Midwestern Gigs

Yacht Rock played a couple of gigs this past weekend in the midwest--specifically, we were in Indianapolis Friday night and Chicago Saturday evening.  Both were good gigs--easy, we played well, and had a good time.  Plus we flew in and flew out (and our gear met us up there).  I love doing it that way.

Friday:  We flew to rainy Indy.  The gear and our crew of Kip and Zach left Thursday afternoon and picked us up at the airport.

After lunch (and a nap), we made our way to the Indianapolis Art Museum for their fundraiser.

The situation there was not so great.  No rain contingency (and it was raining pretty steadily), the stage had standing water on it, and the canopy covering the stage had several holes.  I also heard mention of permits being revoked more than once.  It seemed like there was a pretty good chance that the gig wouldn't happen, so I took another nap.

Eventually, the stage was relatively dried, and we brought our equipment out from the trailer, setting up around the drips in the ceiling.  It felt like the sort of gig we'd wander through.

By the end of soundcheck, however, the skies had begun to clear.

It turned out to be a nice night!  The band was in a good mood, and we gave a comfortable performance.  Not bad at all.  Finished at 10:30 PM for the curfew.   Easy stuff.

Saturday:  We slept late, and had lunch at Yats (New Orleans restaurant in Indy) before heading north to Chicago.  Yats is so good, I had lunch twice (maque choux and then gumbo).

Ice Cube

maque choux

One of our nicer rides up through northern Indiana.

I didn't get any good pictures of downtown Chicago as we came through, but I did take these of Monkeyboy trying to get a shot of the skyline.

We were early to load in!  It almost never happens.  There was enough time for a walk around the neighborhood.  Greg and Monkey bought socks at Old Navy.

It was a beautiful day.

We opened for another band at Joe's Bar on Weed Street.  Not a bad gig by any means--ninety minutes and then a frantic teardown/load out so that the next group could have the stage.  Once again, we played well and had a good time.  No Pete on this gig (he stayed behind in Indy for a family obligation).

One strange thing about this gig for me:  I needed my more familiar tenor Monday night for a jazz gig, so I opted to send my backup horn in the trailer.  Worried that I wouldn't remember to keep my mouthpiece with me, I left it on my number one in Atlanta and used a backup mouthpiece.  Backup mouthpiece on a backup horn...hmm.  Everything was pretty close--they're both Guardala mouthpieces (an original MBII vs a laser cut Studio) and first generation Yamaha Custom tenors with silver G3 necks.  The only thing that bothered me was that there is a tooth indentation on my regular mouthpiece, worn in from fifteen years of playing it.  The Studio has a new, softer tooth guard (with no groove cut by my teeth).  I couldn't find a consistent place to grip the mouthpiece.

the tiger is not ours

Green room score.

Sunday:  no Pete;  Nick stayed in Chicago to go to the Packers/Bears game.  Cobb rode back to Indianapolis in the van.  The old guys flew home.  A nice day for flying.

Quartet for Kids

I had a nice quartet gig last night in Buckhead, an annual event for Children's Healthcare.  I think this my tenth or eleventh year in a row doing the event (which has been the same format every year)--I've got it figured out!  For this one, I used Louis Heriveaux on keyboard, Kevin Smith on bass, and Mark Raudabaugh on drums.  Since I rarely do a jazz gig these days, it was nice to hang out of with some of my friends in the scene.  The four of us had a wonderful time.  It was a good combination.

I really enjoyed this one.  Maybe I've been starving for a gig with a lot of blowing, but everything felt especially great.  The gig ended before I'd gotten sick of hearing myself!

Grant Park, Greg Lee

And now for something completely different...Yacht Rock (in Austin) Wednesday, Beatles Friday, Yacht Rock Saturday, and then the Greg Lee Show at a festival in Grant Park Sunday afternoon.  I played on four songs at the end of the set.  I couldn't summon anything great;  hopefully nobody recorded it and we can all collectively remember that I tried hard and just leave it at that.  Sometimes I don't know what the hell I'm doing anymore.

Wedding Time

Yacht Rock played a Saturday night wedding.  Super big money--not just a tent in the backyard of a mansion, but one of those permanent tents with the plexiglass panels and real doors.  A tent nicer than my house.  Their house was amazing.  Their garage was also amazing, and nicer than my house.

Our backdrop was a wall of paper flowers.  Presumably handmade.  Impressive.

The crowd was very reserved and didn't give us too much attention or energy.  On the other hand, I got in a pretty good nap before we played.  We also watched Big Hero 6, and we set some kind of record for farting.  Nothing else to report.  It was that kind of gig.

Ted Time

Something different for Yacht Rock:  our Beatles band, Please Pleaserock Me, celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four's concert in Atlanta with a gig at Turner Field.

Before the game we played in the plaza.  It was a little rough in some spots, but we had fun regardless.

KDC on the job!

Once this part was over, we followed our gear down to reset it on the stage.  Here's the view from the right field corner early in the game.

During the game, we were provided with a suite (full of family and friends).

Post game, a stage was towed out in front of the pitcher's mound and we played a short (8 minute) medley, timed to a fireworks show.  Pretty cool!  We waited around in the tunnel until the game ended.

Pete was nervous.

We just barely fit on the stage.

Austin

Yacht Rock had a nice, random Wednesday night gig in Austin, Texas yesterday, performing at a summer concert series.  

After flying in and dropping our bags at the hotel, we caught a ride to Curra's Grill for some dynamite Mexican food, described by Greg as "gastric nirvana."

A bottle of juice and a bottle of jews?

I had shrimp and pineapple enchiladas.  Outstanding.

Load in was pretty miserably hot--too much of direct sunlight.  By the end of soundcheck, my horns were hot to the touch and my laptop was almost too hot to pick up.  That's not good!  I took pretty much all of the gear that I flew with (2 saxes, EWI, flute, piccolo, computer) into the green room.  The local crew taped my keyboards with a thermal blanket--the aluminum foil looking ones.

As usual on these fly dates, we rented keyboards, stands, pedals, and cables.  Our old sound guy Hans would be pleased with this cable wrapping job.  Greg Lee would not.

Dream big.

After the sun set, the evening turned out to be quite nice!  Not a big crowd, but they were very entertained.

Go time...

This was a pretty good gig.  Personally, I played much better on the saxophones (though my alto reed bit the dust--it pinched shut a couple of times during Baker Street).  The mix was a little bit different from what we've been hearing, but it wasn't a big deal.  We ended up with two or three hundred people in the crowd.

We flew home the following morning.  On to the next thing.

2015 Revival

The 2015 Yacht Rock Revival was a massive success, starring Walter Egan (Magnet and Steel), Elliot Lurie (Brandy), Ron Moss and Peter Beckett of Player (Baby Come Back), Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special (Hold On Loosely), Matthew Wilder (Break My Stride), Steve Augeri of Journey (Don't Stop Believin'), plus special guests Peter Stroud (Sheryl Crow's band), and Brian Ray (Paul McCartney's band!!!!).  Damn...

We sold out (3,500) before we'd even finished setting up for soundcheck.  I think everybody had a great time (ourselves included), with only a minimum of complaints about the Park Tavern's bar stations.

Ready to roll...

For the most part I fared well, except for a few diarrhea saxophone solos.  The end of Taking it to the Streets didn't go well, with me misreading the band and missing the last note.  I had a solo in Matthew Wilder's Kid's American that went ok (nothing special).  My other big sax moment was in Robbie Dupree's I'm No Stranger, which has a nice long solo in the middle.  I played one ugly wrong note and then somehow managed to completely loose the time and bullshitted my way out of the rest of the solo.  Dammit!  It didn't go like that in rehearsal.  I still suck.

On the other hand, I got the Africa solo correct (I missed my EWI pedal on the previous gig and screwed the first phrase of that up), and I nailed the lick in My Old School that I've been ruining as of late.

The keyboard parts were correct (a few minor flubs), and my vocal parts were fine.  Most importantly, I didn't have any failures to pitch my keyboard up or down (for key changes)--usually my Achilles heel on a gig like this.

excellent photo by Jim Ramsdell

Everybody else on stage with Jeff Carlisi.

We had a our awesome crew of Kip and Zach on sound, plus Hans teching at the stage.  Here he is gathering up guitar crap while Matthew Wilder prepares to take a selfie.

We finished with a group sing along on Hey Jude.

Congratulations to everybody at Pleaserock for putting on such an awesome show!

Funk Box

In spite of the fact that the Michael Brecker/Brecker Brothers envelope filter sound is loved by horn players the world over, there is very little information about what settings (and what envelope filter) will get you there.  Believe me--I've scoured the internet.  It's not out there.

The most well known guy using the effect currently is Jeff Coffin, he of the Dave Matthews Band.  He uses an older Q-Tron, and there's a picture of his pedal on his website so you can snag his settings.  However, he seems to prefer it set so that the filter doesn't open all the way, which isn't really like the Brecker Brothers sound.  I bought a newer Q-Tron and set mine up like his, but it wasn't until I messed around with it for an hour or so did I finally find was I was looking for.  Here are my settings, in case you want a better starting place.

MODE=HP (high pass) 

SWEEP=UP

RANGE=LO

PEAK=3 o'clock

GAIN=8 o'clock

BOOST=on

It sounds like this:

Sunday

Sunday was a big day--three church services plus a wedding reception.  It made for a long day, made longer by the fact that I'd spent the night on the bathroom floor, destroyed by Saturday night margaritas (happy birthday Mark Cobb).  Ouch.

The services were the same kind of thing I generally do on my church gigs, playing soprano sax in a generally improvisational setting.  Pretty easy.  The first two services had pretty big ensembles, but the third was just piano, one vocal, and me.  With a little more room to play, that one was definitely the most fun.  I got lots of compliments from all three;  success all the way around.  It looks like I'll be doing this gig (three services at the same church) once a month.  Nice.  I only have to wake up early every few weeks.

After a quick trip home to exchange gear, I was off to a Yacht Rock wedding reception for some friends of the band.  Not my best gig, let's just say.  I was certainly tired and mentally fried (and my corner of the stage was so dark I couldn't read the set list, the couple of charts I had, or see my EWI pedal on the floor), but I my playing was pretty shitty.  I had trouble everywhere in the set list;  I never could get in any kind of groove.  It was frustrating as hell.  I could itemize my mistakes, but I want to forget everything about this one as soon as possible.

Eatin' Beats

Yacht Rock had a repeat gig Thursday night--Eats and Beats, a benefit at the Buckhead  Theatre that we've played two or three times now.  A few chef bands (surprisingly good!) and then us.

I hit rain on the way down I-75 and had to stop at an underpass to get my gear from the bed of my truck into the cab (big fun).  It was still pouring when I got to the theatre.  With no sign of it letting up, I hustled all of my gear onto the dock as I got soaked.  Most of the other guys did the same.  It made me wish forever more for one of those cool bed covers that would keep my stuff dry and safe.  Someday, if we play enough gigs...Anyway, all my gear stayed dry, so no big deal.

We've had some really limp Buckhead Theatre gigs, but this one was surprisingly entertaining.  Maybe it was getting back on in ears?  I'm not sure.  We laughed through this one.  Easy gig.

My only mess (other than sound checking Arthur's Theme, which was a "what chord do we start on?" kind of brain fart), was a lick in My Old School.  It cracked a few gigs ago, and then I began second guessing myself the next time we played it, then I played "variations" on it, and now I can't remember it all.  AGGGHHHH!!!!!!

A pretty painless load out, four bananas snagged from the green room, and $10 for parking.  Decent for a Thursday night.

Next Saturday is a big day.  Get your tickets now!