM.  Up at 7 to begin Sunday!

Foxy

Yacht Rock had a private gig last night at the Egyptian Ballroom (Fox Theatre)--some kind of big entertainment industry party.  We played two long sets.

The load in is notoriously difficult, mainly because there is one freight elevator to service the ballroom (for production, catering, and the band), and it is not quite the size of a twin bed, so there's always a bottleneck of stuff going in at the beginning of the day, or stuff coming out at the end of the night.  To alleviate this, much of our gear was back lined.  I brought everything just in case…I guess if I'd checked in ahead of time, I could have planned a little better.  I ended up going half and half--I used their keyboards, keyboard stands, pedals, throne, and monitor, and supplied my rack so I could still have my EWI rig, and my sax wireless.  Along with that, I needed sax stands, tambourine…a little bit of stuff out of one of my boxes.

After getting the gear all sussed out, we endured a pretty difficult soundcheck.  Two big problems we encountered:

1.  The sound guys made guesses about what we would want in our mixes, so we had to go through every mix, clear everything, and start over.

2.  The monitors were being mixed from front of house, and the front of house guy was up in the balcony, so communication was difficult.

It's safe to say that each of us ended up with monitor mixes that were "good enough to get through the gig."  Mine wasn't great, but it was so difficult to fine tune things, I just let it go.

Following soundcheck, we had several hours of downtime, so I took the chance and ran my extra gear (2 keyboards, amp, and keyboard stand) home so I wouldn't have to deal with it at the end of the night. What else was there to do for four hours?

I made it back in plenty of time.  It turned out that the Dan Baraszu Trio was playing in the lobby.  Nice!  The band was Dan, David Ellington on organ, and Chris Burroughs on drums, all old friends of mine.  Awesome group.  We hung out for their soundcheck.

They had sound problems of their own--the guy who manned their PA laid out two monitors (the band laughed at that--for what?  two amplified interments and a drummer on a stage the size of a parking space!).  Once their set began, I went out front to listen, and the guy had the kick and snare louder than anything else in the band (if you know Chris, you know how powerful he is to begin with).  No organ in the mix!  I sent Chris a text encouraging him to unplug the microphones aimed at his kit.  They were plenty loud enough--there was no reason to have a PA in that space.  It would've sounded much better with just the natural stage sound.

Our sets turned out fine.  Mike Bielenberg filled in for Bencuya.  He was reading charts all night.

I brought two EWIs to the gig and checked to make sure everything was working correctly a couple of times.  Of course, I had no problems at all.  It was back to normal, but I still don't trust it yet.

The crowd was very cool.  It didn't take them long to really get into it, and they requested an encore at the end, which is always appreciated.  Hopefully we will get some really sweet gigs out of this!

I loaded out in one trip, and was home forty-five minutes after the last note.  Possibly a personal record.

Cajoning It In

Busy day!

1.  My AM church gig--we had all of July off.  That worked out just fine for me because I was out of town almost every Sunday morning.  August, I'm back.  Time to make the money!

This gig was pretty low key.  I played four horns (tenor, flute, soprano, clarinet).  No choir, no extra players--easy stuff.

2.  My PM church gig was also easy.  I forgot my headphones, but I think the mix that I had was pretty good.  I mostly played soprano on this one, as I continue to get more comfortable on my new horn.  It feels like I've finally found the right spot on the neck for my mouthpiece to play in tune.

3.  I left straight from my PM gig and went straight to Ventanas for a House Live gig.  We haven't played this venue in a long time--good to be back!  It's a beautiful view.

This one was an hour and a half (with a five minute break for speeches).  Unlike some previous gigs, this one was a lot of fun.  I felt engaged in what we were playing the whole time.  Good, creative stuff between the four of us--Guy Strauss and Nico Gutierrez on percussion, Huda Hudia DJ'ing, and myself.  The balance between the live instruments and the DJ stuff was perfect.  Ordinarily, I'd say two cajons is a red flag, but these guys were both very good.

Even better was the fact that we were quiet enough that I didn't use a microphone, even for the flute stuff, so at the end of the night, I put my horns away and I was gone!

No EWI in Toto

Yacht Rock played a gig way up at Barnsley Gardens last night, a one hour show on a bill with the Ken and Drew from Sister Hazel, Stephen Kellogg, Emerson Hart from Tonic, Jay Brown, and Shawn Mullins.  Twas an easy gig in front of a nice crowd.

We loaded in at 2 PM, onto an uncovered stage that worried me--I'm not fond of leaving all of my gear in direct sunlight for several hours.  Fortunately (I guess), the threat of rain became real enough that the whole stage was tarped.  It turned out that it did NOT rain (yay!), so all gear was fine.  

The humidity did some weird things to my EWI, though--it appears that my train wreck at Chastain was maybe not a transposition button issue after all, but an issue with the heat/humidity.  I think it's possible that whatever senses that my fingers are touching maybe needed an adjustment (there's a small screw-like knob on the back that can regulate this).  

 Hey Nineteen was early in the set and everything worked fine with the ol' EWI.  Later in the evening, Africa was once again a strange problem of one or two notes not transmitting correctly--the B I was fingering was sounding as a Bb, and one other note (an F or E) was also wrong.  All the other notes were correct.  Hmmm.  So, Africa had some troubles, but only where those couple of notes occurred.  Weird because I played the B and the other note in Hey Nineteen and they were correct.  My next thought was that maybe my Africa patches had become corrupted somehow, but we played Rosanna (with the solo beginning on B) a few songs later, and it was once again not working correctly.  The shame of it!

I got home, set up my EWI rig, and everything worked perfectly.  What the hell?  Anyway, I readjusted the aforementioned screw-like knob.  Hopefully that settles it.  I guess we won't know until I screw up Africa tomorrow night at the Fox.  At least we'll be indoors (upstairs in the Egyptian ballroom)--then I'll be able to rule out the weather.  It does appear that my EWI has some sort of prejudice against Toto songs.  Maybe it's some Bobby Kimball voodoo.

In other news, Dustin (of Schooner and AM church gig fame) filled in for Mark Bencuya, who is on vacation.  He did a really good job.  Speaking of which, there was a guy who, at a glance, looked like Bencuya.  We were totally confused.  What was he doing here?

The End of the Road

The "Summer of Smooth" tour ended last Friday for the Yacht Rock Revue with a show at The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina.

Some travel difficulties caused us to be really late (we left Atlanta about two hours later than we had intended).  Renting a van and trailer took longer than we'd anticipated, and then we had to stop and grab our PA on the way out of town.  Ouch!  By the time we got up to Asheville (rerouting around a street festival), time was tight.  We set up really quickly and sound checked.  It left us an hour to eat, but fortunately the taco place up the street was pretty quick.

The show was great.  We had almost four hundred people show up--by far our best attendance at The Orange Peel.  From what we could tell, they loved it.  We played well, and the sound was loud but pretty good.  Another fun night!  We were all plenty relaxed after making it through the Chastain show.

The following day, we drove down to Hilton Head for a private gig.  It took all day.  The trip was supposed to be four and a half hours, but it was more like six and a half.  We hit lots of traffic and patches of rain.  Once again, we were squeezed for time, but lucked out that the first part of the night was not in the room in which we were setting up.  Saved!

I can't lie--it's a little bit of letdown after all the big shows we've done in the past thirty days.  A small stage in a hotel ballroom doesn't hold much vibe.  Nonetheless, the crowd for whom we played was really cool and into us from the first song.

I think of this gig is as one to help pay for our van's repair.

focus!

In the second set, the sustain pedal on my top keyboard stopped working--or should I say, wouldn't stop working!  It held the first chord I played in Somebody's Baby and wouldn't let go.  On the break, I took it apart, but I couldn't find anything wrong with it.  It was fine through the third set.  It is now a plastic time bomb.  When will it fail again?  So exciting.

FOCUS!!

I also came to the conclusion (affirmed by my leak light once we got back to Atlanta) that my tenor has lots and lots and lots of leaks.  Time for a visit to Lopes.  The giveaway for me on that a horn is when I can't play an altissimo A.  Once that problem arrises, I know it's time.  It made Whatever Gets You Through the Night (which begins on the A) really difficult!

The band had no trouble getting home Sunday afternoon.  I ended up with just enough time to put my gear away and head out the door to my PM church gig.  My new mic set up (with the clamp on the frame in the middle of the piano) is a big winner.

Upcoming dates!  There's some California time at the end of August, a northeast tour In October, and then another trip to California right before Thanksgiving.  Should be fun.

August 3, Barnsley Gardens (Adairsville, GA)
August 10, Loews Hotel (Atlanta, GA)
August 15, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Please Pleaserock Me show
August 18, Monday Night Brewing Company (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)
September 26, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Sazerac show
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 10, State Theatre (Falls Church, VA)
October 11, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
October 12, Rams Head On Stage (Annapolis, MD)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)
October 31, Georgia Theater (Athens, GA)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)
November 17, House of Blues (San Diego, CA)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)

Mic Check

No Sunday AM church gig for me this month--a blessing considering the previous night's occasion.  My PM church gig is still on, though.

While in New York, I bought a clamp to try and get a microphone more in the center of the piano.  It's already an improvement over the "58 in one of the sound holes" approach we've been using.  

Chastain!

Wow!  Yacht Rock held this year's revival at Chastain.  What a great place to play!  It really was an amazing night with a great crowd.  I can't wait to do it again.

Big thanks to Elliot Lurie, Robbie Dupree, Walter Egan, Jeff Carlisi, Bill Champlin, and Bobby Kimball for joining us.  They're all legendary musicians and pretty incredible people.  Thanks to the Schooner and Starbuck for opening things up.

Awesome job by Pleaserock--Nick, Pete, Esther, Kristen, and Nackers for putting it all together.

Great work by our crew of Kip, Zach, Hans, and Kerry, as well as the Chastain staff.

There's nowhere to go but down.

Just kidding.

noon load in

Hans blesses the rains

Good Thing

Carlisi

Bobby Kimball

The crowd estimate I heard from one of the Chastain people was 3,500.

Here's the rundown:  

What a Fool, fine…LA Lindsay, totally bullshitted my solo (blame it on adrenaline)…Dancing in the Moonlight and Brandy, no problems…Good Thing, solo started great but kind of died at the end, and vocally, I'm still wandering around…You Make My Dreams, fine…Hot Rod Hearts, the arpeggio thing I'd screwed up last week in New Jersey was solid…All Night Long, singing high like that makes my tongue and jaw hurt…Steal Away, good, but our attempt to change the ending from what we usually do once again caught me off guard (in other words, I totally screwed it up)…Magnet and Steel and Go Your Own Way, both good…Baker Street, fun…didn't play on the Carlisi stuff, Somebody's Baby and Get Lucky/Night Fever, both good…Turn Your Love Around was good, though my solo on the gig was mediocre--I was better at soundcheck…You're the Inspiration was vocally challenging, and I think I was better on effort than accuracy, though my string and horn parts were solid…Look Away was similarly challenging (Champlin's newer arrangement had Peter and me singing the 2nd resolving to the 3rd, which then becomes the 7th resolving to the root), and I missed it a couple of times…I began Rich Girl with my keyboard still pitched down a whole step, which did not sound good at all…My Old School was fine…we skipped Footloose…everybody likes my piccolo solo in Call Me Al …Rosanna was good…the solo on Africa was a DISASTER--I turned the transpose button off on the EWI somewhere before the solo, so the first phrase was HORRIBLE, in the second phrase I stopped playing (realizing what the problem was) and hit the button, and recovered in the time to play the last phrase correctly…outro solo was decent…Hold the Line was fun, and Lido was good.

Videos:

You Make My Dreams


Baker Street




So Caught Up in You


Turn Your Love Around


You're the Inspiration


Africa






Hold the Line


So…back to normal life!

Upcoming dates:

July 26, The Orange Peel (Asheville, NC)
August 15, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Please Pleaserock Me show
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 10, State Theatre (Falls Church, VA)
October 11, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
October 12, Rams Head On Stage (Annapolis, MD)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)

Rehearsal, Day 2

Yacht Rock held one last rehearsal to check in with the guys on tomorrow's show with whom we hadn't yet played--those guys being Bill Champlin (formerly of Chicago) and Jeff Carlisi (formerly of .38 Special).

I had nothing to prepare for the .38 Special stuff--there's no saxophone, and barely enough keyboard (if at all) for one guy.  It's probably a good thing--the Champlin stuff was kind of a butt kicker.

Right off the bat, we worked on Turn Your Love Around (a tune he cowrote with Jay Graydon and Steve Lukather) down a whole step from the original A minor.  I played that for hours yesterday, so I was ready for the album version.  Bill threw in some of his own arrangement, including a gospel walk up that scared me to death.  He came around to each instrumentalist and showed us really quickly, and I kind of freaked out.  You can't tell from this picture, but I am scared to death.

Reaching out to my keyboard, he played it quickly a couple of times and then was like, "Ya got it?"  Uhh…no!  I was trying to watch his hands, but I could only focus on one at a time, and he played  through it and I didn't follow anything after the first chord.  On top of that, I was trying to figure out why he was starting with a Eb triad (he then reached down and added a C, so it was Cmin7, which still didn't help) in the key of A minor.  After the whole band had played it (after I'd screwed it up with the band), it clicked that he was playing it in G minor--I have my keyboard tuned down a whole step for this song.  So then it was a walk up from the four chord.  Ah ha!  It made much more sense when I could sit down at a piano and think it through.  Putting me on the spot completely shut down my brain and ears.

Noticing later the sax strap (for my EWI) around my neck, he asked about taking a sax solo on Turn Your Love Around.  Yeah, sure!  It also gave me a chance to kind of halfheartedly apologize for not being a good keyboardist.

The other two tunes were not as frightening.  You're the Inspiration is mostly strings, and Look Away is mostly pads.  No big deal.  Hopefully I can contribute something vocally, too.

Following rehearsal, I had just enough time to go home, dump gear, eat lunch, and drive back downtown for another one of those things like I did Wednesday night.  Wish I could tell you about it, but I can't.

Rehearsal

I got up at 8:30 (that gave me around 4 hours of sleep) and played through my Bill Champlin/80s Chicago tunes for a Yacht Rock rehearsal.  By 10 AM, I was in midtown setting up my gear.

Some of my playing was up to speed, but the majority of it still needs work at home.  Fortunately (I guess), we spent a large chunk of rehearsal sorting out the vocal harmonies, the highest and most dense of which are in You're The Inspiration, which saved me some embarrassment with regards to the state of my instrumental parts.  Vocally, I think I was getting it at rehearsal;  good on the way home;  no good at home.  I can't remember where I was.  It's probably better that I concern myself with playing the right notes.

After rehearsal, I came home, set up my keyboard, and spent almost all of the afternoon and evening bringing my parts up to speed.  Things should be much better at tomorrow's run through.  I also have tomorrow night to hit it once more before the big day.

Much too Early

Yacht Rock played CBS Better Mornings Wednesday to promote our big revival this coming Saturday at Chastain.  Normally, it wouldn't be too bad to be there at 7:30 AM, but after coming home at midnight on Monday and then a Tuesday of laundry and getting back to normal, it was pretty tough.  We played fine, but I had a lot trouble paying attention to what we were doing.

Hopefully, this link still works.

CBS Atlanta 46

From there, it was home to practice, teach, and then go to a thing that I can't tell you about.  After that, it was back home to do some more practicing for rehearsal.  I finally gave up at 4 AM.  Ouch.