Beatles Show

Please Pleaserock Me played a show at Smith's Olde Bar last night to a pretty full room.  Pretty good gig!

We had Rob Opitz joining us on trumpet.  Excellent work and good hang with somebody I've known back from the William Noll days fifteen years ago.

We debuted a couple of songs, my favorite being George Harrison's What is Life--a great song from a great album.  It makes me wonder why it took us so long to add this one!

I got to play the rhodes part at the beginning of Band on the Run, but the amp wasn't loud enough and I didn't hear anything I played.  I'm hoping my guesses were all lucky!  I made it back to the horn section, picked up my tenor and adjusted the microphone with just enough time to see that I was supposed to play bari!  I managed the switch just in time.

I made a quick load out after the gig--around 10 minutes.  It's good to be a horn player!

Next week will be a biggie for church gigs--four services on Sunday, three on Tuesday, and one on Wednesday.  Tis the season!

If you missed the Yacht Rock Revue Holiday Special last weekend at the Variety Playhouse, you can watch the whole thing on YouTube here:

Sunday

I'm still recovering from the previous week, but I did make it to my church gigs.

My AM church gig was weird.  The orchestra was performing for most of the service;  the only small band song was us backing up the middle schooler choir on a gospel tune.  I ended up sitting through everything and only playing for the one song.  It's confusing to me--if you're paying me to be there, why not use me on everything?  I could have played second flute, third clarinet, bass clarinet, or any of the saxophone parts.

We played two services.  In the second, they brought in a second flutist to play when the only flute player switched to piccolo.  I sat and watched.  Maybe I should add a copy of my diploma to my bag with flute, clarinet, picc, and instrument stands.  Look!  I'm qualified!  It's disappointing to me that they think of me as only being able to do the SNL sax player kind of stuff when I could be contributing in other styles.

Just for the record, I really killed it in the second service.

My PM gig was moved from the cathedral into the parish hall due to some kind of special service or concert.  I wonder why they scheduled it for Sunday night when there was already a mass in that time slot?  Wouldn't it be better if it wasn't competing with something else at the church for people and parking?

Anyway, the parish hall is sounding pretty good these days.  They bumped up the amplifiers for the speakers in the ceiling (so we have enough headroom at the mixer), and now the sound is easier to manage.  It definitely makes me less apprehensive about playing Christmas Eve in there.

Second Guesses

Yacht Rock played our annual holiday show at the Variety Playhouse last night.  I think we had a good show overall, but I had some weird moments, particularly in the first set.

I'm not sure what happened--maybe I had trouble focusing on what we were doing--but I was really unsettled for most of the first set.  The result was a string of weird mistakes, even on familiar tunes.  I really thought a lot more than I usually do on our gigs--second guessing myself constantly.  Even when we laid into Baker Street on the second set, I couldn't remember how many times the sax hook went around before the first verse.  I played it twice (which turned out to be correct), but I couldn't decide if I was right or the band was just following my mistake.  After the show, I checked with Greg to see if I'd messed it up.  In Maneater, I played the chords of the verse in a different inversion than usual, so it wasn't wrong, per se, but again, what the hell am I doing?  It was that kind of night for me.

Anyway, as I look over the first set, maybe it wasn't bad, but feeling unsure of myself for the entire first set made for quite an adventure up there.

Nice job by Nick, Pete, Ether, and Kristen for putting together another excellent evening, and thanks to Kip, Zach, and Farrell for perfect lights and sound!  Also thanks to the Variety and our excellent fans!

Two Gigs, One Building

Yacht Rock pulled a two-fer last night--two gigs in one night, albeit in the same building, with each "gig" consisting of three songs.  Appearance is probably a better description than gig.

Our first event of the evening was at The Loft (at Centerstage in midtown).  We participated in the "Beatles vs. Stones" show benefiting Poverty is Real.  Our set was Jealous Guy, Hey Bulldog, and A Little Help from my Friends.  I had a good solo on Jealous Guy.  At the end of Hey Bulldog, I was anticipating Monkey creating feedback and noise at his amp--maybe I have this confused with the end of Good Morning, Good Morning--anyway, once we hit the outro of Hey Bulldog, something compelled me to just to take the most out, free, squealing, noisy solo I could muster.  Nobody seemed to mind.

After that, we headed out the door and walked into Vinyl (also at Centerstage) to play for Mixtape's "The Nightmare before X Mix" show for the Songs for Kids Foundation.  This set was Donny Hathaway's This Christmas, Springsteen's version of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and Two Tickets to Paradise.  I could barely hear my saxophone.  Hope it was ok.

If you want to hear more of us, come see us tonight at the Variety Playhouse for the Yacht Rock Holiday Special!

Song of Simeon

I played a really nice gig with a bunch of old friends last night.  Will Scruggs presented his album Song of Simeon in concert last night at the Sandy Springs Christian Church.  Great writing and playing all around!  It was also cool to see several old friends in the band, including Tommy Sauter, Marlon Patton, Kinah Boto, Dan Baraszu, Lester Walker, and Wes Funderburk.  It seems like we don't move in the same circles anymore, so our opportunities are fewer and farther between.

Quartet Gig!

I had a great quartet gig last night.  We played a horse related event--I never fully grasped what it was--but who cares!  A two hour jazz gig with Tyrone Jackson (keyboard), Kevin Smith (bass), and Justin Chesarek (drums).  I couldn't have asked for a better band.  Awesome playing all the way around by some of my favorite musicians in Atlanta.  I feel lucky to share the stage with them.

You should listen here:



In related news, everybody likes my beard.

Sunday

Even without a Saturday night gig, waking up early on Sunday is tough.  Too many years of training my body clock to go the other way.

My AM church gig was pretty good.  When I got there, they had the stage set for a show with the orchestra that afternoon.  I had no idea where to stand, so I ended up taking a position in between the organ and bass player.

Musically, it was another morning where I didn't contribute much.  I played some tenor and some soprano, and played clarinet (as always) on the last song.  I'm still really enjoying my new soprano mouthpiece, and after breaking in some softer reeds Saturday night, it's really fun now.  The big song for the day had a little bit of space for me to blow in between verses by the choir, so I played soprano on it, which I think fit it better than tenor.

At one point in the service, the pastor mentioned that a dollar bill was backed by gold at the Federal Reserve--I wanted to raise my hand and vehemently disagree!  Then he corrected himself--it was backed by silver.  Wait--what?  What year is it?  President Nixon ended the gold standard in 1971.  Weird stuff.

While we were on break, Wayne Viar walked by--he was playing drums in the contemporary service on the other side of the building.  Always a pleasure!  He was telling us about playing drums on some kind of national tour with somebody from ABBA.  He had to run the backing tracks, too--all on an ADAT machine!

My PM church gig was a bit of a volume war--as in, I set the level so it was audible in the back of the church, and the band leader said it was too loud.  Fine.  I turned it down.  Anybody complains, I know who to blame.

Musically, there wasn't anything that lent itself to my improvisatory noodling, so I didn't add much.  I tried to make up for it with more attentive audio mixing, albeit at a lower volume.

Nashville

Yacht Rock played a show Friday night at the Mercy Lounge in Nashville.  In spite of the crappy weather, it was beyond sold out--more people than the number they call sold out.  Very cool!

We left Atlanta and the 70 degree weather.  Just north of Chattanooga, it started raining.  We went up and over Monteagle in the pouring rain.  When we arrived in Nashville, it was mid-30s and still raining.  Yuck!

We set up and sound checked as we've done here plenty of times before.  For supper, we met up with the guys from our booking agency for pizza at DeSano.  If you've ever been to Antico in Atlanta, it's the same sort of thing--the DeSano guy purchased the concept/franchising rights from Antico and set up shop in Tennessee.

Anyway, it's soooooo good.  It's kind of embarrassing--this is the kind of place where I will eat right up until I'm about to throw up.  If I had access to pizza like this more often, I would weigh 1,000 pounds.

Back to our gig!  We had a good time and played pretty well.  That stage is always loud, and for me, it takes some time to get comfortable with the volume.  First tune of the night was Greatest American Hero (Believe it Or Not).  This one hasn't been on the set list in over a year.  I did pretty well--the last measure of the bridge has an intimidating sixteenth note run that I can play most of the time.  I think I got it.  I had some other minor flubs on the string part, but it was alright.

My solo on Biggest Part of Me was kind of blah, as was Baker Street.  I couldn't get any kind of epic energy happening in the latter.  On the former, I tried to hold off on the altissimo stuff for as long as possible and try and play something meaningful in the middle of the horn.  I couldn't really get anything going.  My EWI solo on the end of Africa went very well, however, and the flow of my ideas felt logical.

The crowd had kind of a weird vibe--or maybe it was the stage volume/ear plugs thing.  It felt like they were into the first sixty seconds of everything, and then it felt like they wanted us to hurry up and get on to the next song.

Walter Egan made the trip in from Franklin and played Magnet and Steel and Go Your Own Way with us.  It's always a pleasure to hang out with the real guys, and Walter is gracious with his stories of the 70s, and he tolerates me taking pictures of him.

We spent the night in Smyrna.  The next day, it was back over the mountain in the fog.  1, 2, 3 Greg Lee!

No gig Saturday night, but I did get in some good practicing.

This is a crazy week!  I have a quartet gig Monday night, rehearsal Tuesday morning, rehearsal Thursday morning, a gig with Will Scruggs Thursday night, a gig Friday night, and the big Yacht Rock Holiday show at the Variety Playhouse Saturday night!

Holiday Party

Yacht Rock played a holiday party last night at Park Tavern.  We usually play outside on the patio, but the ice rink made that impossible.  Because of this, we were tucked in a corner of the downstairs room. It seemed like a pretty terrible situation (acoustically speaking), but in the end, I don't think it sounded bad at all.

This gig was a holiday party for a small company, with maybe a hundred people in attendance.  It never got rowdy, which was cool by me--there were a few people dancing and watching the show, but no drunk people screaming at us.

I felt good about my playing all around--I've had some good solos on Reminiscing lately, and liked my playing on Lowdown last night.  I've finally gotten over whatever I caught in California and my voice is back to normal, so I'm also feeling more confident about my singing.

We're headed out the door today to play in Nashville tonight at the Mercy Lounge.  It's in the 70s here in Atlanta and the 30s up there.  Yuck.

Easy Day

No Saturday night gig…the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving has pretty much always been dead for everybody, so I don't feel too bad about not working.  Sunday was a regular day, though, with services in the morning and evening.

My Sunday morning gig was uneventful.  I played some clarinet on the opening song (kind of Christian klezmer oom-pah thing).  The remainder of the service, I played soprano and tried to stay in the background as much as I could.  No big spots for me to fill, so I did my best to participate without being noticed.

The instrumentation was a little unusual--in addition to the usual drums, bass, piano, church organ, and me, we had Neil from the contemporary service joining us.  Neil plays B-3 organ, so he played some with us--dueling organs?  I always wonder what that sounds like out front.

We played two services this weekend, which was cool for the money.  I must admit that my clarinet felt so good that I was happy to play two.

My evening church gig was also mostly a non-event for me.  The music chosen for this weekend didn't leave me many opportunities to play, so I stayed out of the way as best I could.  One of the hymns was such a wandering subdominant nightmare that I gave after a few seconds of trying to weave something into it and put my soprano back on the stand.

Yacht Rock will be in Nashville at the Mercy Lounge this coming Friday night if you're around.

Turkey Eve

Yacht Rock played a sold out Thanksgiving Eve at the Egyptian Ballroom at The Fox Theatre last night--a major step up from last year's Turkey Eve at Smith's Olde Bar.  Way more people, way more fun, and I played much better than last year.

This was a great gig all around for us!  We debuted a few new tunes (I'm Alright, Two Tickets to Paradise) and brought back several that we haven't played in a while (Band on the Run, Sara Smile, She's Gone, Get Out of My Dreams, and Everything She Wants).  I'm pretty sure they all went over well, though with ear plugs jammed deep into my head, I didn't hear much of the crowd.  It's one of the louder stages we've played recently.