West Coast Trip

Yacht Rock has just returned from a short trip to the west coast, with nice gigs in San Diego and Los Angeles.  In between was a wild night on the town.

Sunday:  we flew to San Diego.  No problems from Delta with our gear.  By the way, I have seen that it's now a law that the airlines cannot charge you for checked musical gear if it's under 165 pounds.  You can read about that HERE.  

So anyway, we landed in beautiful San Diego (even the airport is beautiful), picked up rental cars (with the planes flying over us).  We checked into our hotel (right next door to the venue), sound checked, ate…the usual stuff.  The San Diego House of Blues is nice.

My Nord case was the victim of a random peeing by my dog earlier in the week.  When I opened the case in San Diego, I was greeted by a plume of ammonia.  Gross.  I tried to clean it the night before we flew with pet carpet cleaner and Febreeze (and airing it out), but there's still some stink to it.  Since I couldn't put my keyboard back in the case with an open box of baking soda, I bought a box of dryer sheets and laid them out.  If nothing else, the fragrance will hopefully mask some of the pee.  Bad dog.

This gig was fun--the House of Blues gigs pretty much always are (I guess Anaheim's not the greatest), but we had a good showing for a Sunday night (approximately 170 people, two thirds of whom had paid to enter).  San Diego is nice, the House of Blues was groovy, the hotel was cool…I've got no complaints!

I played a pretty sloppy show.  Sorry!

Monday:  we got up late.  Most of us woke up kind of early, since our body clocks were three hours ahead.  I had four cups of coffee (even the hotel coffee was good).  Once everybody was rounded up, we ate lunch and headed up to Los Angeles.  We even let Monkey drive.

The drive north was beautiful.  San Diego and the area north are incredibly scenic.  As we got closer to LA, the landscape changed for the worse.  Downtown LA has a trash problem.  

We started the night at a foodie restaurant called Animal.  Totally not my thing and really expensive.

From there, Elliot Lurie recommended we go see a band called Bern (led by drummer Bernie Dresel) at Cafe Cordiale.  The band was three vocals, rhythm section, and a horn section.  Very cool!  They did some Tower of Power stuff, an Amy Winehouse tune, a Sting song, Fool in the Rain by Led Zeppelin, The End by the Beatles, etc.  It was really neat--a kick ass band in a small room.  I went and stood behind the horn section (Willie Murillo on trumpet, Brian Scanlon on tenor and alto sax, Brian Williams on bari sax, and Alan Kaplan on trombone).  I really dug this.  The horns were tight, and the charts were great.

After that, we closed out the night at the bar at Chateau Marmont.  It's a pretty legendary place.  The bar is hip and the Australian bartender was a babe.  Later in the night, Bencuya was cornered by some creepy lady from Slovenia who not only asked him if he thought she was attractive, but also asked him if he thought she was too wrinkly.  Honesty in a sixty year old hooker is commendable, I guess.  

We got away from her and made our way out onto Sunset just in time to see a van come peeling around the corner with the driver's side door open.  The guy stopped the van across the street, got out, and tried to beat up a parking meter.  At that point, he fell backwards into the landscaping.  As he was getting ready for round two, his friend came running up the street and their argument continued.  They eventually got in the van and drove away just in time for the LAPD to swoop in on them.  

Tuesday:  we had lunch at the Grand Central Market in downtown LA.  Pretty good.  I had chicken tacos.

Our show that night was a private party on the roof of the Grammy Museum for a eighty people (mostly dudes).  Nice, easy gig (two forty-five minute sets).  The backdrop on the hotel behind me was a mural for Anchorman 2.  

I was fighting some sort of illness that peaked in its intensity right around this gig, so I was very thankful that this show was short and sweet.  That said, it was a cool party and the mostly-dudes crowd really liked us (though nobody danced because it was mostly dudes).  

Wednesday:  we flew all afternoon back to Atlanta.  The flight left around 1 PM (local time), and we landed just after 7 PM.  Once again, no problems getting our gear checked.  Walter (who works the counter of Delta on the curbside check in) was fantastic--worth more than we could tip him.

I got home and my dog was so happy to see me that she peed on the floor.  Welcome home!

Hopefully I can get my jet lag sorted out by Sunday, when the ol' AM church gig slams me back into Eastern time.

They Say it's Your Birthday...

Yacht Rock played the surprise birthday party of one of our friends/fans last night.  Happy 40th to one of the coolest people we know!

Party Time

Yacht Rock played a small party at the Buckhead Theatre last night.  I really have no idea what we were celebrating, but then again, I guess that doesn't affect my job.

As is often the case these days, I have little to say about the gig.  Mark Cobb was particularly inventive and creative in the first set, and Mark Dannells had a really weird/cool solo on How Long.  My personal excitement reached its peak when I began Africa (of course) in the wrong key (using my Bobby Kimball down-a-whole-step set of patches).  Once I realized what was going on, it was an easy fix and I went back to work.   At the end of our show, I ended up in the middle of a conga line on Call Me Al.

There's not much vibe at the Buckhead Theatre (it feels like a nice high school auditorium), but the sound on stage was very good.  After the show, Cobb and I found out that the front of house guy had recorded the whole thing (they were listening to it as they wrapped cables).  Wow!  It sounded great.  We were kind of impressed with ourselves and the front of house mix.

Also, I took home an entire pizza.  Cold.  It was free, though.

Wednesday night, I created a horn part for an original song somebody had sent me, and Thursday mid day I recorded horns over it as a demo--next week I'll probably go in the studio and do it for real.  

Hey, we're in San Diego this Sunday night at the House of Blues.  Come see us!

In other news…I'm currently listening to Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein, and Bill Stewart live at the Village Vanguard on NPR.  It sounds great.  You can check it out here:  http://www.npr.org/event/music/243027513/peter-bernstein-larry-goldings-bill-stewart-live-at-the-village-vanguard

Also, I bought the newest Jeremy Pelt record, titled Water and Earth.  Excellent stuff.  Dig it.

Cinking In

Yacht Rock played a gig for Stewart Cink's Cink It Challenge, a Pro-Am golf tournament to raise money for The Pregnancy Resource Center of Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Medical Center Newborn Intensive Care Unit.

Another relaxed gig for cool people.  The most difficult part of the gig was navigating from the clubhouse back to the main road in the dark.

We had Kip and Zach on sound two nights in a row (Saturday and Sunday).  What a joy it is to work with these guys.  I hope we can make it full time at some point in the future.  Having good, reliable sound men is becoming more and more important as we do more high profile gigs.

For the second night in a row, we received gifts!  No t shirts on this one, but we got Parker's Pickles.  Yessssss!

The Bacon Gig!

Yacht Rock played a party at a home near North Druid Hills Country Club--a gig we've also played three times before, I think.  The hosts are huge fans of the band, so the gig is always really cool.  Plus, there's forty pounds of candied bacon.  Bacon, bacon, bacon…I had at least twelve pieces.  It's amazingly good.  This is one of the best gigs we do, and the bacon is one of the reasons why. 

We set up in a long, narrow tent on a plateau in their backyard.  The first year, the gig took place in early December (night of the SEC championship).  It was so cold that might EWI froze up and stopped working.  Since then, it's been a few weeks earlier, and therefore not nearly as cold.  It's a weird set up due to the space;  drums all the way in the back, then the two keyboard rigs facing each other (Dustin subbing for Bencuya tonight), and then the Nick and Pete flanked by Greg and Monkey across the front.  

Here's some more craziness:  they made t shirts for us (and wrapped them in a bottle of vodka, but I gave that to Monkey).  This takes Yacht Rock fandom to a whole new level.  These people are way cool.

We're already looking forward to next year's party!  The diet begins tomorrow--I love the bacon.

Sunday morning was ye olde church gig.  I played on a new soprano piece I got from CE Winds.  I'd finally reached the breaking point with my old mouthpiece (which I customized/destroyed with files and sandpaper over the years).  If only I'd known what I was doing, my old one would play like this one does.  I think the tip opening is a bit bigger--I may have to change to a softer reed.

Tonight is another really relaxed gig at the kickoff party for Stewart Cink's Cink It Challenge.  Please stay tuned for an essay comparing and contrasting our scalps.

Please Pleaserock Me at Smith's

Please Pleaserock Me played a show at Smith's Oldest Bar last night to a packed house.  The wrinkle in this one was that Mark Bencuya was out of town, so Nick successfully picked up a bunch of his keyboard parts.

For the horns, I took a solo on Don't Let Me Down (instead of the Billy Preston wurly solo), and I arranged the strings on I Am the Walrus for the horns.  Tricky stuff.

Greg Lee brought his new 12 string guitar to the gig.  Very very cool.

Smith's feels like it's on the verge of closing…in addition to the usual smells and the non functioning restroom, they were out of good beer (they gave us the choice of Bud Light or Yuengling), some menu selections, vodka for Monkey…hope we're not loading out when the back stairs finally give way.

That said, it sounded great on stage and out front, and everybody played really well because of it.  Good gig!

We finished at 11 PM.  Another band was slotted to play at midnight, so we loaded out quickly (with help from the staff, which was very very cool).  See you in December!