2014 Revival

The 2014 Yacht Rock Revival was this past Saturday at Park Tavern on the edge of Piedmont Park.  If you weren't there, you missed the best one yet!  The weather was terrible earlier in the day, but cleared off enough to make it a very special evening.

This one was by far the easiest one for me.  Three contributing factors:  1.  We don't add much new material these days, so the band songs (without the original artists) were the same stuff we've been doing for a long time;  2.  we've played with most of the original artists before and most of their songs we repeats;  3.  the new songs that were added had no saxophone and almost no keyboard.

Pablo Cruise opened for us with a seventy-five minute set.  Good stuff and great playing, with plenty of chopsy stuff in between their big hits!   Pretty cool guys, too, though  I wonder if there was some sort of contest among the four of them to see how many times they could insert the word "fuckin'" into their banter between songs.  They said it so many times that they began to sound like little kids learning to cuss.

Our set was excellent.  Fun all the way through, and no disasters.  We even had fireworks during Maneater and Africa, courtesy of a party elsewhere in the park.  Everything ended right on the dot at 11 PM.  Perfection!

Congratulations to Nick, Pete, Kristen, Kip, Nackers, Rebecca, and the whole Pleaserock crew for another awesome event!  Also, thanks our outstanding guests Pablo Cruise, Walter Egan, Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss of Player, Robbie Dupree, Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special, and Gary Wright for performing with us!

with Walter Egan

with Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss

with Jeff Carlisi

Walter Egan watching from the wings

Videos:

















"GET A ROOM!"

My Sunday night church gig, by comparison, was not this exciting or entertaining.  Also, there were no fireworks.  Such is life.

Rehearsal

All of the special guests are in town for the big Yacht Rock Revival, and yesterday was our best opportunity to get together and play through everybody's songs.

First up was Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special:

Nice to see Monkeyboy's Les Paul, which doesn't make it out to very many gigs.

After Jeff, we had a visit from Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss of Player:

We've finally nailed down the arrangement of This Time I'm in it for Love.

After lunch (Antico pizza!!!), we got together with Walter Egan to check his songs:

Gary Wright arrived later in the afternoon, so we rehearsed his songs in the evening.  Bencuya got louder and louder throughout the day, and by the time we hit Gary's last song, I couldn't hear anything else.

It's going to be a great show!

Thursday

Yacht Rock played a run of the mill corporate event at Buckhead Theatre yesterday afternoon.  A couple of nice things about this one:

1.  Kip and Zach ran sound

2.  Another chance to rehearse some of the songs for this weekend's big Revival

3.  This was a two hour gig that ended at 6:30

The crowd was ambivalent (to say the least).  Someone came forward as we were beginning the second set and suggested that we were boring and that if we wanted to liven up the gig we should have a contest and the winner could come on stage and play tambourine with us.  Mark Dannells did not take kindly to that.

That said, they were very enthusiastic about having their pictures taken with us afterwards.

CBS

Yacht Rock was on local TV Tuesday morning, doing some press for the big Revival this weekend in Piedmont Park.  With us was Robbie Dupree, and we sang one of his songs titled All Night Long, a doo-wop memory of his Brooklyn youth.

CBS46 News

After that, it was off to rehearsal.  We're in pretty good shape. I don't have a lot to do on some of these.

See you Saturday!

Bumpin' the Mango

Ahh...a moment for which I'd been waiting quite some time--an opportunity to sub with Bumpin' the Mango, a horn band based in Atlanta.  Their covers of Tower of Power, in particular, sound so good that when I was asked to come play bari sax with them Monday night, it was easy to say yes.

There's more to it than Tower of Power, but that's kind of what I fixated on.  I saw ToP in the early 90s (my sax teacher took me) and then I saw them at the start of this year at The Canyon Club in California.  Both times--totally awesome.  The sound of those horns is in my DNA.  I think I did a good job of approximating Doc Kupka on this evening (except for the hat)!

This gig had many subs--more than regular band members!--but everybody came prepared.  Subbing along with me were Dan Baraszu (guitar), Jason Chapman (bass), Justin Powell (trumpet), Travis Cottle (trombone), and Umcolisi Terrell (tenor sax).

I shouldn't have been surprised at how well Dan played, though I'd never thought of him as being a funk or rock guy.  His rhythm has always been impeccable and his angular solos fit right in while still sounding just like Dan.  It got me thinking that I first time I ever met Dan was in the very same room (Cafe 290) in probably 1997.  He's just as impressive today as he was then.

Umcolisi stood next to me in the section.  His solos blew me away--I was stunned at his sound, his phrasing, his ideas, his technique.  Incredible!  I'd never heard him play before.  Wow!  Without a doubt, one of the best tenor players in Atlanta.  Thank god I didn't have any bari solos.  I would've looked really bad playing anything after him.  What a fantastic talent.

The other guy I really dug on this gig was Tony Giordano, who played organ and sang.  Terrific soul and excitement.  He was there for every note all night.

Thanks to Paul Garrett for having me out.  Beautiful charts in the book.  I'd love to do it again!

Beatles

Please Pleaserock Me (the Yacht Rock guys playing the Beatles) did a two night stand at Smith's Olde Bar this past Friday and Saturday, mowing down four sets of music for two very good crowds.

Smith's got a new menu and better food--yay!  On the flip side, the bathroom upstairs is still disgusting.  No soap at the sink either night, and no towels in the towel dispenser Saturday night.  How do all the employees wash their hands before returning to work?

Friday:  

A very easy night for me.  My only disaster of the evening was the little two measure sax solo at the end of Jet.  I couldn't see what I'd written on my chart.  Well, maybe that and Hide Your Love Away.  When the set list was emailed out, I misread it thinking that we'd played that song before, and since I didn't have a chart for it, I didn't even bother listening to it.  Turns out it WAS a new tune with a flute part at the end.  Oops.  Bencuya played the flute part on organ.  I played tambourine on two and four.

One of the best things about this gig is listening to Bencuya play like Billy Preston.  Totally awesome.

Paul Poovey reading down the tambourine part for Happiness is a Warm Gun

Saturday:

An even better crowd and even more fun!

Once again, a pretty easy evening.  We must've had more people in there this night because the air conditioner could not keep up.  Smith's brought in some electric fans to try and circulate the air during the second set.

Smith's was even cool enough to provide a couple of guys at the end of the night to carry gear down the stairs for us.  I didn't have anything for them to move, but the help with the bass cabinet, guitar cabinets, drums, and keyboards was very nice.

Big week coming up!  The Yacht Rock Revival is in Piedmont Park this weekend.

Churchill Grounds

The David Freeman Organ Trio (David Ellington, Henry Conerway III, and me) played Churchill Grounds last night.  Great playing all around--adding Henry to our duo gigs radically changed the way Dave and I play these tunes (in a good way), and pushed us to some really cool places that we wouldn't have gotten to on our own.

Can't Get there from Here/Austin Keeps it Weird

one of the best gig posters we've ever had

Yacht Rock played a show in Austin, TX for the Fourth of July.  The gig was supposed to be an outdoors event in conjunction with a massive fireworks display, but the fireworks were cancelled and the event fell apart, so our party was moved to a club.

We flew out in the morning from Atlanta.  As I was getting off the park and ride bus at the airport, I realized that I didn't have my driver's license with me--I'd left it at home.  There was nothing to do but drive home and get it, meaning I would certainly miss my flight.

At the airport for the second time, I found out that there were no seats available on any flight for the rest of the day in my seat class (or something like that--I took it to mean that there were none left in the same price range that my original flight had been booked).  Great...I had to get to Austin, so I bought a plane ticket on my phone (with my hands shaking so badly that I could barely input my information).  Ever buy a plane ticket three hours before the flight?  Not cheap!  Just as I finished purchasing a new ticket, the counter agent let me know that buying that ticket negated my return trip to Atlanta, so I also had to purchase a return ticket (though they were able to get me on the same flight, in the SAME SEAT! that I was originally going to be in).  And hey, it'll cost $25 for you to check your bag.  Whatever...take my money.  I HAVE TO GET TO AUSTIN.

A very expensive morning...I made it to Austin and got into the hotel lobby with about fifteen minutes before we left to go set up at the club.

The club we were in was new, and maybe not the ideal set up for a live band, particularly one as large and loud as us.  It sure did look cool, though.  The sound was ok;  there were a few weird things like the room shape (we were in a rectangular room on one of the long walls), and the main PA was against the wall behind us (and therefore behind most of the microphones).  People said it sounded good out front, so I guess I'll go with that, though I was also in front of a PA stack and I heard lots of drums and not much of me (particularly the saxophone solos, which felt like I was playing unmic'ed).  I wish we could've brought Kip with us to run sound, though it was the kind of situation that would frustrate him to no end.

We had a small but mighty crowd.  They loved it, though.  Maybe we can come back?

Following the gig, we loaded out quickly while the DJ took over.  Special thanks to the DJ and sound man for putting the DJ table directly on top of Monkey's pedalboard, which did nothing to expedite our exit.  One other particularly strange moment occurred while I was scouring the dressing room for my street clothes--Peter was in there with the promoter (who was sitting in a chair writing us a check), and three guys were right next to him snorting drugs off the counter.

As we were waiting at the front door to leave, some crazy girl was telling us how much she liked the band.  When she got to me, she was almost yelling--"You were doing everything!  Keyboards, sax, singing, and I loved the piccolo!  AND WHEN YOU PULLED OUT THAT FUCKING CLARINET THING (I'm guessing she's talking about the EWI?)!  I felt it down here!" (and pointed to her lower abdomen).  That pretty much sums it up.  Keep it weird.

We exited the club into a street party, and walked a few blocks with our gear (still in our stage clothes) to a nearby Hilton, which was kind of enough to ferry us to our Hilton over by the airport.

After a couple of hours of sleep, we took the shuttle back to the airport, where the line for Delta was almost out the front door.  I barely made it to my flight (speed walking from security directly onto the plane).

What a trip.

Sugar Hill

Yacht Rock played a 3rd of July show last night in Sugar Hill, GA (right near Duluth).  There's no good way for me to get to that part of town--for this one I had to make my way over to GA400, get on at Holcomb Bridge Road, head north for seven exits, and then continue east.  For no apparent reason there was an obscene amount of traffic, and coupled with a GPS failure (insisting on taking me to Creek Road instead of Level Creek Road), a trip that should have taken one hour took two.  I was completely incensed by the time I finally made it.

The guys coming up from Atlanta had similar problems, though, and we all arrived right around the same time.

Load in and set up were uneventful.  We drove across the field and up to the stage.  Kip mixed us, which once again saved us hours of frustration.

This was a fun gig.  I was dreading the heat, but temperatures were pretty pleasant, and a good breeze kept us pretty cool.  The crowd got better as we went.  I'd imagine that it took quite a while for people to get into the park (based on my experience of trying to leave at the end of the night), and maybe no one was too keen on sitting in direct sunlight for two or three hours to hear us.

I had a good show, though Kip reported that my microphone was kind of choppy--maybe a little bit of loss of signal when I was up front for Baker Street.  I think I only picked up a saxophone three times the entire night, so no big deal.

This was the first gig in the history of the band where we played no Hall and Oates.  None.  Zero.  One for the record books.

We packed up during the twenty-three minute fireworks show.  Twenty-three minutes!  Quite a budget.  Very impressive.

What's up with the music selections for fireworks displays?  The Sugar Hill show began with a selection from the band Saliva (I am told), then Toby Keith, and on down the line.  Pretty dreadful.  Eventually they got to Born in the USA, which unfortunately is not the patriotic piece that you think it is.  I bet we'll hear it a few more times before the end of the week.

Blah.

Yacht Rock played someone's birthday party last night in Roswell.  We were in a room unfit for a band.

Personal highlights/lowlights include the heel coming off my shoe, me watching the Braves game on the TV instead of playing about half of the penny whistle solo on Call Me Al, and...I don't know.  I not interested in being at this gig at all.  It didn't help that we played over half the night to an empty room.

The Braves won, by the way.

Eddie's Attic

What a cool gig!  Greg and Nick from Yacht Rock played a gig last night at Eddie's Attic in Decatur which featured their original songs.  The rest of the band (plus or minus Jason Nackers and me) backed them.  It was refreshing to play some different songs, and also to play without the polyester and sunglasses and the YRR schtick.

I played keyboards and a couple of songs and flute on a couple;  I also played saxophone on two of Greg's songs.  It felt like I was REALLY loud on both, but it sounded too good for me to back off.  I'll be interested to see if somebody got audio or video of either to hear what it was like out front.  One was a Sanborn-ish alto thing and the other was a growly Clarence Clemons tenor.

Bencuya's original Cartoon Butterfly was also on the list, and he asked me to play piano in addition to the flute solo.  The adrenaline flowed freely on the piano part, but unfortunately, it caused me to pretty much throw up when I switched to flute.

The highlight of the night for me was hearing Nick play a couple of Y O U songs solo, both of which were mesmerizing.  Fantastic stuff.