Northeast Trip

Yacht Rock returned home yesterday from a short trip to the northeast with very successful gigs in Washington DC and New York, including our biggest audience to ever see us in NYC.  Very cool.

Wednesday:  We drove all day.  It's too far to drive to DC and play a gig.  Late in the afternoon, we stopped in South Carolina and ate lunch at a random Mexican restaurant, and considered the consequences of touching a fence that might or might not have been electrified.

Thursday:  There's a crappy Holiday Inn in Maryland.  We woke up there.  Off to DC for our gig!  First, a Chinese restaurant for lunch:

We played The Hamilton, one of the greatest venues we've ever played.  Beautiful room, great sound, fantastic staff.  We had 517 people (in a room that holds 600) on a Thursday night.  It's a win!

Friday:  The drive from DC to NYC takes...4 hours?  5 hours?  Even when you get close enough to start taking pictures, you're still an hour or so from the gig.  The traffic is horrible, and every lane change is a dare.

Anyway...Brooklyn!  We're back.  There's nothing about the Brooklyn Bowl that isn't cool.

Brooklyn Bowl has the best fried chicken ever.  Ever ever ever ever ever.  Delicious.

Another good gig!  710 people there to see us--our best crowd in New York City ever.

I was set up pretty far forward--a much different vantage point than usual.   Normally I'm not witness to what's happening right up against the stage.

Our friend Danny who runs The Hamilton in DC was in Brooklyn for a wedding, so he ran sound for us.  Yes!

One thing that definitely sucked was that there was a late show following us--meaning we had to hurry up and get out.  We had a great gig, played an encore, and then ran upstairs to change back into our street clothes.  Security backed the crowd up about twenty feet from the stage, and everybody got to watch us frantically pack up and load out.  Boo.

Once we loaded out, I had a chance to hang out with one of my favorite and most talented classmates in college, Chris Hiatt.  I hadn't seen him since we finished at IU.  He now lives in Brooklyn with his family.

Saturday:  lunch near Woodstock (NY) with Robbie Dupree.  So cool!

We played a wedding at a remote location in the Catskills--kind of Hudson River valley Deliverance.

We didn't get our rider, and the food was terrible.  This chicken was the ying to Brooklyn Bowl's yang.

This gig could have been a major letdown after the two previous evenings, but the crowd was really into it from the first song.  Not too bad for a wedding.  Nice dancing.

My evening ended with Monkey watching Paula Poundstone YouTube videos.

Sunday:  we drove to White Plains to fly home.  The counter agent for Delta gave us some trouble with Bencuya's Fantom (weighing 59 pounds).  Eventually she got it straightened out.  We used the Silver Medallion baggage weight limit argument.  The language on Delta's website is pretty clear, but she still needed 10 minutes on the phone.  Meanwhile, the line behind us backed up almost to the door.

Come on, Richard Anderson!  Get it together!

You'd think after this week's pictures of John Pattituci's bass being mangled and Rick Springfield's guitar splitting open that the airlines would be a little more cool with musicians...

The rest of our gear is staying in the Northeast until our next gig--Friday in Cambridge, MA.  I've never been to Boston, so I'm really looking forward to this one.

Who Cares?

I had a great experience tonight recording horns for a song titled Who Cares at Madison Studios in Chamblee.  Last night I wrote a nifty horn arrangement so that we could record before I go out of town for several days.  Paul Poovey (trumpet), Eric Alexander (trombone), and I went in and knocked it out--and everybody dug what I wrote.  Super cool!

Sandy Springs

Yacht Rock played a really cool concert in Sandy Springs last night at their local amphitheater.   About 1,000 people crammed in there to see us on a nice Sunday night.  We played well, we had fun, and Kip made us sound good.  What more could you want?

Here are a couple of cool photos in the midst of me not playing a bunch of buuuullllllshhhiiiiittt on either The Biggest Part of Me or Takin' it to the Streets.  Take your pick--it's the same saxophone diarrhea in either C or D.  Not my best playing.

(photo cred:  Nicole Jerovics)

(photo cred:  Chadwick Hunter)

Our next big Atlanta show is July 19 in Piedmont Park.  Come see us!

The Usual Stuff

Yacht Rock played a wedding last night--a pretty normal gig of two sets.  Things of note:

1.  The first dance was a Depeche Mode song called Somebody.  The mother/son dance was Take Me Home, Country Roads.  An immense distance between two genres spanned in a matter of minutes.

2.  There were multiple speeches/toasts.  Most people had their notes on their phones (one guy had his notes on a iPad).  Very strange to see people holding the microphone (not near their faces for some reason) in one hand and their phone in the other.  Sign of the times.

3.  On our break, a partygoer came into our dressing room asking for drugs.

The room looked very nice, and because we had Kip running sound for us, sounded better than it ever has.  We should take that guy everywhere we go.

Also, this guy:

Freaky Friday

I played two gigs yesterday--a bizarre trio gig and then a pretty normal Yacht Rock gig.

My trio gig was a last minute call to provide background music for an awards ceremony at a hotel in Buckhead.  We set up on stage in the back of the room, ready to roll.  Right from the start, the staff asked us to play softer because there was a meeting on the other side of the air wall.  It was kind of hard to believe because the attendees walking in were drowning us out, and then the MC made announcements through the PA...I beg to differ that volume was an issue.  Whatever...the bigger issue at hand was that no one quite seemed to know the flow of the event.  A half hour into the gig, they began the program, so we took a break.  "How long is the program?" I asked one of the coordinators. "An hour."  The trio found a place to hang out in a sitting area.

A half hour later, I went to see how things were progressing, only to find that they WEREN'T DOING THE AWARDS!  They were eating!  Uhhh...are we supposed to be playing?  Nobody knew (or apparently cared).  I gathered Nick and Kevin and we prepared to play for what was left of lunch, only to be told that there were four minutes left and then the awards would begin.  So...back to being on break?  The same coordinator came over to us and said, "We're going to be talking for the rest of the program, so y'all can pack up."  Oh...kay.  We pulled our gear out into the pre function area, packed up, and left.  Three songs.  What the hell just happened?

The Yacht Rock gig was at a golf course, one of those repeat events from last year and the year before.  We squeezed onto a too small stage for three sets.

First set, nobody acknowledged us;  second set, really excited about us;  third set, pandemonium.  We even broke the neighborhood curfew for a quick encore of Footloose.

We had Pete and Monkey back.  Monkey played a particularly awesome solo on Two Tickets to Paradise.

North Carolina

Another fun weekend!  Yacht Rock was in North Carolina this past weekend with a public show Friday night and a wedding Saturday.  North Carolina is always good to us.  Specifically, your women are really hot.  Thanks.

We had Matt Reed subbing for Monkey on guitar and the Dude from the Shadowboxers subbing for Pete.  Both did an excellent job filling in!

Friday:  We played in Charlotte at the NC Music Factory, which looks like a loading dock in the middle of a group of restaurants.  The last time we played here there were major problems with the stage and the tin roof over it--namely, every time the bass played a G, the whole thing would sympathetically vibrate with it.  Peg was a lot of fun that night.

On this trip we had Kip with us.  Yay!  No rattling Gs.  Kip can make any venue sound good--this was a great gig because he was there.  

Matt Reed

Kip

We had a really good crowd!  I think Charlotte should definitely be a regular stop on our trips to the Northeast.

Saturday:  we drove to Highlands, NC for a wedding reception.  Weren't we just here?  We were just here.

color coordinated suit and binder

Dude's pants are too tight

What can I say about this wedding reception?  Nothing.  It was easy.  We sat around for hours beforehand.  I ate all the pineapple.  It was over at 11.  We drove home afterwards.

Sunday:  Church gig.  The band leader noticed that I was playing clarinet instead of soprano saxophone.  I think I switched about five weeks ago.  My mix sounded good, though the piano still doesn't have much presence.  I'm still thinking about getting a better microphone for the job.