Purple Rain, Delta, Highlands

Friday:  Yacht Rock played Purple Rain in Piedmont Park up by the Legacy Fountain.  I'd bet that most people have no idea where that is, but if you know where the parking deck is, it's right near that, up in the northeast corner of the park (closest to Piedmont and Monroe).

This is our third or fourth year playing Purple Rain.  Across the band, I think we're all pretty comfortable with it and know our parts;  like Dark Side of the Moon, it now only takes us a rehearsal or two to bring it back.  It sounded good (we listened to the board tape last night on the way home).  I had a few random mistakes, but overall, I was satisfied with my performance.

The second set was a regular yacht rock set.  Interestingly, whatever was making my hands not work Thursday went away, and I felt much better about my sax playing on this night.  I wonder if this had been a jazz gig if I'd still be saying that.

Something I don't remember seeing at one of our gigs before:  people holding up signs.  One had to do with a birthday (TURING (sic) 40 NEXT WEEK!), and one was for Pete's birthday.

Mark Cobb played ass off on this gig.  All night.  Super good stuff.

After the gig, we loaded everything into the trailer in preparation for Saturday evening's gig.

Saturday:  After a few hours of sleep, we met up at Nick's at 7:45 AM for the beginning of a long day of gigs.  

Our first gig was a big company party for Delta down at their headquarters.  We used backlined gear since ours left for North Carolina.  Fantom X7-yes!  Nord Electro 2-no!  After playing an Electro 3 for a couple of years, it's hard to go back to the 2.  At least my horns sounded good.

Good on stage sound, though Monkey did not like his choice of guitar amplifier, and the kick drum sounded like craaaaaaaaaap.

This was one of those gigs with an on stage camera man.  They also had two cameras out front.  It only took me a set and a half to realize that the video screen was above us.

After the break (and some rain), the crowd loosened up.  One guy really led the charge.

About fifteen minutes after this show ended, we were North Carolina bound to play a wedding reception in Highlands.  Fortunately, we had a crew (Zach, Hans, and Nackers) who took our gear and the PA up early and preset everything so we could walk in.  We couldn't have done this without their help.

We had a little bit of down time before the reception began.

I wonder how many other bands playing a wedding get a cheer just by walking in the room?  Pretty cool.  Obviously we had quite a few fans in the audience.

The reception was nice, though I was totally brain dead by the time we began the second set.  For example, I set my microphone and got out my piccolo to play the solo on Call Me Al, and then completely missed the beginning of it.  Nice move.

At the end of this reception (just like at the end of the Purple Rain show Friday night), we sent people to the exits with Kenny G's Going Home.  Have you heard about this Chinese phenomenon?  Read about it here:  http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/china-embraces-kenny-gs-going-home-as-its-anthem-to-go-home-20140512

We packed everything up and headed for Atlanta around 12:30 AM.  I made it to the bottom of the mountain before I passed out, waking up back in Nick's neighborhood around 3 AM.  Ugh.

Duo with Dave

David Ellington and I played a sax/organ duo gig last night.  It's always fun doing a hit with Dave, and we've got a fun batch of tunes going.  The gig is easy, the pay is good, the hang is terrific, and the food is great!  What more could you want?

That said, I am playing like SHIT these days.  My hands don't work anymore...maybe it's the connection between my head and my hands, but I'm forcing every note that comes out of my horn right now.  There's no flow at all--I feel really stiff, and my musical phrasing feels tongue-tied. The stuff I played tonight sounded ok, but I was working way too hard at it.

Anyway, here's what we did.  My hamburger was delicious.  Fries were ok.  Sometimes I think about ordering something different, but...that's not me.

Trio #4

Tyrone Jackson, Kevin Smith, and I played a pretty nice trio gig at, of all places, Stats in downtown Atlanta.  We were playing a small private party in a room there.  It was a hip looking space, though unfortunately for any music fans, it got pretty loud over the course of the night, between the conversations, the activity at the bar, and the occasional slamming door.

Maybe predictably, the three of us were more interested in playing than at our previous gig at the mall.  Kevin, in particular, had a great night, I thought.  Check it out!

To Jacksonville and Beyond

Jacksonville is far, far away.  It doesn't seem like it should take hours and hours of monotonous driving to reach it, but Yacht Rock drove down there for a gig on Saturday.  Seven hours, I think.  Even more when you miss the turn for I-10.  Oops.

One gas stop had a beer cave.

One stop had Mexican food.

Several stops required gas.

We were playing a charity event tied to The Players Championship PGA tournament.  Nothing too stressful--a couple of sets in a big tent, with an air conditioned RV for a green room and BBQ for dinner.  Things could be worse!  We had Matt Lipkins from The Shadowboxers subbing for Nick.  He did an outstanding job.

Soundcheck was long and tedious--nearly as difficult as the one we did a couple of weeks ago, except instead of a sound guy who wanted to get it right, we had the most apathetic monitor guy possible and a jackass of a FOH guy (who would ask "Is that how hard you're going to hit it on the gig?" several times).  We've done a soundcheck before, thank you.  Maybe if you'd turn our vocal mics on we could communicate with you instead of trying to yell across the tent.

I can't think of too many weird things.  The main one would be that my EWI/laptop rig stuttered all through I Wish, scaring the absolute hell out of me.  I think the culprit was my phone, which I'd plugged into the spare USB port on my laptop.  It made MainStage (which I am using for EWI sounds) develop some seriously bad latency.  I pulled the cable out and shut down iTunes (and iPhoto, which had also automatically opened), smacked the space bar a couple of times (the ultimate MainStage emergency fix), and it was fine for the rest of the gig.  Perhaps in the future I should charge my phone elsewhere.

Dannells and I traded phrases during the solo on Use Me.  We kept it going until he broke into The Entertainer.

When we did this gig last year, Monkey got something in his eye that scratched his cornea and nearly blinded him.  That didn't happen this year.  Maybe next year?

I made it home in time for my church gig.  I really really need some clarinet reeds.  If only there was a store ten minutes from my house...

Big fun at ye olde gig:  The band leader decided that one of the singers wasn't loud enough, so she asked the vocalist for her opinion, then asked the drummer for his opinion.  Then she told me to turn up the vocalist.  I turned the vocalist up.  Then she was too loud.  I put it back where we started, and that fixed it.  Uhhhhhhhhh.

Tilt a Whirl

I played a random gig with Full Tilt last night, doing the typical Atlanta corporate cover band thing.  It's really strange whenever I am back in that scene;  some of it is like I never left, and some of it is now completely foreign to me.  The Rupert's derived stuff like the sax solo on Signed, Sealed, Delivered is still there early in the night, as is the Atlanta Beat derived medley of Soul Man into Hold On, I'm Coming.  The newer things, the more current hip hop stuff, I have possibly never heard, and have nothing to play as a saxophonist.  I spent three quarters of the gig playing tambourine and shaker.

This one I have played many times.

Good rule of thumb for all you freelance saxophonists:  Don't bring a cowbell unless you specifically have to play it on a particular song, or some asshole in the audience will yell "More cowbell."  It's a race to see who can get it out there fast enough.  No one will ever yell "More shaker!"

Anyway, it's always good to have a paying gig during the week, and this one was fairly painless!  Also, it was an excellent hang with Michael Magno.  That dude is awesome.

Trio #3

So...Monday morning began with a rehearsal for the upcoming Purple Rain show in Piedmont Park.  Thank god I write charts for this stuff so that when we do something like this I don't have to start from scratch.  A few run throughs on Sunday night and I was ready to roll.  Rehearsal was no problem.

Monday evening I had one more trio gig (my first trio gig of the year was last Wednesday, and then in six days I've now had three).  This one had Kevin on bass and Tyrone Jackson on keyboard.  Once again, I took a feed off of the mixer, guessing on the levels.  The bass is a little hot on this one, until the last couple of tunes where the bass disappeared!  I think Kevin's amp got too hot and shut down.

This gig was in the mall.  Not the most exciting bandstand there among the housewares, overlooking the escalator.  Nonetheless, it was another opportunity to play some of my music!  

Dig Tyrone's shirt and check out the tunes:

Another Weekend

Another weekend come and gone, a significant chunk of which I spent asleep in the van.

Friday:  no gig, but I caught the big CD release show for Indianapolis Jones at the Goat Farm.  Indianapolis Jones is Nick's original band, and also has Mark Cobb on drums.  Great stuff!  Their album is super good, and their show was equally spectacular.

Video!

Saturday:  Yacht Rock played a wedding in St. Simons.  Yay gig, boo long car ride.  Any ride that involves driving to Savannah is a bummer.  Fortunately, I slept a lot.

We stopped for lunch at Subway.

We were Constantly Awesome for this gig, which means a much broader mix of tunes instead of the late 70s/early 80s boundaries of our main gig.  The CA gigs are fun--Bencuya usually does much of the keyboard work, and I play along on my side.  For this particular gig, he was out of town, though, which meant that I had the opportunity to play some of his parts.  Very cool!  Particularly fun were the Beatles tunes with Billy Preston on keyboard, such as Don't Let Me Down and Get Back.  

The reception was at the edge of a marsh.  I bet it gets really buggy here in the summer, but for this weekend the weather (and this setting) was just about perfect.

Sunday:  We drove home.  I slept most of the way.  So did Pete.

Sunday night I was back at my church gig.  I think someone's back to messing with the amplifier settings again, as my spot for the main faders was much louder than the previous couple of weeks.

I thought I spied the trumpet player from Easter and I got freaked out that she might be coming to beat me up after our last gig together.  It was enough to keep me awake for the entire service.  I guess it wasn't her, though.  Good thing.

Another week awaits!

Trio #2

I had a really good trio gig tonight, this time with Nick Rosen on keyboard (Kevin Smith on bass).  This was connected to some kind of tour of homes--we were in a big tent next to a Buckhead mansion.

The toughest part of this one was getting there.  All three of us fought the traffic to get there, and once we dumped our gear at the site, we had to park a few miles away and ride a shuttle back to the house.  Kevin ended up going directly to the parking place and bringing his bass on the shuttle in order to save some time (and frustration).  At the end of the night we got to reverse it--ride the shuttle back to our vehicles, then drive to the house and pick up our gear.

Playing was really fun on this one.  They requested that we play lots of "familiar" songs (no love for the David Freeman Songbook?).  We still managed to cover several a few of my tunes.  In particular, I think tonight's versions of Kenny's House and Silverite, two tunes we debuted last night, sounded really good.  I was in such a good mood, I didn't even mind that much that some big butted lady knocked my microphone over into my horns.  Thanks, though.

I think T.I. was there.  I'm not positive, but the dude looked a lot like him.

Anyway, check it out the music.  Tonight's mix was waaaaay better than last night's Kenny-fest.

Trio #1

I played a fun two hour trio gig with Kevin Smith and Kenny Banks Jr last night.  Some kind of corporate background music situation.  As usual, we let 'em have two hours of my originals!  Take that!  We were 100 percent ignored (though a handler stopped by the stage at one point to encourage us to move more quickly from one tune to the next).  Little did they know that we were allowing them to hear the world premier of not one but TWO new DBF compositions.

I recorded off the mixer (I set up a PA, but we didn't need it).  Not my greatest mix, obviously, unless you are trying to steal Kenny's licks.  Check it out, especially our first attempts at Kenny's House and Silverite (the two new ones).  Fun for us!

Saturday into Sunday

I've been delayed in writing this by Hank Mobley's Soul Station.  Just as awesome and singing as the first time I heard it.



Saturday:  Yacht Rock played a big party at the Atlanta Athletic Club--the third year in a row we've played this event.  They're into it from the first note, so it's always fun.  The first year we were outside, but now they do it in their indoor tennis facility, which is way better--less pollen, less direct sunlight during set up/soundcheck.

Ugh.  Speaking of soundcheck, we had one of the longest, most brutal sound checks ever.  It was at least an hour and a half, maybe two hours of boredom and frustration.  We eventually got what we needed (or could live with for one gig), but the path there was mind numbing.

The gig itself was great.  These people are cool, and their women are hot and expensive.  More of that, please, especially if they'll help load our gear out at the end of the night.  Maybe next year?

Sunday:  I'm back to only having my PM church gig.  I hope everybody at my AM church gig is severely disappointed that I'm not there anymore.

The PM church gig was pretty good.  They had some dudes come and check the sound system, and discovered that G is an extremely resonant note in the cathedral.  Yep--evidence of that at last week's mass.  What they're going to do about it remains to be seen.  In the mean time, I will keep doing what I'm doing.

Afterwards, I went to Smith's Olde Bar to check out Jake Clemons (nephew of Clarence Clemons, Springsteen saxophonist).  I guess I should've investigated it beforehand--not what I was expecting.  He played a sax solo on part of the first tune, but the rest of the time he played acoustic guitar.  I ended up watching more of this gig than I wanted only so I could get a picture of him with his horn for my blog, but it didn't happen, and I had to leave.  I wasn't into it at all.  I guess I was expecting there to be lots of saxophone--maybe some kind of a soul band with him singing and taking solos?  It was more like watching a Northpoint band play a set.

I woke up on the couch in the middle of the night.  Thus the week ended.