Up to Chicago

Yacht Rock had our final run of the year up to Chicago, with stops in Nashville and Columbus, IN along the way.  We had some really nice weather and good crowds at every stop!

Thursday:  first stop, Nashville.  The trip began with a quick "acoustic" show at an elementary school.  This was a freebee promo thing we did for a fan who teaches at the school.  Since we were late (no big surprise there), we forewent changing into our stage clothes and did this one in our street clothes.  Three songs, and we were done...and then the autographing began!  The large number of random pieces of paper I signed was way out of proportion to the way I played.

From there, on to the Mercy Lounge!

Back at our usual spot.  Not the greatest load in--there's a long ramp to the front door, and then either a flight of stairs or a passenger elevator--but the room has a pretty good vibe (especially compared to its larger downstairs neighbor, the Cannery Ballroom).  This was our first time using in ear monitors here, and the difference was huge, because unfortunately, this stage tends to get uncomfortably loud.  With in ears, it was just about perfect.

Great crowd, particularly for a Thursday.  370 in a room that holds 500 is just fine.  500 people in there starts to get sweaty and claustrophobic.  I remember thinking late in the first set that we were already playing like we were two or three days into a run--no rust even though we hadn't played together in almost a week.  The Mercy tends to bring a little bit of extra aggression to our performances there.  I dig it.

We probably would have sold it out if the venue hadn't used a picture of the Yacht Rock Schooner in the promo.  Nice try.

Dinner was a pulled pork sandwich from Peg Leg Porker, our newest find in Nashville.  I'm a fan.

Friday:  we got up at a reasonable hour and headed north to Columbus, Indiana for a private event--a fundraiser for the regional hospital.

The corn has been harvested, and this is what the midwest looks like right now...

...and then Peter got involved.

Easy gig!  Pete and Nick are both Columbus natives and apparently local celebrities.

The next morning I got up and went for a run.  Great weather.

Behold my room key.  For this location, perhaps it should say GET IT TOGETHER.  The rooms at this location we old, run down, and smelled terrible (a combination of dampness and chlorine from the indoor pool right outside my door and the still-lingering stench of cigarette smoke before this room became a "non smoking room").  On top of all that, a fly shared the room with me and bothered me the entire time that I was awake.

We had to check out by 1 PM, but we weren't due in Chicago until pretty late (the venue had a private event until 8 PM), so we headed to lunch.  First, however, was a stop at Walmart for supplies.

This is not a supply;  it's a picture frame.  I didn't buy it.  I hope she doesn't let him play his horn without his own mouthpiece and reed.  Totally unsanitary.

Greg Lee did a little shopping.  He was hoping to purchase a drone, but there were unfortunately none to be had.

He did not, however, come out empty handed!  His suitcase handle bit the dust, so he bought a new one.

The swap of clothes from the old bag to the new.

For whatever reason, I decided to Periscope this (for my mom and others who don't know what I'm talking about:  Periscope is an app that streams video live from my phone.  As I'm shooting video, people can sign in and watch it).

Anyway, Zach had a great time trying to destroy the suitcase.

Lunch was at Yat's (New Orleans food).  I love the original location on the north side of Indy.  This location was decent.  Points deducted because 1.  The dude behind the counter obviously did not want us to be there and was extremely reluctant to wait on us;  2.  Boiled/instant rice.  It hurts my soul.  Shame on you.

That being said, I had two orders of this, which they are saying is gumbo, though I'd never seen gumbo that was this color.  Whatever.  I wish they had regular sized spoons, too.  It would've helped mix up the "gumbo" and "rice."  As it was, all the "rice" was on the bottom.

We took a short walk around downtown Columbus.

This was a nifty indoor playground.  Cool.

 Finally, we gathered everybody at the van and headed up to Chicago.  More from Pete, this time interrupting my chance to photograph the northern Indiana wind farm.

Here's one unobstructed picture.  It's fuzzy enough that it looks like a painting.

So...we ate at the Whole Foods around the corner from the club.  One of our better food choices on this trip (I had Wendy's two days in a row).

Good gig!  We had to deal with what turned out to be a dead instrument cable in my keyboards during soundcheck, and I noticed when getting dressed that I'd left my white hat, white belt, and sunglasses in that dreadful hotel in Columbus, but the show was pretty smooth.  We played a little bit over ninety minutes, finishing with an encore of Born to Run.  The crowd was really good and energized, except for the asshole who was mad that his wife kept staring all dreamy-eyed at Pete and thus stood up against the stage with his back to us, trying in vain to win her back.  Eventually, he moved back--not a moment too soon.  Mentally, I'd already punted his head across the room seven or eight times, and I was lining up to try it for real.

photo cred:  Sagar Chowdhury

 Look!  Origami!  Nope--old set lists that fell out of the back of Monkey's guitar amp.

Sunday:  we slept for a few hours before heading to O'Hare for a really early flight home.  I was asleep before they closed the door and didn't wake up until we were on approach to Atlanta.

Pete and I waited outside for a ride back to get our cars.  Evidently some dipshit pulled up in front of the airport, ran inside, and didn't come back for a half hour or so.  The cops didn't like that very much.  I guess we were far enough away to not be in any danger.

Duo Duos

The Dave and Dave Duo was scheduled to play brunch and evening performances at Venkman's this past Sunday, but Ellington realized after I'd already confirmed the date that he would be out of town.  No big deal.

Matt Kaminski covered the brunch gig.  Dave and I have been playing this batch of tunes for a couple of years now, so it was pretty cool to hear another organist's approach to tunes with which I was very familiar.  Pretty cool--Matt's got his own thing, his own vocabulary, sounds, and approach.  I dug it!  Sometimes I wanted to stop playing and just watch to see how he was doing things I'd never heard before.

photo cred:  Matt

I recorded both sets.  You can check them out here:




In between brunch and the evening, there was just enough time to kill that I considered going home.  To do what?  I guess I could've gone and sat on the couch for an hour, but I stayed and broke in some new reeds and got ready for my next partner.  This may or may not have been my best move--my embouchure was pretty tired by the time we stepped on stage.

Matt had a evening gig with his group at Churchill Grounds (and I don't know of another jazz organist in Atlanta), so I reached out to my old friend Tyrone Jackson to come and play.  He doesn't own an organ (yet!), but he brought his 88 key custom Fender rhodes out.  Sweet.  It sounds as good as it looks.

I joked with him that this is his "beater" rhodes because he has a restored 73 suitcase at his house as well!

Tyrone is an incredible player, and it took all the brain power and ears I could muster just to keep up with him.  I chose songs that we'd played quite a bit when we used to do a lot of trio gigs--some of mine, some that I thought would work well as duets.

It was also wonderful to catch up with an old friend with whom I've been sharing the stage off and on for probably fifteen years.  I hope we can do it again soon!

Here's the two sets we played:

Makin' Bacon

Ahh--the bacon gig!  Yacht Rock has a standing yearly gig over by Druid Hills Country Club in Atlanta, and this was probably our sixth year in a row doing it.  In the early years, the gig was in early December (same night as the SEC Championship), but it comes earlier on the calendar these days--good for me, because we were so cold in the tent that first year, my EWI froze up and stopped working.

best costume prizes

The highlight of this gig (other than the outstanding costumes and the extremely cool hosts) is the candied bacon.  My bacon consumption was at an all time low this year (4 pieces!), probably down because of my guilt about how much Halloween candy I've eaten.  Greg thought that maybe the bacon wasn't as good this year.  I say "Who Cares!  It's bacon!  Eat it!"  He may have been joking.  Hard to tell from this picture.

Anyway, the gig was cool.  I do like an easy night of work.

Our illustrious sound crew of Zach and Kip.  Not sure what's happening in this picture.  Kip is either snorting a daisy or offering it up to a console.  Whatever it takes to make the gig sound great.

The Noog

Chattanooga, of course!  Yacht Rock played our first club gig (our only other appearance being at the Riverbend Festival earlier in the year) at the Revelry Room, and sold it out!  Looks like we might be making it up to Tennessee a little more often.

Things didn't begin well, however.  The Revelry Room has only been open for four weeks, and by the looks of it, they're still trying to sort things out.  For example, we loaded in off a muddy street (with no ramp option so everything had to be carried up some stairs).  The stage was dirty, covered in glitter and dust.  A few of the guys found a broom and a shop vac and cleaned that up before we started setting up.  Not very rock and roll.

 The green room stuff on our rider also took a while to materialize, and when it did, the bananas we just a little too green.  In five or six days when these are ready, I'll be happy.  I'm guessing that whomever did the shopping for our requests isn't the fruit pro that I am.  Frickin' green bananas!  What the hell?  Maybe we should submit a paint chip with the correct color of yellow.

The room itself was very live--a medium sized concrete floor box.  Soundcheck sounded ok;  we knew it would change a lot when the people showed up.

Greg, Bencuya, Monkeyboy, and I ate at a place called Blue Orleans around the corner from the club. Excellent, excellent, excellent New Orleans food.  Also, the hostess was cute.

The gig...was pretty fantastic!  Five hundred people is more than I thought we'd see on a rainy night, but it was packed, and the crowd had great energy.  Super fun!  I met a couple of cool people who'd seen us at different places around the southeast.  The word is out.

I hope we play Chattanooga again, maybe at the sister club to this place, Track 29?  That looks like a much better room (just checking out photos on the internet).  Also, I want to eat at Blue Orleans again as soon as possible.

Trio

David Ellington, Kevin Smith, and I played a trio gig last night at the World Congress Center.  Weren't we just here a couple of weeks ago?

Some funny stuff (to me):

1.  The gig was for Roland, but Dave brought his Nord and a QSC powered speaker.

2.  The Roland people checked Dave's keyboard out to see if it was made by them, which is funny because a bright red Nord keyboard is one of the most easily identifiable instruments out there.  We guessed that maybe these people weren't from the music division.

3.  I was asked to bring a PA.  We got in the room, which was small enough that we probably didn't need a PA, only to find a production team of three in the back of the room and their PA (with small line arrays and a sub on either side of the stage) fanned out to cover the room.  I wonder why we wouldn't have just plugged into their system?

4.  We were given thirty minutes to set up while they flipped the room, but the client opened the doors twenty-five minutes early.  We started fifteen minutes earlier than the contract and played two hours straight (ugh).  At the end of our two hour contract, I went back and let the production guys know to kick on their music.  As I returned to the stage, the client said that we were supposed to play another fifteen minutes.  When I let her know that we'd started fifteen minutes early, she had no idea (but was cool with it, and turned out to be very appreciative of the music).

5.  We were set up on one wing of a wide stage, and one of the Roland dudes climbed onto the back of the stage and pushed me out of the way so that he could photobomb an official photo in front of center stage.  He thought he was really funny.

So...after all that...nice gig!   We played well, though I messed up a few times.

Thrillered

Yacht Rock finished our two night stand at Venkman's with an encore performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Third time's the charm?  I think the few things that we might have sacrificed in terms of accuracy (I'm pretty sure I reverted back to older background vocal parts in a few spots) were made up by the relaxed feel of the set.  We may have been more precise at the Variety Playhouse show, but we had more fun at this one.

The second set was comprised of 80s tunes from our set list.  No big surprises.

For I Wish, Pete comes to my position and plays my keyboard, and I go up to his spot and play EWI.  As I moved up front, I checked my EWI and it worked fine.  However, once the song started, I had no sound in my in ears!  I went back to check my laptop, which registered that it was getting MIDI signal, but there was nothing in my ears, so after fiddling with it for a little bit, I switched to saxophone and finished out the song.

Upon returning to my keyboards for I Can't Go for That, I found that I also had no sound from my keyboards.  During the first verse, they finally came back on.  I guessed (and our monitor guy, Zach, confirmed) that Zach had muted my keyboard line when I came out front--something he does on Silly Love Songs when Nick is playing piano at my position--and forgotten that the EWI signal was coming down the same line.  Which means that my attempt to troubleshoot the EWI was coming through loud and clear to everybody else, including the audience.  Oops!  I think it might be better if I played sax on that one from now on.

Original Recipe

Yacht Rock celebrated our eighth year of existence by recreating our original set list.  Some of these we haven't played in eight years.  Preparing for this was a pretty hard grind--there were only a few that needed my attention, but at this point in the year, I'm so fried on trying to learn anything new that I am easily frustrated.

It'd be great if we kept all of these new old ones, not only because of the work it took to learn them, but also because they sound waaaaaaaaaay better than they did eight years ago.

Noteworthy:

Things We Do for Love is a new old one.  Difficult vocal harmonies, easy keyboard part.  Forgot multiple times to clap during the "Like walking in the rain" part.

Lonely Boy.  I wanted to sing this one.  Nick sang it instead.  He crashed and burned at the last verse.

Magic (Pilot).  Easy vocal part (for me), tricky keyboard part.

Heart Hotels.  I love the way this song builds and grooves, and it's got an EWI solo (Tom Scott on a Lyricon on the original, and-at least once live-Fogelberg activated some Michael Brecker!)



Damn.  That's some good shit (the solos).  We were trying to get on a Fogelberg tribute album a few years ago so we performed it with saxophone--closer to this version.  It's fun either way.

This is It.  Challenging vocally and instrumentally.  I like it, though, and if we could ever convince Kenny Loggins to hang out with us, I'd rather play this than the firkin' Danger Zone.

Sundown.  An easy one for me (tambourine), and a chance for Mark Cobb to come out front.  Nick on drums.

Kiss You All Over was played often during the first year of the band.  This song got a shout out on our Facebook page, but that probably won't be enough to keep it in the setlist.

Love is Alive.  Must be really hard to sing because we play the shit out of it and it always seems to go over well, but it never stays in the set list rotation.

We even brought back the wigs for this gig.  I remember now how hot and scratchy they are.

In other news, I replaced my purple sax effects pedal (the Digitech Vocal 300) with a Line 6 M9.  First gig with it sounded good!  It'll probably take several more gigs to dial it in, but I'm about 80% there just from playing with it at home.

Plus, it's got a looper...you know, a caddie, a looper...a jock...

More Weirdness and a Wedding in the Woods

I failed to mention the biggest weirdness of Friday night's gig downtown:  I got home, pulled my truck into the garage, and as I walked around the back to go in the house, I noticed a cell phone.  Umm...now what?

A couple of thoughts:

1.  I tried responding to a recent text (I can swipe the message notification and reply without unlocking my phone), but that was not an option.  Same with returning a missed call.  The phone wouldn't let me do it.

2.  I noticed that this was a Verizon phone, so I wondered if I could turn it in to a Verizon store and let them track down the owner.

I mulled the whole phone thing over for a while, and then the "FIND MY IPHONE" alert went off.  I wanted to answer that one, too, to say, "I'm here!  Come get it!  I don't want your phone!" but that is also not an option.

Finally, the owner called and wanted to know who I was and how I got her phone, and of course, how she could get it back.  I told her I was in Marietta, and she said, "Me too!"

"Great, I'll come meet you somewhere.  Where are you?"

"Midtown.  Where are you?"

"Marietta.  I'll be in midtown in the morning, and I can meet you and give you your phone."

"I'm at the Ramada Inn by the Tabernacle."

"Got it."

So, Saturday morning, I drove down to the Tabernacle and did a search for the nearest Ramada Inn, which happens to be on Armour Drive (up by Smith's Olde Bar, which is not near the Tabernacle or near where my truck was parked last night).  The girl had given me her passcode, so I tried calling the number she'd called me on the night before.  No answer.  I drove around the block and tried calling again.  No answer.

Since I was not in the mood to deal with this anymore, I went to the Holiday Inn (which is a couple of blocks from the Tabernacle).  I texted the number "The missing phone is at the front desk of the Holiday Inn on Andrew Young International Blvd," hit send, and handed it over to the front desk.  The end.

From there, I drove to meet the van and trailer, and we headed to North Carolina for a wedding reception.  I slept most of the way.  The reception was at a golf course/group of cabins in the woods.  We were in a tent by the driving range.

After set up, we had a few hours to kill, which we did watching college football and farting profusely.  The meals we were provided were really bad.

We had to learn Queen's You're My Best Friend as a first dance--just ninety seconds of it.  The background vocals are very involved, and we did a pretty half-assed job with them.  Fortunately, the happy couple didn't seem to notice.  Everything else was pretty much our standard set list.  No big deal on anything.

The gig ended at 10 PM, and we were packed and headed to the hotel at 11.  Zach (one of our sound engineers) was driving, and he volunteered to take us home instead, to which we readily agreed.  I'd much rather do that than get up at 7:30 AM and book it back to Atlanta.  Anyway, I slept the whole way, which I guess I would have done even if we'd spent the night.  Woke up in midtown at 2:30 AM, wondering if that girl ever found her phone.

Weirdest Gig of the Year

Yacht Rock played a very strange gig Friday at the Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta.  Following on the heels of our sold out show last Saturday at the Variety Playhouse (and more or less selling out the Georgia Theatre in Athens the night before that), we played for around forty people, the vast majority of whom ignored us until the last THIRTEEN minutes of the gig, when two people finally set foot on the dance floor.  We played almost two full sets without anyone coming near us.  Maybe they were enjoying the music while hanging out (possibly networking?)?  I'm not sure.  Very strange.

Also weird was that fifteen minutes after we finished, a group of people who threw the party came into the dressing room to thank us for being there.  That's not weird (it's nice of them to do so), but we were almost all half undressed at that point (I was wearing underwear and socks when they came in), and they hung out talking/thanking for a couple of minutes.  Should I continue progressing towards street clothes, or put my polyester back on?  It was cool of them to thank us personally, but hey...I'm standing here in my boxers.

Weirder still...the same group returned a few minutes later to ask for a group photo (when they'd just seen us changing out of our stage clothes, so we had to put our clothes back on (we agreed on top half only, so Monkeyboy didn't wear pants for this), step out into the hall, and take a few pictures.  Again, it's cool that they liked us, but...we were available for all this in between the two sets when we played for no one.  How about then?

One other observation:  the "chamber" in the Chamber has a bidet/heated toilet seat...the works.  Is this for employees or foreign guests?  I wanted to take it for a ride, but I only had to pee during my visit.

Sunday Trio

After slugging through the Yacht Rock Variety Playhouse gig, I went home, climbed into bed, and slept for 10-12 hours.  Sleep was the best preparation for Sunday's gig, a jazz trio (with David Ellington, piano, and Kevin Smith, bass) for some sort of corporate reception/feeding.

Most of these corporate things are really uptight, but this client was super cool.  She came in and hung out for a second;  she even had Ellington take a picture of us while I was playing his new keyboard (a modern rhodes piano made by Vintage Vibe).

So...the gig was pretty great.  We all played well, the people were really cool to us, and it ended on time.  Check out the tunes (no repeats from Wednesday's trio):



I feel less bummed about my life.


In other news...

Fantastic pictures from the Thriller show by Emily Butler Photography.  Here are a few of me.

Thrilled

Saturday began early for me (after a very late night coming home from Athens) with a wedding ceremony in Smyrna.  I picked this one up after one of my Sunday church gigs--my friend Graham played piano and sang, and I filled in the spaces around him.  It was fun!  Always a good hang with Graham.

From there, I had just barely enough time to run home, change clothes, eat lunch and head to the Variety Playhouse for Yacht Rock's annual Thriller show.  This was also the day of the Little 5 Points Halloween Parade, so everybody came screaming in right before the road was closed.

This turned out to be a very difficult gig.  For one thing, I'd definitely crammed too much stuff in a week (I ended up with 10 gigs in 9 days, plus 2 rehearsals).  There was pressure because it sold out.  Also, the Thriller show has never settled--every year we change some things (adding solos, etc) and shift harmony vocals.  Whereas the Purple Rain show feels consistent from year to year, this one always feels like we're doing it for the first time.  The cumulative effect is focused apprehension in front of a giant audience.

Also, we had a camera crew filming, and a pro photographer planted in front of Pete.  The camera shooting from behind me was a reminder of the post-gig scrutiny that would be happening.  The photographer in front made me extremely self-conscious of everything I did.

I think the crowd really enjoyed it, but if you asked anybody in the band (particularly in between sets), you'd have gotten a different story.  It was not fun experience.  I, for one, had pretty much given up on my career in music by the end;  mentally, I had finished drafting my resignation to the band.

Looking over the first set now, I'm not sure why I felt like that.  The only song that got the best of me was The Girl is Mine, and that was only because I totally blew my background vocal parts.  Playing-wise, it was fine.  There was definitely a heavy vibe between all of us, though.  We didn't enjoy any of the music.

photo cred:  Emily Butler Photography

The second set was a good bit more relaxed;  we all laughed a little bit more and played a little more.  The only song that bit me in the ass was Take On Me;  it's always the same chords, but a different order depending on where we are in the song.  It a Russian Roulette of A, C#minor, D, and F# minor.  I also played a great big wrong chord in Maniac, come to think of it.  I can live with all of that, though, because we had more fun.  First set, not so much.  By the time we'd finished the encore, I was more than ready to go home.