Time Passages

This trip was literally all over the map.  We began in Nashville and finished in Costa Rica.  In between were stops in Indianapolis, Chicago, Las Vegas, and New York.  We hit all four time zones and temperature changes between 22 and 87 degrees, loading gear in snow and ice one day, sound checking on a beach just a week later.  Van rides, plane rides, rickshaw--somehow, we made it.

Thursday, March 6 (Atlanta to Nashville):  We hit the road and played the Mercy Lounge on a Thursday night.  Not the most insane crowd--just under 300 in attendance.  Not bad for a Thursday! 

soundcheck

Before the gig, we had pizza at Desano.  I kid you not--I ate an entire pizza.  Totally worth it.

This gig was a good first night.  I'm not bummed about the numbers at all--the room felt really full, and we were all really surprised that count didn't reflect that.  Nashville was happy to see us, and we them.  It's a fun room to play.

Friday, March 7 (Nashville to Indianapolis):  Ah yes, the homecoming!  Three of the band (Nick, Pete, and Cobb) are Indiana natives, and five of the seven are Indiana U. grads.

gross

I have taken this turn before

We moved over to The Vogue for this show (last time we jammed everybody into a smaller place called Radio Radio).  The Vogue is a cool room, almost the size of the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, but with a much smaller stage.  It's in Broad Ripple, a pretty hip part of town.

the Vogue dressing room is absurdly small

Pretty good show.  It's very cool to be received that well on our second gig in Indy.  At 840 people, we were less than a hundred from a sellout.  How about that?  Way awesome.  I want to come back more often.

At some point, it'd be cool if Indiana University would give us a nod.  Hey School of Music, remember us?  None of us is Joshua Bell, but we're successful grads with careers in music.

Rachel Fox took some really nice pictures of us.  You can find them here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxrf88/sets/72157642177100483/

Here's one.

Saturday, March 8 (Indianapolis to Chicago):  The midwestern musician's dream...playing Chicago.  Hell yeah!  Last time (our first time) we were in the House of Blues.  Amazing, but maybe too big of a room for us to begin the siege.  For this run, we were at the much more economical Lincoln Hall.

Before leaving Indy, we stopped for lunch at an excellent New Orleans restaurant called Yats.  Very good jambalaya.  I texted my mom about it.

yuck

I got the last of the jambalaya--after my order, they wiped it off the board

This is what boredom will do to you:

Chicago was still an icy tundra, and Lake Michigan was almost completely frozen.  It was cold and windy, and we loaded in from this alley behind the building.

Another small stage, but it wasn't too bad because it was really dead (acoustically).

a bigger, colder dressing room than Indy

 Chicago loved us!  At 410 people, we were once again less than a hundred people from selling it out.  How about that!  On our second trip through town.  I hope the midwest becomes a regular tour for us.

This is where the trip began to get difficult.  We got to our hotel rooms around 2:30 AM, but unfortunately with daylight savings time, it was now 3:30.  Ouch.  We repacked, dumping dirty clothes in garbage bags to ride back to Atlanta in the trailer (Hans drove us and ran sound).  In bed a little after 4 AM and then up in time to make a 6 AM lobby call.

Sunday, March 9 (Chicago to Las Vegas):  Our hotel was right near O'Hare, so no problem getting to the airport for our flight to Las Vegas with a layover in Salt Lake City.

Here's me taking a picture of us pulling our gear out at O'Hare instead of grabbing the bag with all the keyboard sustain and expression pedals.  Nice work, dumb ass.  We had to ship the bag to New York.

Chicago Delta guy gave us no grief about the size or weight of our gear.  Good dude.

We made it to Vegas for four days of rehearsal and then a rehearsal and performance on the fifth day.  Here's my hotel room.

Before rehearsal we had a pit stop for lunch at In-n-Out Burger, which apparently was the only place serving lunch in the state of Nevada that day.  The line almost went out the door.  Mark Dannells devoured my chocolate shake.

This gig had horns!  I led the horn section and wrote the horn arrangements.  On trumpet we had Darren English, seen here playing trombone.

On trombone, we had Rich Sherrington, seen here playing Darren's trumpet.

We were in a rehearsal studio just off the strip.  This is my view.

On the other hand, here's the view from my room at night.  We had individual rooms.

Here's my daytime view.  The airport was straight out in front of me.

More rehearsal.

After the first day, they changed the final song of the show to Two Tickets to Paradise, so I had to crank out a chart.  First I sketched some stuff out in pencil;  then, on a borrowed laptop, I downloaded  a free demo version of Finale (music notation software) and made horn charts.  It took three hours.  I missed dinner at some hole in the wall Italian restaurant.

The next day, we emailed pdfs of the charts to another computer that was connected to a printer.  Confused?  It wasn't easy.  I will say that once we finally got all the charts and editing done, the gig was much more fun for me, and I was really happy with everything I wrote (which is not always the case).

Darren doodle

 Mandalay Bay (where we stayed and performed) has an aquarium that we checked out Tuesday afternoon.

Later on, I walked around with these two.  We took a quick look at the Luxor next door (the one shaped like a pyramid).

Back at Mandalay Bay, we encountered another yacht rock band playing.  We play the same stuff they do.  They knew who we were.  It was kind of weird.

Another day, another rehearsal.

Wednesday afternoon we moved from the rehearsal studio over to the Mandalay Bay Arena.

miniature key lime pies

The Arena is super cool.

The horns had a riser to ourselves.

More rehearsal.

That night I went up to the Foundation Room, a bar located on the roof of Mandalay Bay.  Beautiful view!

Thursday was the dress rehearsal and performance.  At this point, I think the horns had pretty much memorized all the charts.  We were ready.  We were, dare I say, a little bored!

Here we are right before the show.  Darren English, Rich Sherrington, and me.

A few pictures from the show.  Great gig!  This was ton of fun.  We really felt like rock stars.

The show was quick--I think the whole thing lasted thirty minutes, and we done around 3 PM.  After killing the afternoon doing nothing more productive than eating, we left Mandalay Bay at 9:30 PM for the airport.  Our flight was the red eye to New York, leaving Vegas at 11:30 PM and arriving at JFK at 7:30 AM.  Ouch.

24 hours from this moment, we would be finishing a show in NYC

We had to argue with the Delta counter people about our gear.  They let us go without paying because the tickets were purchased on a Delta AmEx or something random--some kind of special privilege, I guess.  The fact that Delta's argument (or in the case, allowance) is different every time only highlights the fact that their own musical instrument policy is arbitrary and unclear to those charged with enforcing it.

Friday, March 14 (Las Vegas to New York City):  Ouch.  This one hurt.  I didn't sleep well on the plane.  To make matters worse, we flew into JFK, which is a horrible horrible horrible horrible HORRIBLE airport.  Why are the terminals each two miles long?  We were going to try and take the train to the hotel, but ended up getting everything into  two taxis.

Pete had a ten minute argument with the desk lady about our rooms and early check in fees and the room we'd paid for the night before.  It was difficult to stand there and wait.  I was near death.

They finally squared it away, and I ran up to my room and dove into bed for a few hours.  We had a 2 PM lobby call so we could go by the NYC Twitter office for a meet and greet/Q and A.  They are HUGE fans and cool people.  I ate multiple bananas and drank coffee until I began to sweat.

Pete and I were left out, but we made the best of it.

Once again, coffee saved my life.

On to the venue!  We dumped our gear before a food stop at Schnipper's.  Kind of like Grindhouse Burgers (if you live in Atlanta).  Burgers, fries, mac and cheese, milkshakes.  I can dig it.

Yay!  We sold out the Gramercy Theatre (650 people).  The gig was pretty rockin'--the crowd was really fantastic, even though the stage sound was not as good as it has been in the past.    New York is such an incredible place to play.  We always have fun.

We got back to our hotel late at night, I want to say around 2:30 AM (it was an hour ride from the Gramercy back out to the JFK Marriott).

Saturday, March 15 (New York City to Liberia, Costa Rica):  I was in bed by 3:30, but up at 4:45 in order to catch the 5 AM shuttle back to JFK (the worst airport ever) for our flight to Costa Rica.

We lost the battle with Delta agent about our gear, but this time they "combined" the weight of Bencuya's keyboard and my sax case and only charged us for one overweight item.  Thanks?  I made all my usual arguments, but the dude said it was because we were flying internationally--the limit for flights to Central America was 50 lbs.  Does that mean that you won't try and charge me when we fly back to the US?  Whatever.  Delta's full of shit.

wildfires are all the rage in Costa Rica

We played a fiftieth birthday party for the owner of Imperial Beer, which I think might be the only beer in Costa Rica.  The venue was an hour van ride from the airport on a recklessly fast two lane highway.

local cattle drive

We made it around noon (local time).  After checking in, that left us about forty-five minutes before soundcheck.  Lunch!

To reach the stage, we had to get back in the taxi van and ride down a dirt road parallel to the beach down to the next resort.  There, things were taking shape.  It was quite a view, and as hot here as it was cold the day before in NYC).

Not bad, huh?  What are your plans for your fiftieth birthday party?

Soundcheck took forever.  There was a crew of at least ten men helping set things up, but only two spoke any English.  With the heat and lack of sleep, it made for some extra frustration.

Post soundcheck, we had about two hours to kill before the gig.  I opted to sleep.  Here's my room.

After caffeinating myself, we took the van ride back to the stage for our performance.  When we got there, Debi Nova was performing.  She's a major babe.  Check it out:

Damn!

Following her were fire twirler people.  I think there were four people.  It was really spectacular on a dark beach.

Unfortunately, sparks from their performance set the cover over the stage on fire.  As I was sitting at my keyboards watching the end of the show, a dude came up to me with a fire extinguisher and asked me to move.

Ultimately, they decided that opening up a fire extinguisher with all of gear right there might not be a great idea, so they held a guy up and he smothered the fire with his bare hands, going round and round until it ceased glowing.  Wow!

We played one ninety minute set.  Our playing was fine and the stage sound was good (and the setting was incredible).

Monkeyboy had a particularly rippin' solo on Two Tickets to Paradise this night.

six toms.  seriously.

The screen on my top keyboard was permanently messed up--the liquid crystals wouldn't go back to the bottom, so I could barely see what my sounds were.  Even tougher with sunglasses on.  Bottom keyboard for the night was the beastly Nord Stage.  Lots of knobs.

Following the gig, we had a little bit of time before the van came to take us back to our rooms.  I took it all in...it's a pretty badass gig when it's Saturday night and you're eating freshly made tacos on a Costa Rican beach.  I got three in before we had to split.  Everywhere we went on this trip we had good food, and the lady cooking tortillas on the beach that night made sure that this was no exception.

I guess we were back to our rooms around 10:30 PM.  At midnight, there was a ten minute barrage of fireworks.  It sounded like Costa Rica was under artillery bombardment.  Either that, or the birthday boy had received a howitzer as a present.

The most insane birthday party ever!

Sunday, March 16 (Liberia, Costa Rica to Atlanta):  We were as giddy about going home.  All of our gear and suitcases were loaded into a beat up Toyota Four Runner and we followed in a van for the ride back to the airport.

Delta gave me one more opportunity to argue about our gear.  After several minutes of me almost cussing, the guy gave in, even as he was telling me that the weight was the issue, not the size.  Minutes later he was dealing with Benucya's keyboard case (which he also let through without charging us), telling him it was the size of the case that was the issue, not the weight.  What?

The flight was long, but not too terrible.  We watched the movie Nebraska.  That killed a couple of hours.

Baggage claim took forever, customs was pretty speedy, and we were home free.  It was a long ten days!

We All Fall Down

Big fun...I tried to squeeze in an Ash Wednesday church gig after teaching yesterday.  Unfortunately, I-75 southbound was shut down due to an accident, so I tried some nifty rerouting that bit me in the butt.  By the time I'd started and stopped all the way down highway 41 and then weaved my way down Northside Drive, and then parked about a half a mile from the church, I was twenty minutes late.  Ouch!

Showing up paid off, though.  For one thing, the piano mic was on top of the lid for the piano (difficult to hear through an inch of wood), and it wasn't turned on anyway.  I got that up and running and reset the gain on the guitar.  Whomever had set this stuff up hadn't bothered to set up a mic for me (or brought a mic stand from the other side of the room), so I considered not playing at all.  I set up my horns and played acoustically, which turned out to be just fine.  I could hear me and I could hear the piano.  After a couple of days of playing flute, my face was back, and things actually sounded good!  Yay!

Yacht Rock is on the road a lot over the next 10 days:

Thursday, Nashville (Mercy Lounge)
Friday, Indianapolis (The Vogue)
Saturday, Chicago (Lincoln Theatre)
Sunday-Thursday, Las Vegas (private event)
Friday after that, New York City (Gramercy Theatre)
Saturday, Costa Rica (private event)

Living Loud

Yacht Rock just returned from the Live Loud cruise, a four day nautical jaunt between Miami and the Bahamas.  Along for the ride were Robbie Dupree (Steal Away), Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss of Player, and the Washee Washee lady.

Wednesday:  We flew to Miami really early, landing at 10:45 AM (which means that none of us slept very much, since we met up at 6:30 AM).  As we were waiting at baggage claim, we got a message that the entire port had been closed due to the discovery of a radioactive compass.  Somebody had brought a WWII vintage compass on board the previous cruise, and as he came off the boat it set off some sort of detector.  I think that delayed us for about an hour, giving us a little time to hang out in the lobby of the Airport Marriott before transferring to the port shuttle.

At the port, there was another big delay to get on the boat because the gangway needed to be reset.  More standing around.

Once we got on the boat, there was no time for a nap--we had the "sail away" slot on the deck, so set up for the first show began immediately.  Our first set went off without a hitch as the boat left Miami for open water.

Later on the night, we checked out The Shadowboxers (Atlanta based band).  Very cool stuff.  They're extra awesome.

Thursday:  Our first stop on this trip was at Norwegian Cruise Line's private island Great Stirrup Key.  They have built up a little resort area with a tender port, a cafeteria, a beach, and a stage.  We were supposed to do our second show on the beach stage.  Unfortunately, high winds (Robbie reported that they were 37 knots!) cancelled our show.  We still got to ride over to the island on the tender.  Quite a ride on the high seas.

Our show was rescheduled for that evening in the theatre.  Good news for us!  The Stardust Theatre is really nice--a good sized stage with a nice sound.  We had a pretty good crowd, as our first show had helped to generate a buzz.

nice mic placement

Afterwards, we went to a show by Brian Collins.  From there, things got a little wild.  I did a couple of shots of Jaegermeister (ugh), drank a few beers, and stayed up late with the Sixthman guys and the sound crew.

Friday:  Kind of the same stuff.  I slept late, ate, and took a nap--all helpful in curing the common hangover.  We played our final show of the cruise once again in the theatre, this time to a full room.  Yay!  I think this was also our best show.  Some particularly excellent playing my all three Marks.

"It's probably not even on"

Saturday:  Our second stop on this trip was at Freeport, Grand Bahama Island.  I can't think of another port we've ever visited that didn't have something within walking distance.  With that in mind (and no cash in my wallet for a taxi), I set out walking.  After an hour, the only place I'd found was a gas station.  I bought a bottle of water and turned back to the ship.  My head is now red like a tomato.

Some dude jumped/fell overboard while we were in port, and the rest of the cruise found out what a "code oscar" is.  Once he was safely returned to dry land, he was kicked off the ship and sent to the airport in Freemont.  Ouch.

Saturday night, we had a photo shoot with the great Will Byington, who took some really superb pictures of us (he's responsible, for example, for this fantastic shot).

From there, it was dinner at the teppanyaki place (our new cruise tradition).

We then celebrated Ronn Moss' birthday.

Monkeyboy sang Happy Birthday.

Greg Lee crushed me in bowling again.

Later in the evening (early the next morning), we sat in with the Trailer Park Ninjas, a really groovy cover band out of Ohio.  Their sax player, Matt Corey, sounds great and is a really cool hang.

Sunday:  get off the boat!  We had one more big delay when they once again had to reset the gangway before we could walk off (and then walk back and forth and back and forth down to meet customs).  Not my favorite thing to do while dragging gear.

Greg Lee is not amused

At Miami International, the dude at the Delta counter wanted to charge me $100 to check my sax case.  It weighs 63 lbs.  I disagreed about his interpretation of his company's rule for musical instruments.  I pointed out that the Delta website says the limit is 100 lbs, and I'd flown probably twenty trips with this case and every other Delta counter guy knew the deal on musical instruments, and I'd researched it and checked with Delta before I'd even bought the case, and oh, by the way, it's also a law as of 2012 (as in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, Section 403).  None of this mattered.  I asked to speak to a supervisor;  she declined the opportunity to get it right.  Even after all these years, I want to give Miami the finger.  Say hello to my little friend.

So…the way everyone else at Delta reads this means that I can check my saxophones without being charged.  The way Miami Delta reads this is that they can't refuse to fly my case home (because it's under the musical instrument limits), but they'll still charge me extra money.

Interesting that I got charged for being over weight, but he didn't charge me for being over size (my case is 81 linear inches).  I guess when you're reinterpreting the rules, you don't have to follow all of them.

Interesting also that my suitcase was a couple of pounds overweight and didn't get charged.  Does that make us even?  I guess when you're reinterpreting the rules, you don't have to follow all of them.

I got home and called Delta Customer Service, and the agent agreed with me (and not her colleagues in Miami).  She filled out the form to issue me a $100 refund.  We'll see how I do with multiple flights in the next two weeks.

Fun.  I reserve the right to be mad at Delta for the remainder of my music career.

I made it to my church gig Sunday night.  My flute playing was not so good.  My face is really out of shape.