Pizza Tour

Yacht Rock returned from a run up the northeast last weekend.  The drives were long, the sleep was limited, the food was mediocre at best, and our collective smell was...strong.

Wednesday:  travel day.  We left around 2 PM and drove to Virginia to spend the night, en route to our first gig outside Philadelphia.  Somewhere in North Carolina we ate ok Mexican food.

Thursday:  more driving on the way to Ardmore (outside Philadelphia), with a pit stop in Chevy Chase, MD to pick up Nick and eat lunch at Manoli Canoli.  I ate an entire pizza.

Ardmore was cold and rainy when we arrived.  Pretty easy load in through the back right to the stage.

The stage was on the small side, but not terribly so.  It was also very dead, with heavy curtains hanging around the back and side.  Behind me was the bar.

This was our first chance to publicly try a couple of tunes:  Arthur's Theme (The Best that You Can Do) and Who Loves You.

A crowd of right around a hundred people show up.  Not too bad for a suburban out of town club gig on a Thursday night.

The weirdest thing about this gig--the house sound guy informed our sound man Kip that the club was transitioning to new management, and the entire staff had been fired, but had to work their last three weeks before new people took over.  I'm not sure that's the best way to do that...

Friday:  our travel for the day only involved a trip from Philly to New York City, so Mark Dannells and I used the morning to practice our flute/guitar duo stuff for the wedding ceremony we were playing Saturday afternoon.

Speaking of wedding ceremony stuff--Nick forgot non-polyester clothing to wear for his part in the ceremony, so we stopped at a mall for food and clothing.  I'm not sure if food court Chinese food is a sensible choice, but that's what we did.

Greg, Pete, and I had a discussion about which A Team members we'd be.  My votes:

Monkeyboy:  Murdoch
Greg:  BA
Pete:  Face
Nick:  Hannibal

whatever.

New York City!

There was about an hour to kill before load in, so we went for a walk.

Our show was at Irving Plaza.  Any place that has a crew to help load you in is a pretty nice place.

We soundchecked--nice sounding stage!  Robbie Dupree came to soundcheck and we went over a couple more of his songs.

In between that and the gig, more pizza.  For whatever reason, I ordered two slices, but could only eat one.

Great gig!  New York is always a fantastic show, but this crowd was particularly good.  Approximately 600 in attendance.

Robbie Dupree came out.  We did Hot Rod Hearts, Steal Away, and Dance with Me.

photo cred Kip Conner

One of our Atlanta buddies, Kerry Glennon, was in New Jersey visiting her parents, so she came out. Super cool to see her when she wasn't busy working.

Post gig, the "fun" began.  We loaded out and drove to New Jersey to spend the night.  I went to bed at 3:30 AM.  Lobby call was 6 AM.

Saturday:  6 AM.  Today's event was a wedding in Virginia Beach.   I ate my other piece of pizza, and we pointed the van south.

Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel.  23 miles of this, plus a couple of tunnels in the middle of the bay.  Cool/weird.  I'm betting it was sleep deprivation and the accompanying headache that made me want to jump out of my skin at the entrance to both tunnels.

We had to get to the gig early because everything for the reception had to be set before guests showed up.  Mark Dannells and I (and Nick on one song) played the ceremony--flute and guitar duo.

Perfect weather.

After the ceremony, we had a couple of hours and some really crappy sandwiches to kill.  Post sandwich, I think we all passed out on the floor.

There was a gift on my nord.

Sunday:  Keep going!  We got up and drove to Charlotte for our final gig of the run at the Charlotte Fillmore.

We stopped in Durham for lunch at Mellow Mushroom (and some football).  I ate another pizza.

The Fillmore is niiiiiiiiice.  It's located on the back side of the NC Music Factory (a loading dock looking outdoor venue where we've played a couple of shows).  This is a cool room with a nice sized stage.

Once again, a crew helped load in our gear.

A better than expected gig!  The long drives and little sleep  (and overall pretty shitty food) made us all really fried.  There was some concern that we would have fewer than fifty people show up for this show, but the attendance for the evening was right at 300.  Cool!

For whatever reason, there wasn't enough time for us to eat between soundcheck and the gig, so we planned it eat afterwards.  Our first plan was to hit the diner across the street from the Fillmore, but it was closed by the time we had loaded out.  The backup plan was to hit the Waffle House next door to our hotel.  After twenty minutes of waiting without so much as an opportunity for a drink order from the waitress, we got up and left.  The backup to the backup was Taco Bell.  I abstained.

Monday:  Back to Atlanta.  Peace.

Foxy Wedding

Yacht Rock played a wedding at the Egyptian Ballroom Saturday night.  I got the feeling they were pretty big fans by the number of specific song requests from our list--probably almost half!  We also learned a shag song (yuck) and Who Loves You by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.  I like this tune a lot, and I think it's a good add.  Hopefully it'll be a keeper.  If nothing else, it's an effort towards changing things up and keeping the set list from going stale.  Same old songs on every gig=bored band.

What a video, too.  Funny to think that hairy, middle aged men could be pop stars.



The big problem on this gig was the catering, who delivered plates of once hot food to our green room.  Do I really want to try and eat a plate of cold beef, cold fish, cold shrimp, and cold fries?  Got any fruits or vegetables?  This was totally inedible, so I went out to my truck and got a granola bar to carry me through the gig.  Not cool.  I realize we're not their primary responsibility, but that "meal" was pathetic.  After we complained, they brought some grapes and bread and maybe a scoop of hummus, and another plate of shrimp.  I don't know.  I'd already given up at that point.

We watched Footloose until it was time to play.

Other than that, it was a pretty decent gig.  Zach ran sound (Kip was out with Shawn Mullins).  The crowd was into it pretty quickly, which made for a pretty entertaining gig.  Cobb showed up a with a set of Steve Jordan sized cymbals (18" high hats made of two crashes), and then played most of the night sounding kind of like Steve Jordan.

I wish I'd kept count of some of these rooms in which I've played multiple gigs.  I bet I've played the Egyptian Ballroom close to fifty times by now.

Load out was actually not too bad.  The aforementioned catering people split seconds after the end of the reception.

In other news, I had my second week of two (back to back) church gigs.  I still haven't nailed down everything in the first one.  So close, and yet so far.  I'd love to get in there more often and actually be comfortable with what we were doing.  My flute face took forever to settle in, too.  I couldn't find my tuning, and I kept doing weird stuff with my embouchure as I tried to get there.  Finally, I put my head joint back to the spot where I almost always have it and everything was cool with the pitch and my sound.  Stoooopid Dave.

The second mass was nothing worth mentioning.  Flute was good, but my pitch on soprano felt all over the place.  I gave in and opened the tuner app on my phone--I was in tune.  Confidence!  I feel tone deaf tonight.

Yacht Rock is on the road this week!  Stops in Ardmore/Philly (Thursday), NYC (Friday), a wedding in Virginia Beach (Saturday), and then Charlotte (Sunday).

There and Back

The first crazy weekend of gigs I've had in a while.  Follow along:

Friday:  the final Yacht Rock summer concert series gig at Park Tavern.  Nothing too difficult--we even debuted a few new ones (I Love You by Climax Blues Band and Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton).

Midtown got a lot of rain in between soundcheck and the show, and the tent leaked a little bit in my area.  Nothing could really be done about it, and it didn't hit any of my gear directly, so I waited it out.  One leak created a pretty good sized puddle in between my saxophones, which kind of scared me, but there appeared to be no damage.

Much like the previous month, I wasn't all that excited about playing the gig, but the crowd was really enthusiastic, so it turned out to be pretty fun.  Both new songs went over well, especially the duet (even though I crashed and burned on the outro).   One other new song that we played was Hotel California, which we first played at this year's revival.  Monkeyboy figured out how to play both parts of the outro guitar solo.  Excellent work!  He also tried a new cabinet with his Kemper profiling amp--Ford Fry's 65 Amp!

"It's probably not even on anyway."

Kip to the rescue!

The crowd got a bit testy after the show--a few angry girls who didn't get what they wanted (one insisted the Greg Lee sing Happy Birthday to her;  another asked that we pose for a picture with her while holding her parallel to the floor like a dead fish).  I don't understand why these people think they have the right to demand this kind of stuff of us.

Post gig, some guy said to me, "I loved that there was a flute part, and you could've played with a flute sound on your keyboard, but you played it on an actual flute instead!"  Correct.

One sweet thing from this gig was that we had a couple of guys to haul our gear back up the hill to the parking lot.  Almost all of it went straight into the trailer.

Saturday:  we reassembled on three hours sleep to go play for the PGA tournament at East Lake.  Ouch.  7:30 soundcheck on back lined gear (the van and trailer left town for our next gig).

This one was kind of a blur.  We were tired.  At one point, I was fanning Monkey with Rory McIlroy's face on a stick while he was trying to solo.  That progressed to rubbing and patting his head with it, which then progressed to poking him in the butt with it.  Soon after, I was attacked with Rory's and Bubba Watson's heads while trying to play Baker Street.

Here's a fun video from the event.  You can't even hear me screwing up, can you?  My hands and wrists got a nice cameo, though.



We played one set, packed up, and left town, headed to Charleston for a wedding reception.  Hans and Kip took the van and trailer earlier with our gear plus a PA so we could make it in time for a soundcheck.

timber?

This one was rough.  The coordinator was not our friend.  We were crammed into a small space in a small room.  I fell asleep at the table while we were waiting to be fed.  There was no green room.  At one point we were paraded down a stairwell full of construction tools, out on the front sidewalk, up the alley, and up another back staircase to retrieve two suitcases from a hallway and then all the way back just so we wouldn't be seen by the guests.  We almost didn't get fed at all.  As soon as the gig ended, the room decorators came in and began tearing their stuff down, which made our packing and load out chaotic (to say the least).  One of the butthead decorators parked their box truck in front of the alley, so we had to load out down the stairwell full of construction tools and pile our gear on the sidewalk until we could get the van close enough to load.  Charleston was still hot and humid after midnight.

That said, the room was pretty, that one decorator chick in the tight shorts was really hot, the people throwing and attending the reception were very cool, and the playing was good.  We played the hell out Lowdown both here and at the Park Tavern (with terrific solos by Bencuya both nights).

I roomed with Greg Lee, who challenged me to a Snore War.  Even though he started snoring before I fell asleep, I prevailed (by waking him up with my own snoring).

Sunday:  up early again.  We drove home from Charleston (five or six hours).  After dividing gear, I had enough to time to go home, dump my stuff, change clothes, and head out the door to my church gig.  This Sunday (and next), I picked up the mass before my usual, so I had a 4:30 rehearsal.  Somehow I managed to stay awake for both, though my eyes were rolling back in my head during the homily.

Got home, ate half a pizza, watched some of the football game, and passed out on the couch.

Sun in my Belly

David Ellington and I played another sax/organ duo gig tonight at a restaurant in Decatur called Sun in my Belly.  Great little gig!  We are really enjoying these quieter performances where we can hear really well.  Much more fun than the previous evening's stress (though there was some stress for me with the traffic--it took Dave eight minutes to get to the restaurant, but it took me an hour and forty minutes!).

I'm really happy with my playing on this one.  Check it out:

Quartet for Kids

I played a quartet gig--a dinner/awards ceremony for a local children's hospital.  I think this may be the tenth year I've done the gig.  It's always very stressful for me because they have a very particular script for the evening, and I do my best to drag the other three guys along as we play various people on and off stage throughout the night, in addition to providing music during dinner.  This year the band consisted of Dan Baraszu on guitar, David Ellington on organ, and Henry Conerway III on drums.  Making sure everybody shows up on time and knows what we're doing throughout the evening wears me out.

Our set up was not the best--more or less in a line leading away from the stage.  On the recordings, that's why you can't hear the guitar very well--he's on one end of the line and I (and the recorder) am on the other.   Maybe we can fix that for next year?  More importantly, I think it caused some strange tempo problems.  We were not hearing each other well.



Dave and I will be back in duo form tomorrow night (Friday, September 5) at Sun in my Belly on College Ave in Decatur.  7-9 PM.