Cheddar, Beef, Etc.

Yacht Rock played a private party Tuesday night at, of all places, Park Tavern.  Pretty regular corporate gig.  No fruit in the green room.  Boo.

In between sets, several people asked to have their pictures taken with us.

Then a dude with a pink phone totally moved in on my shot, oblivious to my existence.

More people.

Starting to get a little weird.

Is that a Blackberry?

Here's one of a bunch of frickin' dudes.  One of these fuckers kept yelling for Freebird all night like 1.  We've never heard that joke before;  2.  We might seriously play Freebird.  

Back to the action.  We have the meats.  Not much of a gig, though they danced enough to get us through the night, but just barely.  Definitely not one for the books.

The good gigs are coming up next.  Stay tuned.

Kind of Blue

Last night was the inaugural performance of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album by the Pleaserock Horns (Rob Opitz, Richard Sherrington, and myself) at Venkman's.  Nick (dude from Yacht Rock and co-owner of Venkman's) had asked me to put a band together to perform the record, and I thought it would be a cool idea to tie in the horn section that we use for the Beatles gigs and other shows where we expand the band.

I think we played really well!  No rehearsal and a ten minute soundcheck, so it was very much a show and blow situation.  I'd been writing out the arrangements over the past few weeks, and thankfully there were no huge errors in the charts.

The second set was mostly comprised of songs and arrangements from one of my favorite albums of that period, '58 Sessions (now reissued as Jazz at the Plaza).

You Know You Make Me Wanna

Saturday night's gig was a wedding with Yacht Rock.  The big, um, thrill was playing Shout from the Animal House soundtrack.  I even wrote a chart for it.

Some attendees were a little more excited than others--some extreme air guitar and shaker playing.  It seemed like there was more than alcohol in his system.  Monkeyboy was freaked out by him, but he was pretty entertaining, I thought.  Then again, he wasn't three feet in front of me all night.

On our end, we were short a few of our regular guys--Nick was on vacation (we had Dude from The Shadowboxers covering for him), and The Great Bencuya had his sinus cavities mined/vacuumed/decontaminated/reamed this week (Dustin from the Yacht Rock Schooner performed his parts).  It remains to be seen how this will affect his texting.

Big MVP of the night was Mark Cobb, who began the day playing a gig in the Bahamas, jumped on a plane, flew to Atlanta, zipped over to Buckhead, and played a gig with us.  Probably some kind of record.  I don't know.

Anyway...big week ahead.  Stay tuned.

Northeastern Tour + TX

Alright goddamnit...I've put this off for as long as I could.  I've done enough stuff since I got home that I don't hardly remember anything anyway, but here it goes...

Thursday:  We (Yacht Rock) flew to Boston to begin our run of shows in the northeast.  The van and trailer (and our crew of Kip and Zach) picked us up.

Boston:  still under construction

Boston Common--oldest park in the country (yes, I looked that up)

Remarkably, we were kind of early for load in, which afforded us time for lunch.  An exotic place in Chinatown was selected.   Good food, but you had to work for it.  A large bowl of broth was set to boil on the burner in the middle of the table, and each of us was given our own ingredients to cook.  Probably easier when five guys aren't trying to fish their food out at once.

Our show in Boston was at The Royale.  It was a beautiful room with a nice sized stage.

Great show!  Somewhere around 500 people showed up, which I would say is a major victory for our third time in the city.  Other than that...I don't remember anything.  That probably means it was good.

Ahhh...we changed the end of Africa, so now we go into a sax solo over the groove to Flashlight by Parliament (instead of an EWI solo over the accelerating Africa groove).  Make sense?  You can watch it here:  https://www.facebook.com/fenderp/videos/vb.1438865258/10207740065926499/?type=2&theater

Yacht Rock Revue plays Toto's Africa...damn cool
Posted by Don Mangels on Saturday, October 3, 2015

photo cred: Kip Conner

Post gig, we walked down the street to grab some pizza, only to discover that the area we were in was populated by hundreds of young, drunk girls dressed as cheap prostitutes.  Maybe I'm getting old, but it was kind of depressing.  Kind of...as we left the scene, Mark Cobb coined the term "slut lap:"  to drive around the block once just to check out the skanky chicks.

Friday:  we drove from Boston to NYC for our first show at the Bowery Ballroom.

No rain in Boston, but by the time we hit Manhattan, the rain was pretty steady.

I stole The Great Rencuya's hat.

In spite of the weather, we sold out the Bowery Ballroom.  Yay!  575 people.

Robbie Dupree came down from Woodstock and we played his three songs (I'm No Stranger, Hot Rod Hearts, and Steal Away).   Another good night of playing.  New York City is always a great gig.

photo cred:  Kip Conner

stolen from Instagram

Post gig...not as exciting.  Some bimbo who had been invited into our dressing room by a friend of a friend asked me as I was finishing changing clothes if I was in the band.  As you might expect, I said no, and then asked her if she was in the band.  I guess that makes us even.

Load out in the rain on a Friday night in Manhattan.  Not fun.

Saturday:  We spent the night at a hotel on Long Island.  With most of the day to kill, a few guys went to the movies.  I stayed in my room and wrote charts for an upcoming gig.  Kip, Zach, and I also had lunch at Wendy's.  Spine tingling levels of excitement.

Saturday night's show was at The Paramount in Huntington, NY.  It might just be the best venue we play.  The stage is great, the crew is great, the backstage is great, the food is great (enough), the post-gig hang in the speakeasy in the basement is pretty great.

The last time (first time) we played here, the marque said something like "70s Soft Rock."  They didn't even use our name.  This time, we made it.

 Rock star warm up: a mirror and a red solo cup full of vodka.

Yet another great show!  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 showed up.  The floor looked comfortably full.  Interestingly, the crowd skewed noticeably older, especially compared to the two nights before.  They dug it though, and we looooooove playing The Paramount.

photo cred:  Don Mangels

Sunday:  we headed on down to Washington, DC.  The rain had dissipated.  Lunch was somewhere at a sandwich shop in Delaware.  Eagles fans.  It felt like a suburb of Philadelphia.

Try and guess what Pete ordered...

So...The Hamilton in DC!  Another really nice room.  We played nothing but really excellent venues on this trip.  We had around 500 people at this one, which was almost a letdown because we sold it out in the early afternoon the last time we came through.  Then again, it was a Sunday night and the weather was a little shaky.

I can't remember anything about our playing on this one, other than I was a little shaky/distracted at the beginning of the night.  It took a few songs for me to get into the gig.

We stayed at a hotel right near the Pentagon to facilitate Monday's fly date.

Monday:  ouch.  6:15 AM lobby call.  I went to bed around 3 AM after showering.  Not so good.  We flew out of Reagan National to San Antonio, TX, with a connection in (of all places) Atlanta.

I was awake enough to work on charts on the flight to Atlanta, but then I slept pretty much from the moment I sat down until we landed in Texas.

The Great Bencuya sleeps

 San Antonio was not too bad for a Monday.  I'd never been here before.  We were early enough (and close enough) to run over to the Alamo and check it out.  Not as big as I expected.

This was some kind of private event.  I really have no idea who we were playing for (though somebody said it was medical related).

Here's how Monkeyboy got through it.

Kind of a small stage.  Mostly the same backlined gear we'd played a month or so earlier in Austin.

It was a snoozer of a gig at first, but the crowd finally came around when we played Islands in the Stream, and from then on the dance floor was pretty solidly packed.  Not a bad gig for a Monday.

Tuesday:  we were able to sleep late (10:30 lobby call) before heading home.  More charts were created on the plane.

Charts, charts, charts...what the hell for?  These are for a gig next Monday, October 12, at Venkman's.    The Pleaserock Horns (Rob Opitz, Richard Sherrington, and myself), along with David Ellington (piano), Kevin Smith (bass), and Marlon Patton (drums), are performing Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.  The second set will be other tunes of the period performed by Miles' sextet at the time.

AM Church Gigs and Golf Gig #2

I wish I'd taken more advantage of my early Saturday gig by going to bed early, but I didn't.  Unfortunately, I was up extra early to make a trio of church gigs at St. Ann's.  Once I was up, it really wasn't that bad--it's the early afternoon crash that gets me.

The church gigs were super easy;  the songs aren't difficult and the people are cool.  As much as anything it was a cool hang with the the two guys who run the music there, a chance to work on my soprano sax tuning.  I'll be back to do it again one Sunday in October.

After lunch, I headed out to another Yacht Rock gig (a big weekend for us).  This was a kickoff party for pro golfer Stewart Cink's Cink It Challenge,  which raises money for two local charities.  We've played this gig (I think) four years in a row now.  It's an easy, well run event.  

My sax effects pedal was acting strange--it appears that I traded on electronic gremlin for another.  Fortunately, it wasn't sounding weird, but the display kept showing the settings for the patch I was on.  I'm not sure why.  

Other than that, things were cool.  The rain even let up long enough for us to enjoy the fall weather.

We're headed to the northeast this coming weekend, with shows in Boston (The Royale), New York City (The Bowery Ballroom), Huntington NY (The Paramount), and Washington DC (The Hamilton).  

Golf Gig #1

Saturday, Yacht Rock played a late afternoon gig at the PGA Championship in Atlanta.  I'm not really sure for whom we were playing;  there was a small loop of corporate sponsor type tents set up in a VIP area, and we used one as a stage.  Unfortunately, the rain from Friday night continued all day Saturday, so the people who saw us were drenched.  I was a bit dumbfounded at the number of people (maybe 75?) who stood in the rain and mud and watched us, but they did, and they loved it.

I solved my EWI problems by switching out the little MIDI cable between the EWI and the wireless MIDI transmitter.  It worked like a champ.  A few spare cables have been in ordered and are in route to my mailbox.

Other than the rain, this was a nice, easy gig.  Monkeyboy had some guitar issues early on, but once he settled down, things were cool.  My sax mic was having some strange reactions to the on stage sound--probably because of the tent and the proximity to the main speakers.  There really wasn't anywhere to go anyway.

Skechers hosted us (it was their tent), and provided us with some groovy shoes to wear.  A nice perk of the job.

Home by 8 PM.  Nice.

Park Tavern

Yacht Rock played our final Park Tavern show of the summer concert series.  Pretty big crowd (maybe 1,000?), in spite of the rain.  

photo cred:  Kip Conner

My big excitement of the evening was some sort of EWI problem, basically with the laptop not receiving MIDI information from the EWI.  This is a major drag because there are several things that could go wrong:

1.  EWI problem

2.  bad MIDI cable between the EWI and the wireless MIDI transmitter

3.  problem with the wireless MIDI system

4.  bad MIDI cable between the wireless MIDI receiver and the MIDI to USB box

5.  bad MIDI to USB box

6.  bad USB cable between the USB box and the laptop

7.  laptop problem

The issue is intermittent, meaning I kind of have to wait for it to happen and then see if I can figure it out.  This happened years ago when the band was just starting to play bigger shows, and it took at least a month for me to solve it.  Fun.  I am now terrified of using my gear.

My initial hope/diagnosis:

1.  The EWI seems fine

2.  The wireless MIDI transmitter and receiver have a flashing light that says they are synced up, and that was flashing (meaning they are talking to each other), so I think they're working correctly

3.  The USB box also gets MIDI information from a foot switch (used for switching sounds), so I think that part is probably ok, which also means that the USB cable is fine, and the laptop is probably fine

Therefore, I am going to swap out the little MIDI cable between the EWI and transmitter tomorrow and hope that everything goes back to normal.  Pleeeeaaaaaaassssseeeee!

What else...the stage was about five feet above the crowd, which was kind of weird.  I wonder why it was like this.  No one had a good answer.

We brought back Break My Stride and Hip to Be Square.  Both were pretty good.

Post gig, the handle on my rack that houses my electronics broke off.  Now there's no way to pull it around like a suitcase, meaning I'll have to carry it like the big forty pound plastic box that it is until SKB sends me a new one.  Great.  Just in time for us to head out for some gigs in the northeast.

Second Beatles Show at Venkman's

I had the burger again (they were out of the bratwurst thing that I intended to order).  Still a winner.

This gig sounded much better.  According to Zach, the only difference was that he cut the level on the audience/ambient microphones down.  Maybe there was more to it (last Thursday, the guitar level moved up and down during soundcheck a lot, and we had some "Your ears should be muted"/"They're not" stuff), but whatever the science, the result was excellent.

Pretty good playing in front of a lackluster crowd, no doubt deterred by the rain.

I forgot my iPad clamp and my bari sax stand, neither of which I could do without, so in between soundcheck and the burger, Rob Opitz (our trumpeter, who also managed to forget his iPad clamp) headed back to Cobb County.  Not my favorite way to kill time, but there was no closer solution.

Polo Grounds

Atlanta has polo?  Atlanta has polo grounds?  I guess I never knew that.  Saturday's gig was at at the Buckhead Polo Grounds, which looked to be a pasture in the lowest (geographically speaking) part of Buckhead.

We set up on a stage in a tent, besieged by gnats, for some sort of benefit.  It was a pretty vanilla gig, albeit one with tall, expensive looking women.  In the second set, the band got a little silly, which made the time go by a little faster.  The gnats also excused themselves for the evening after sundown, which I greatly appreciated.

Other highlights:  I brought home four bananas from the green room;  we were fed BBQ, which was excellent;  I was able to drive up next to the stage for load in and load out.  A nice, easy gig, which I think was about all that we could handle.

Beatles Show at Venkman's

My burger was great;  my in ear mix was not.  We'll try again next week.  I may even order another burger.

Venkman's

Monday night was a cool gig for the Dave and Dave Duo (my sax/organ duo with David Ellington):  we played for the grand opening of Venkman's, a new restaurant brought into existence by Yacht Rock front men Nick Niespodziani and Peter Olson.  Congratulations to the whole crew that brought Venkman's to life!

Dave and I hadn't played together since late July at JCT Kitchen.  You can take a look at the videos from that gig here.

The Venkman's gig was a lot of fun.  Jazz gigs require a different kind of concentration than a Yacht Rock gig, and it was a very nice change of pace for me.  Plus, I played really well.  That always makes for a good night.  I even landed the two Brecker licks I've been trying to incorporate.  Yay for me.

Give these mp3s a spin.

I'll be back for a few Thursday gigs with Yacht Rock playing the Beatles (September 17 and 24).  I'll be leading a sextet in a performance of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue October 12.