Friday

I spent lunch time at Georgia Tech on Friday, giving my time and brain to researchers interested in viewing the brains of improvising musicians.  After sliding me into an MRI, they had me sing a Charlie Parker tune and then improvise/scat sing for two choruses.  This alternated with imagining the Charlie Parker tunes and imagining the improvisations.  I'm pretty sure I fell asleep a few times, but the researchers didn't seem to mind or notice.  I made fifty bucks, too.

Here's a cross section of my head.

After that, it was off to the Park Tavern to sweat with the Yacht Rock Revue.  This one came close to selling out, which was nice.

Instead of setting the stage up facing the back of the building, the Park Tavern set us up facing Piedmont Park.  I think I like it better this way.  It's never made sense to me how the PA is supposed to hit all the people when they're three times as wide as the stage.

Lots of griping after the gig about the in ear mixes (is the honeymoon already over?), but I was cool with my mix, and I like leaving the Park Tavern without feeling like my ears had been hollowed out with a screwdriver.

On the break, our dressing room was overrun by...I don't know who all of those people were.  The security guy was new, and I don't think he turned anyone away.  Not impressive.

We haven't played Sara's Smile in a minute, and I missed the ending.  Forever in Blue Jeans was ok for me, and Careless Whisper was no big deal.

Thursday

The Dave and Dave Duo, back at JCT Kitchen.  The last time we played JCT, we got mostly set up and then the rain came, so we had to reset inside the bar.  Boo.  Playing inside the bar is HORRIBLE!    It's a concrete and glass box, and the people inside get louder and louder as they shout over each other.  Ellington and I are in agreement that we would rather forfeit the paycheck than play in there.  It's miserable for us, nobody's listening (they're all reenacting updated versions of St. Elmo's Fire), and the staff pretty much hates us for not playing something hipster approved.

So...right as we arrived on Thursday, a line of thunderstorms was bearing down on the west side of Atlanta.  We decided to wait it out for fifteen minutes.  Still no rain, so we began to build our set up, which naturally caused the drops to begin.  After back and forth with...a manager?...a bar back?...the guy in charge of the PA!...we negotiated to play outside but in the covered corner at the top of the stairs.  Perfect for us.  I wouldn't mind setting us there every time.  We had quite a few people right up against us until the rain finally passed for good, and then it ended up being a pretty comfortable night as they finally spread out on the patio.

We were a little rusty--I hadn't played a jazz gig since the last Dave and Dave gig (five weeks previously), and Ellington hadn't thought about these tunes very much since then either.  Still, the results were pretty good!  Check it out.



The next Dave and Dave Duo gig is Thursday, July 23, 6-9 PM at JCT Kitchen and Bar.

Up To Chicago

The Yacht Rock Revue headed up to Chicago this past weekend via Chattanooga and then Louisville. An usual string of cities for us, but it turned out to be three great gigs in a row.

Thursday:  we convened at our usual meeting place pretty early to load the trailer and head to Chattanooga for our first stop at the Riverbed Festival.  I was operating on a couple of hours of sleep, so I slept the whole way.

We set up and sound checked around 12:30 PM on a nice stage.

I'm not sure what I imagined myself doing in this picture.

After a pretty good lunch, I went back to our green room and passed out on the floor for a few more hours.  Sleeping on a hardwood floor is not the best;  I was so stiff when I finally woke up, I thought I wouldn't be able to stand up.

Our stage for the evening.  A jam band from Nashville opened for us.  I think they were probably better than they sounded--their front of house mix was pretty rough.  I gave up pretty quickly and took a stroll.  Not far from our stage the Humane Society had a dog adoption tent set up, and I briefly considered adopting a hound/lab mix, but I wasn't sure how well we'd do with a dog in the van.

We started at 8 PM.  Nice gig!  The crowd filled out pretty nicely--estimates were a couple of thousand.  We had both Kip and Zach for this run, so the sound was good and consistent.  Those guys really make the gigs easy for us.

After a long hiatus, Baker Street has finally returned to song rotation.

Friday:  We drove a few hours and stopped for barbecue in Nashville, where we met up with our booking agent.  Great food.  I had a sammich, mac and cheese, green beans, and tea.

The afternoon drive was a snooze fest.  Lots of nothing.

We made it to Louisville and loaded into the Mercury Ballroom.  We played here a year ago;  they've finished building a really good green room, and the room still looks and sounds good...plus we had Zach and Kip.

Turtle still showed up again after soundcheck.

Another nice gig!  This one had especially great sound in the in ears--we collectively guessed that the room had enough natural reverb to fill out the sound coming through all of the vocal mics.

We had maybe two hundred people show up.  While that's not a particularly impressive number, it's around three times more people than we had last year, so it's definitely an improvement.  We hung out and talked to lots of people after the show;  I once again had to answer questions about whether or not I was really playing the saxophone or just pretending.

After the gig, Monkeyboy was pretending to flip out about something, and he threw a water bottle that hit the wall and exploded all over Pete.  Oops.

Saturday:  Chicago bound.  Somebody in southern Indiana smells really bad.

I slept until lunch in Indianapolis, and then drove the rest of the way to the gig.  Kip was navigator.

The wind farm on I-65 in northern Indiana.

We played Joe's Bar on Weed Street.  It's a sports bar with a pretty big stage in the back room.  We played late (10:30 PM), following the Stanley Cup Finals game (the Chicago Blackhawks were playing Tampa Bay).  Chicago won 2-1.

We discovered some strange radio interference on the stage, and Kip and Zach quickly figured out that we wouldn't be able to use wireless microphones.  Fortunately, they'd brought regular mics and cables.  I'm so glad we didn't have to personally deal with that (or sit around while the in house production figured it out).

Another strange thing about this gig.  They got the name right on their marquee and the website...

The O in rock is upside down.  It bugs me.

...but they twenty or so TVs in the room all said "Yacht Music Revue" during our show.  What the hell?

Anyway...massive crowd for the gig--550 people, and they stayed there for the entire gig.  Absent from our gig, however were members of the band Rush, who were rumored to be planning to attend.  Unsurprisingly, they failed to show.

Chicago was great!  Love it!

We crawled into our hotel rooms around 2:30 AM.

Sunday:  we were all up in time to catch the 7 AM shuttle to O'hare for the flight home.  Ouch.  As much as I hate getting up that early, flying home beats two days in the van headed back to Georgia.

Kip and Zach drove our gear back.

Our next gig is this Friday at Park Tavern.  https://www.xorbia.com/e/pleaserock/yrrjunept2015

Sunday

Gigs on Sunday are generally great.  It's a bonus gig.  Yacht Rock played some kind of corporate party at Stats downtown, up on their rooftop patio.  It was pretty hot, but I'm glad I remembered to bring a tarp to keep my gear out of the sun.

This one was a pretty sleepy gig.  Once the sun went down, we couldn't see or hear much of the crowd (because of sunglasses and in ears).  It felt like we were playing a gig in a dark, empty room.

In the second set, the crowd got a little closer and paid us a little more attention.  I'd guess there were two hundred people there, and maybe seventy-five were engaged with the band.

The real highlight of the evening happened after the gig when we went to get our cars from the parking deck across the street.  We'd been given vouchers so we wouldn't have to pay, but evidently we needed our original parking tickets as well.  The moron who worked the parking garage couldn't solve this one - they have the voucher but no ticket!  What do I do?  I'll call my manager.  Parking lot attendants are not independent thinkers.

In the mean time, Peter ran back across the street, retrieved the original parking tickets, and got us out of there.  Those idiots are probably still trying to figure it out.

We're on the road this week, playing the Riverbend Festival in Chattanooga on Thursday night, the Mercury Lounge in Louisville on Friday night, and Joe's Bar in Chicago Saturday night.  See our website www.yachtrockrevue.com for details and ticket links.

Saturday

Hamilton, GA is between Callaway Gardens and Columbus.  Saturday night, Yacht Rock played a wedding reception out in a tent in the woods.  This one was more or less the same set of music we'd played the night before, and the crowd was just as good looking (though younger).  Nothing more to report.  Twas a pretty easy night.

Lots of tuning before we got started.

No Zach on this one, but Kip did another excellent job running sound (Zach's roommate Liz worked as Kip assistant).

This one had one of the more unusual first dance songs.  I like it, though.



Once the sun went down, all the bugs in the county descended upon us.  This happens when you put a bunch of lights in a tent in the woods next to a pond.  Bugs everywhere.  The curtain behind the band was full of insects, and I spent most of the second set picking these guys off my keyboards and microphone.  At one point, one even went down my shirt.

The two hour drive home was spent pondering what might be in my truck with me, crawling up my legs.  I hate that.

Friday

Yacht Rock has played for a golf tournament at North Druid Hills Country Club for the past four or so years.  At one time we used to set up on the pool deck (in the sun), but for the past few years it has been in a tent around the corner (good because we had rain the previous two years).  This annual event is really easy, and the talent level (of the audience) is high.  Even the load in/load out isn't too difficult.

We brought back Arthur's Theme and added You're So Vain for this one.  Arthur's Theme is really complicated for me because of a pretty involved, two handed string part, and giving way at the end of the chorus to strings and a synth part.  There's also a famous sax solo, and it's a quick one beat change to jump from one to the other.  Later in the song it gets even more complicated--I play a chord, play a sax fill, reach up and play the next chord, play another sax fill, and then jump back to playing two handed strings.  It's going to take a few more attempts before I really have my coordination down.

You're So Vain is easy.  I don't even start until after the guitar solo halfway through the song.

One other thing I liked about this gig is that we had a nice sized stage with two levels, with my station and the drums up about a foot higher than the front line.  Plenty of room for everyone, I wasn't hiding behind the guitar amp, and I could see what was happening out front.  I could go for more set ups like that.

Honky Chateau

I'm glad I don't play many gigs at Chateau Elan because it's soooooo damn far away.  The best way for me to get there is to go across the top of I-285 and then up I-85, both of which are always a big mess...and then the place feels like it's right outside of South Carolina.  Too far.

This gig was a wedding, and our first good test of the in ear monitor system.  Major success!  Everybody's pretty happy, and it sounds like we're already all pretty close to dialed in.  I'm loving the sound.  Zach and Kip have done an awesome job of bringing this to fruition.  I hope they're as excited about it as we are.

Also (and I think this is purely psychological), I'm excited that I have to bring less equipment.  It's only my amp (in a pelican case), but something makes it seem like I shaved a significant chunk out of my load in/out.  I guess I can work it out to be one fewer trip between my truck and the stage.

Other than that, nothing to report.  My part of the first dance looked like this:

Good pre-gig food.  No margaritas, though.

Friday in the Woods

The same group of us (plus Ben Holst) who played last Saturday night in somebody's backyard in Alpharetta/Crabapple played our second gig Friday night at a backyard in Cumming.  Frankly, I'm not sure how we got the gig--maybe Greg knew the guy?  Anyway, there was an open space in the stand of trees between his house and his neighbor's that he seeded with grass.  Pretty sweet.

The hauling of gear from the street to the stage (there was an actual stage with power and a small PA) was grueling, but the gig itself was pretty cool.  Nice stage (the host owned a roofing company, so it was really solidly built).  Good sound, all things considered.  This time, knowing what to expect of the gig, I was better prepared and more comfortable.  I even had a couple of decent organ solos!  Playing keyboard on a gig like this is definitely more fun than playing saxophone.

They had a frozen margarita machine (I had two), and barbecue.  I would probably die from the food if we had regular gigs like this.  I considered drinking myself into oblivion just for the hell of it, but no one else in the band was going for it, so I gave up before I began to get giggly.

We finished after 10 PM, and I was home by midnight.  Not too bad!

On the Hill

Yacht Rock had a ticketed event on Memorial Day, a fundraiser at a Buckhead church.  We played this gig last year, too.  It's a too small tent over a too small stage in the church parking lot.  Last year it rained pretty hard, but we ended up getting through it.

This year we also had the same too small tent/too small stage combination, the same two hundred yards of extension cord to the nearest electrical outlet, and the same weather conditions.  We played five songs before the front left quadrant of the stage had standing water and the sky began to flash with lightning.  No good.  I'm glad I'd brought my tarp to put over my gear.  After consulting the radar (and singing Rain by The Beatles, Who'll Stop the Rain by CCR, and almost It's Raining Men), the gig officially ended.

It's unfortunate not only because we were unable to continue the performance, but also because this was the gig where the entire band moved over to in ear monitors.  We had a really long soundcheck and got each person's mix roughly dialed in, but having an entire gig to fine tune everything and get comfortable with the sound of everything would have been a huge bonus.  My mix was probably 85 percent solved at this point, and already way better than it was at the Purple Rain show--I'm digging it.  I think we're really going to love these things!

Oh well...any outdoor gig in Atlanta during the summer is a crapshoot.  With no rain contingency, what can we do?  At least the early release from the gig left those of us who needed it more time to dry our equipment out once we were home.  Fun.

In other news, here's a video of me playing with Greg Lee at Eddie's Attic last week.