Train Cruise 2016

Cruise time!  It's been a year since our last cruise--the 2015 Sail Across the Sun/Train Cruise.  Time to do it again.

Thursday:  up too early to fly to Ft. Lauderdale, and then we took a shuttle to the port of Miami to meet the boat.  I'm pretty sure we do this to save money.

A few changes for this one:

1.  Nick is still on paternity leave, so Ganesh Giri Jaya (of the Yacht Rock Schooner) filled in for him.

2.  Kip and Zach were along as crew, and they brought the in ear monitors.  Leading up to this trip, there was some doubt about whether or not we'd be able to use them because of the different sound systems on the boat and the short turn around time between bands.  They agreed to give it a shot.

As usual, the host company, Sixthman, made it very easy for us to hop on board.  A quick check of our rooms--we have balconies this year.  Monkey on one side...

and Kip and Zach on the other.

The cruise ship terminal at the port.

After lunch and a little bit of a nap, it was time to turn the boat around and leave.

A stable of yachts--check out how the one in the middle of the picture has a HELICOPTER on the back.

Once we'd left the harbor, I squeezed in a couple of hours of practicing.

Gig number one!  We had the atrium stage, which situates us directly across from the front desk of this floating hotel.  After the frantic set up (and some quick checking of the in ear monitors), we settled in for our seventy-five minute set.  The show was fun, but getting on stage, throwing our gear together, plugging into the PA, and sound checking in about forty minutes is really stressful.  I was glad that there were no equipment failures.

Friday:  Sea day.  Breakfast of...

Maybe the best part of the entire cruise was the balcony door.  I slept the first two nights with the door open, which was great with Miami's 70 degree, low humidity winter.  Then again, one time I woke up and Zach was looking at me from around his balcony.

Gig number two!  This one was supposed to be outside on the top deck around lunch time, but the wind and the potential for wet weather caused us to be moved into the atrium for a second straight night.  No problem, though.  All the rough moments from the previous night's in ear mixes were completely solved.  This was one of the best atrium shows we've ever had on this boat.

Saturday:  I woke up off the coast of Jamaica.

Zach.

Breakfast.

It looks great, but we'd heard from people who went ashore early that this port was pretty crappy--very few options for food, too many options for cabs (to take us where, exactly?) and shitty weed (and who wants to get busted and possibly left behind in Jamaica?).

Monkeyboy and I walked down the sidewalk (propositioned eleven times in ten minutes for cab rides).  As we began to loop back around to the ship, we ran into The Great Bencuya and his girlfriend.

Our original idea was to eat at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville (in indication of how bad the options were), but the wait was damn near eternal, so we left.  On the way back to the boat, we happened across a bistro, across from the guy with the coconuts and the rum.

It took around two hours to get our meals (I had a nine dollar chicken wrap, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  We would have eaten better if we'd stayed on the boat.  Catching the zika virus would have given us something to do.  A waste of time and money, but at least I can now say I've gotten off the ship in Jamaica, and I never have to do it again.

Gig number three was also to be on the pool deck, but the winds and the rain moved us into the smallest stage on the boat, the Spinnaker Lounge.  The stage is small and dark, and the low ceiling means that the lights are almost at eye level.

The two atrium shows used a compatible monitor mixer, so our in ear mixes were mostly the way we always have them set (small problems on the first night, but things were really good on the second).  The Spinnaker used a completely different system, so Zach had to create new monitor mixes for all of us from scratch, and he nailed it.

Sunday:  I was very happy to have this last day at sea free of gigs.  Not much happening in the ocean today, except for a race with a container ship.

I saw some of Train's last set.  Very good.

So...Greg, Monkey, and I were drunk enough to get involved in the singles mixer (even though we aren't single).  When we arrived, it became speed dating, so we were volunteered as target practice.

Monkeyboy made name tags for the three of us.

One of my dates was particularly disinterested in the process.  It appears that we were doing shots.

I should point out that the theme for the day was The Great Gatsby, hence the flapper dresses.

Uhhh...we had wine.

We left (Greg crawled out on his hands and knees to get away) the speed dating thing to go to the tequila tasting (already in progress).  Sixthman had volunteered us to sort of cohost the event with Train's bass player.  We were totally obnoxious.  I'm pretty sure he hates us.

So...I had no tequila.  Greg had no tequila.  Monkeyboy had lots of tequila, and had to go to his room for the rest of the cruise.

After a cooling off/sobering up period, the surviving members of the band attended our traditional meal at the teppanyaki restaurant.

Greg and Ganesh celebrated their birthday.  The restaurant staff tried to divide this cake nine ways (a lethal dose, 6"x6"x4").  I tried, but after eating two helpings of fried rice, there was simply not enough room left in my human container.

We split up and everybody went to pack.  We raced a couple of cruise ships.

Monday:  get off the boat!  Where is our shuttle back to Ft. Lauderdale!

Waiting to go through security.  Pete pulled this hat from the bushes behind us.

I slept the whole way home.  It's the only way to fly.

See y'all next year!

Dave and Dave

I was up much too soon Sunday morning after a late Saturday night, this time to head down to a brunch gig at Venkman's with David Ellington as the Dave and Dave Duo.  The first set went pretty well, but I totally fell apart in the second set, and my coordination and concentration went all to hell.  By the time I began driving home I was desperate for a nap.  

Anyway, I tried to call some tunes, for better or for worse, that we haven't played recently on either a Dave and Dave gig or Ellington's last two quartet gigs.  Check it out:

As usual, I stumbled back to life in time to make my church gig, which was poorly attended.  I wonder when the church will finally give in to reality and just cancel mass?  Is there some tipping point where it would make more sense to say "find another time to get here"?  

The Long One

Saturday was a gig for some kind of big money fundraiser at the Ritz in Buckhead.  Strangely enough, we were not in the actual ballroom (where the dinner and the auction and the bulk of the evening's affairs were), but across the prefunction area in the smaller rooms, where the stage was almost too wide for the room.  I remember seeing Blue Lou Marini playing a wedding reception gig in this same room a few years ago.

Many, many gigs have I played at the Ritz--my guess would be at least 200 in the twenty years that I have played around Atlanta.  A few stand out to me--a Christmas Day brunch gig (that I played with Rob Henson and a horrible pianist), where we played for five hours and I think I was paid something like $150;  the other being a wedding where a woman had a heart attack and collapsed on the dance floor (while the band played She Works Hard for the Money)--the room was cleared of guests, but for some reason the musicians had to stay put on the stage and watch the paramedics attempt (unsuccessfully) to resuscitate her.

The loading dock at the Ritz, in addition to having the reputation notoriety of being one of the most foul smelling locations in wedding band history, is also one of the biggest pains in the ass in town.  You can only enter from one direction, up a hill, and then once you push past the odor, you have to go all the way down a hall and take an elevator up to the ballrooms.  It's a major drag when you have multiple loads of gear, and once you get it all in the room, then you have to leave the loading dock and find a place up in the lot (which means that at the end of the night when you reverse the process, you'll have to do a lap around Buckhead to get back to the dock on the one way road).  So...I was pleasantly surprised to find out that we could load in from the parking deck!  Waaaaaaaaay better.

The gig itself was, I think, the after party for the event.  We began at 10:30 PM and played til 1 AM, much later than any of our gigs in recent history.  It was pretty much a run of the mill event for us.  Along with the captain's hats at the door, there were around a hundred beach balls, most of which were targeted at the front line for a hour or so.  Eventually the focus shifted to shooting them into the chandeliers, thankfully.

Also, there was a lady who ran a microphone cable through her teeth;  I think it was meant to be seductive.  Gross.  She did it more than once.

I played like crap--mostly crappy saxophone.  The band food was pretty decent, and the load out was no problem at all.

I got home at 2:30 AM, twelve hours after I'd left.

Of Knobs and Gigs

Last weekend was the first big weekend of gigs for me, with four Yacht Rock gigs and a jazz gig thrown in the middle.  Mostly good stuff, I would say, off the top of my head.  Along the way, Bencuya and I endured a keyboard stand crisis, sponsored by Quik Lok.  Read on...

Thursday:  Yacht Rock played a private gig in Alpharetta for the same people who flew us to the Virgin Islands last summer.  Alpharetta is not as far, but not as awesome.

Right as  I walked in the door, Bencuya (who was already there) texted me that one of the knobs on his keyboard stand had become stripped, and did I have another knob?  Fortunately, yes.  We installed the new knob, though the thing was so tight that I had to force it, tearing up my knuckles as I cranked a quarter turn at a time.  

We did get it all the way in, but it was really tight, almost like it was the wrong size (FORESHADOWING!)

Kip had been sick for a few days leading up to this gig, so after we got set up and sound checked, he crashed in the green room on an air mattress.

Time for work!

This gig was ok.  A few things in play:

1.  Ganesh's second gig with us as a sub for Nick, so we were trying to make sure everything was cool vocally and instrumentally.

2.  A few tunes we hadn't played in a while were on the setlist as a review for the upcoming shows on the Sail Across the Sun boat next week.

3.  We hadn't played a Yacht Rock show in a two weeks.

4.  The acoustics of the room made for some really weird sounds in the in-ears.  I felt like I spent much of the gig wondering what I could change to improve the sound--I had kind of low mids thing.  By the end of the night I'd finally figured out that Monkeyboy's vocal microphone was twice as loud as everybody else's, and it was amplifying the crappy stage sound.  By then, though, I'd made other changes which I would spend the next three days undoing.

Just like in the Virgin Islands, the audience was small (less than a hundred people), and mostly guys, so not much of a dance party--more like packs of dudes drinking and watching us (or drinking and ignoring us).  They did ask to play a short third set (overtime on a Thursday!), and we got through it.  The whole thing felt like it went on too long.  They were cool about it, though, and if they wanted to fly us to the Caribbean again, I'd be cool with that.

Friday:  Georgia Theatre!  Athens has become my favorite place to play.  The room is beautiful, the crew is good (they load our gear in and out), the audience is always ready, and the drunks are amusing.  The only thing that sucks is that the green room is five or six flights up!

As soon as we began setting up, another knob on Bencuya's stand gave out, and I didn't have any more spare knobs.  The production manager at the Theatre went into his office and found a random bolt that fit perfectly.

At this point, I am completely scared to death of my keyboard stand, knowing that it's only a matter of time before my knobs give out.  Both Bencuya and I are now in survival mode--"Please don't make me go and buy another keyboard stand this weekend!"

This show was pretty damn awesome.  We came within a hundred people of selling out, and the vibes were tremendous from the moment we walked out on stage.  Even my solos were pretty good.  Success!

Saturday:  two-fer!  I went to bed at 4 AM and got up at 9 to get a shower and head to Venkman's for a brunch gig with the David Ellington Quartet.

I was really excited about this one.  For one thing, Ellington's music is really challenging, especially with is affinity for odd meter tunes.  I'd never played with the drummer, Adam Goodhue, but I was familiar with his playing from YouTube.  He's outstanding!  Plus, he brought this sweet vintage kit.

Rounding out the group was bassist Rob Henson, whom I've known since college.  His musical intensity has been intimidating me for twenty years.

This gig was outstanding.  Everybody played great, and the hang was really fun.  I hope we do this one again soon!  This and the night before in Athens really made the weekend for me.

The French toast at Venkman's is really delicious.

I ran away from the quartet back to my house, which left me just enough time to eat, change clothes and leave again for a wedding with Yacht Rock.

Bencuya has become convinced that our keyboard stands have bad ju ju, and we should investigate other options.  Possibly a Z stand, such as this one?  At least the knobs on On-Stage stands will turn.

We were seriously considering it until I watched a product video where the guy showed how to fold it up, and in order to do so, you have to remove a couple of knobs and then screw them back in after you collapse it, and then the second tier comes off completely and doesn't fold into the legs.  No way. Too many parts.  So...back to square one.

Oh yeah!  The gig..it was fine.  The country club where we played is pretty tight-assed:  we were told that we had to wear "proper attire" to load in (meaning no jeans and t shirts), but half us wore jeans and t shirts anyway.  Nobody said anything, though.

We reviewed a few more tunes for the boat, and one for a gig later this year--Eddie Money's Take Me Home Tonight.  We'll be seeing him later in February.

Sunday:  Yacht Rock finished out this weekend's string of gigs with a charity event downtown for The Giving Kitchen.  Getting around downtown is a major hassle because of the one way streets (plus a movie shoot that had one road completely blocked), so by the time I actually began moving gear in, I was really pissed off (compounded by the people in the parking lot who either wouldn't get out of my way, or were too quick to tell me to move my car as soon as I'd finished).  While setting up, I banged my head on the screen behind the stage, and then scraped my head on something else.  Keep it coming.

Following soundcheck, I took one of the keyboard knobs to the nearest Home Depot (on Ponce Ave in midtown) to find out their bolt size is.  My thought was that if the knobs wouldn't fit, maybe we could use regular bolts--at worst, we could leave the arms permanently bolted at the correct angle, and the stands just wouldn't fold up as flat.

The shaft on the knobs is a metric bolt:  M8 x 1.25.  That's the only one that fit.

On the way back downtown, I talked to two incompetent employees at two different Guitar Centers, inquiring about a keyboard stand on their website (which neither could find, even when I gave them the product number off the website).  Unbelievable.

I got back to the gig with a few hours to wander around, sampling the food and drink.

After all that, the gig was really enjoyable!  Nick showed up and sang most of the gig, which kicked everything up a notch.  He's having a wonderful time with his newborn daughter.

Monday:  Keyboard stand crap.  I really want to find a solution to this.  The stand is great except for this achilles heel where the second tier connects.  The big question is this:  why does the stand destroy the bolt on the knobs?

I tried adding a liberal amount of grease to both mine and Bencuya's stands to see if it was just friction.  The answer:  no.  Still eats the bolt.

Here's the bolt.  You can see that at the end of the bolt, the threads become flattened, and eventually they'll no longer screw into the stand.

I suspect that the problem is that the threads on the knob and the threads inside the stand are not the same size, and that's why the knobs are so difficult to install and use, and why they turn to crap so quickly.  To investigate this hypothesis, I took my keyboard stand to Home Depot.

This bolt fits.  It's a 5/16 inch bolt.  It's not metric!

I couldn't find a 5/16" replacement knob with a bolt long enough, but I did have the idea to use an eye bolt--all metal (so it wouldn't break as easily) and easy to twist.  A 5/16" x 4" eye bolt fits great.

Here's my set up with a washer to keep the end of the eye bolt from denting the stand around the hole.

Success for $8.20!  I bought a pair for Bencuya's keyboard and a spare pair.  I think we're back in business.

When Bencuya's keyboard went down on Thursday, I'd called Quik Lok and ordered two more replacement knobs, and they arrived today.  Just as I suspected, they're metric (8x57 MM)!

So...I'm pretty sure that I've solved this crisis.  My final thought, though, is that the threads inside the keyboard might be damaged from repeatedly forcing the wrong bolt into it.  I went ahead and also bought a tap to recut any damaged threads on the inside of the stand, so hopefully it's a clean fit between parts.

What the hell is Quik Lok doing selling a keyboard stand with crucial parts that don't fit?  This is supremely idiotic.



Anyway...Dave and Dave Duo is back at Venkman's this coming Sunday for brunch, 12-3 PM.  Here are a few videos from our previous visit:

Thursday +

Yacht Rock had a pair of gigs Thursday, and then a van ride to north Georgia and back Friday.  I took several naps.

Thursday:  the day began with a morning performance at Timber Ridge Elementary.  We did one of these a few months ago in Nashville.  I'm guessing it was purely a publicity stunt, except we didn't really do much with it on social media, so...there was a guy with a camera from WSB there, too, but we didn't get any coverage (as of yet) because everybody's fixated on the weather.

On to the next thing!  We played our third consecutive Thursday nighter at Venkman's.  I took a nap in the green room between soundcheck and the gig.

As a tribute to Glenn Frey, we added a song from his first solo album.

Nick is on paternity leave for the next six weeks, so Greg's brother Ganesh (of Yacht Rock Schooner fame) is filling in.  He sang lead on this one.

Friday:  we headed to Nashville for a private gig.  This trip was doomed.

I woke up from a nap when we pulled over to deal with a flat tire.

photo cred:  Greg Lee

 As conditions in Tennessee deteriorated, we hung out a convenience store, and finally the gig was called off.  Good thing, too, because an 18 wheeler flipped on the other side of Monteagle.  Who knows what would have happened to us.

I slept the whole way back to Atlanta.  After dividing our gear, we went our separate ways for the weekend.

Dave and Dave!

Dave and Dave Duo made our triumphant return to Venkman's Saturday afternoon.  I kind of wondered if we'd been blacklisted or something, as we'd played there twice in November, and then...nothing.  All the brunch dates in December and January filled up without so much as an inquiry, so I finally spoke up about it.  Anyway, we're back, and I believe we'll do one a month for the next few months.

So...Dave (Ellington) and I tried a few of his newer tunes culled from a recent quartet gig, plus a handful of our old reliables.  Fun stuff!  I felt really good on this one.  I'm going to blame my mistake coming back in at the end of Cold Duck Time on the crowd noise (the sold out puppet show that proceeded us was packed), and my starting Crawdaddy a whole step too high was because I was accustomed to reading concert pitch charts.  Damn.



If you like what you hear, you can come see the David Ellington Quartet (with me) January 30 at Venkman's for brunch, 12-3 PM.  The website says trio, but Ellington says quartet.  http://venkmans.com/event/brunch-w-david-ellington-jazz-trio-2/

Unplugged

Yacht Rock played another Thursday night at Venkman's.  Since Mark Cobb was unavailable, it was decided that we play without drums, hence the "Unplugged."  Not entirely true;  the show was acoustic guitar oriented, but I still played a keyboard, as did Bencuya.

looking cool and probably playing something dumb (photo cred:  Jim Ramsdell)

Beyond that, this was another fun Thursday night.  Since the idea was to pare things down, it was fun to renegotiate our way through these songs in a slightly different format, so I played more hand percussion, played some string parts on organ, and played the Africa solo on flute.

Other random things...

1.  Monkeyboy didn't realize that we were going drummer-less until two songs into soundcheck.

2.  We added Gerry Rafferty's Right Down the Line.  I think it's a keeper!  Then again, I say that about every song we add.

3.  We played David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World, learning it in the green room thirty minutes before we went on stage.  I guess it went ok?  Other than the Young Americans album, I've not been exposed to much David Bowie, so I'd never heard of this song.  Everybody else acted like it was as familiar as something like Hey Jude, so...oops?  Also, I guess Nirvana covered this song--I didn't know that either.  Everybody was annoyed with anyone in the audience who suggested that it was a Nirvana tune.  Uhh...I know nothing.  My interests lie elsewhere, I guess.

4.  A drunk lady got on stage during Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, and in between every line in the verses (sung by Pete), Greg Lee would ask for security.  Our monitor guy Zach (happy birthday Zach!) finally came up and dragged her off.  By the hair, I hope.

5.  Monkey played acoustic guitar into his old TC Electronics pedal, and the thing would randomly shut off every couple of songs.  At one point, he tried to punt it off the stage.  He refused to believe that his power cable might have been going bad.

6.  The keyboard stand company sent me replacement knobs.  I only needed one right now, so the other is ready the next time this happens.

7.  Greg Lee has a new EP out!  I played on one song (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/greglee3/OneKindofLove).

The whole record is great, though.  You should buy ten of them.  Check out his new website here:  http://www.gregleesongs.com

8.  Emergency gig!  The Dave and Dave Duo is back up and running, and we're playing at Venkman's tomorrow afternoon after the puppet show (what?), 1-3 PM.  Who knew that all I had to do was email and ask for more gigs there?