Vegas

The Yacht Rock Revue (plus horns and background vocalists) spent last week in Las Vegas, backing up about a dozen contest winners in a corporate extravaganza for a large hardware store chain.  Our third year performing at this even was different than previous trips--instead of only playing with the "stars," we also played walk-ons and music beds while the executives made speeches and congratulated winners.  It was an incredible, high end production, and no expense was spared.

Saturday:  following my shitty performance at the Dave and Dave Duo gig at Venkman's, I boogied home for around 40 minutes before returning to town to meet the band and head to the airport.  We flew out in the evening and landed around 10 PM in Las Vegas.

A few of us stopped in the sushi restaurant before we left, and the service was so slow that those guys had to chug their drinks and hustle to the gate.

The southwest at night is mostly dark nothingness dotted with the occasional well lit town.  Pretty cool.  It makes you realize how sparsely populated that part of the country is.

Then, you reach Vegas.

Somebody pointed out that the Las Vegas airport baggage claim is immense, two huge rooms of conveyor belts, slot machines, and video boards berating you with ads for shows.  I've never seen more than two baggage carousels in action there at any given time.

Greg Lee brought a luggage cart for his pedal board.  Smart move!  We had to walk pretty far, it'd been a long day, and he's getting older all the time.

Sunday:  first day of rehearsal in Vegas.  We'd done four days of rehearsal in Atlanta before we got here.  The first half of this day was spent building monitor mixes.  In what would prove to be a major difficulty down the line, each song was saved as its own mix, giving us around twenty-five "scenes."  The advantage to this is that you could change what you're hearing from song to song (for instance, if you need a bunch of extra guitar for one song).  The disadvantage is that if you want to make a change to the overall balance in your ears, you have to fix it twenty-five times.

I wonder why we didn't use in ear monitors at the rehearsals in Atlanta and set all of this stuff before we came out west.  We probably could've even used a Yacht Rock show file and augmented it with the extra horns and vocals.  It would have been a pretty good place to start.

The whole situation with our monitors made me appreciate Kip and Zach even more, because their approach is so well thought out and they know how their gear works.  The gear and the set up in Vegas seemed to constantly confound our engineer, even though he presumably requested this specific mixing desk and had a plan for how to use it.

Rob and I were sure it was Monday.  Rich didn't care.

the year's horn section: Rob Opitz (trumpet), Richard Sherrington (trombone), and me

 I hope that no one I know made this sign.  Also, doesn't autocorrect prevent atrocities like this from happening?

Two panoramas of my hotel--easily one of the best hotel rooms I've ever had.

I went for a run in between rehearsal and dinner.  The famous Las Vegas sign was in the median about a mile south of our hotel (Mandalay Bay).  There's a parking lot (also in the median), and buses pull up around the clock so people can jump out and have their photos taken.  I always thought it was just a sign on the side of the road out in the desert.

Monday:  Our call time wasn't until lunch,  affording me a little time to run up the strip.

I like the "TIPS" sign tucked in the bib.  Chucky was disappointed that all I had was my room key.

More of the same stuff at rehearsal as yesterday.  Rich had already memorized the charts, so his iPad was for tuning.  Free wifi meant he could also watch the "football" (soccer) game.

Monday night was our first rehearsal in the arena.  It's super cool to play in a room like this.

Unfortunately, we had big problems with the monitors.  After an our an a half of this (somebody pointed out that the local crew was union and they were racking up the overtime), we were released without playing a single song.

The horns took a field trip to another casino to see a very slick show band called Santa Fe and the Fat City Horns.  Nifty arrangements!

Tuesday:  back to the rehearsal studio.  This year we also had a group of professional dancers (several if not all of whom are doing Cirq du Soleil shows in Vegas) added in for a few songs.  They were incredible!  Since they were all in one place for our rehearsal, they spent a little bit of time running through a light show for a separate performance.

Each dancer had two light wands, and each wand received information from a computer synced to music, so as they swung them, the patterns changed.  At first it was fire, then it was a pattern, then they were solid colors, and finally words.  How cool is that!

The rest of rehearsal was spent fixing and tweaking and fixing and tweaking monitor mixes again and again and again.  All kinds of problems with the mixes.

Also, the occasional break.

I went for another run after rehearsal.  At the north end of the strip, there's a similar sign to its more famous counterpart.

There's a roller coaster on top of this (Stratosphere).  No thank you.

The north end also has more wedding chapels and rough looking motels--the kind that advertise jacuzzis and free ESPN.

Elvis was here.

Other stuff on the strip:

This guy's whole act was to try to climb out of the planter along the sidewalk, then slide back into the bushes.  Over and over, working for tips.

Wednesday:  rehearsal in the arena again!  

Here's Rich trying to take a picture of us looking at ourselves on the giant video board behind us.

Probably fixing monitor mixes again.

(photo cred Keisha Jackson)

 Regardless of the mix, it's still an amazing experience.

Thursday:  Show day!  Everybody delivered--it couldn't have gone any better.  The in ear mixes weren't great, but they were stable, so we could play fine.  I only had to rip them out once.

Post gig, I went for a run.  With all this money I just made on this gig (and approximately twenty hours to kill in Vegas)...

I had chicken teriyaki for dinner, and then $9.57 worth of frozen yogurt for dessert.  I also wasted $5 pretending to gamble.

The wrap party was pretty low key.

We played pool and drank beer and shouted over the DJ.

Friday:  I went for a walk, trying to kill time until the our noon check out.  Vegas had fantastic weather the entire time we were out here.

Early in the flight.

Later in the flight.

Delta showed the newest Star Wars movie, unfortunately not on seat back displays.  This was good enough to pass the time, though.

Back in Atlanta, standing around at the airport at 10 PM on a Friday night.  Wooooo.

Dave and Dave

Dave and I played a brunch at Venkman's, once again jumping on stage immediately after the puppet show ended.

Rough gig.  I couldn't get anything going, and I had more than a few mental errors.  Not my best playing.

Thursday

Thursday was another corporate event--this time, a fundraiser for a recycling center in Atlanta.  Pretty painless, though we did have many familiar faces in the crowd to help us along.

The vendor meals came in plastic boxes, the beer was in cans and bottles, the cups were paper, and the water was bottled.  To the best of my knowledge, we recycled none of it.  Not off to a good start.

Soundcheck.  Kip demonstrated his singular drum technique.

Ready to go.

Hanging out between sets.

photo cred:  Peter Olson!

On the way back to Marietta, I got stuck in a massive traffic jam at I-75 and I-285.  This lane closing, the rain falling on my gear in the back of the truck, my urgent need to pee, and the fact that the "need gasoline" light had come on a while ago called for evasive maneuvers, so I bailed onto 285 to Cobb Parkway.  At least that solved some of my problems.

Tuesday

Woo!  Tuesday night gig!

But first, a little bit of gear maintenance:  my Nord (the red keyboard) has been jumping out of the cleats that hold it in place inside the case, so I added some extra foam to the inside of the lid to hopefully hold it down.  I also made two blocks of foam to add to The Great Bencuya's Nord keyboard case.  Hopefully that will keep the keyboards from banging around inside the cases.

So...we had a gig at the Aquarium, in the ballroom.  The belugas are doing well.

This was another one of those low excitement corporate gigs.  They pay really well, though, so I can only complain so much.  It was weird to me, though, that they used the entire ballroom (which is pretty big), but they only had a couple of hundred people there.

As I was dragging my gear out at the end of the night, some dude from the party asked if I was the drummer.

"No."

"Wait--you play the, uh, skin flute!" (and pantomimed playing the EWI).

"No.  I was the keyboard player."  Not entirely untrue.  

Birmingham

Yacht Rock travelled to Birmingham, Alabama for the first time to play a show at Saturn, a really nice room in a gentrified neighborhood on the east side of town.

This is a great place to play!  Easy load in, big stage, good size room.

To add to the great performance space, there is a large apartment upstairs that serves as the green room, complete with pool table, kitchen, two and a half baths, couches, a record player, and lots of beds.  For a hundred bucks, the band can spend the night there.  Wow!

I remember this thing from my childhood, but I don't remember what it did.  Now it's a lamp.

We ate around the corner at a restaurant called Wasabi Juan, which was (as you might guess) a sushi and Mexican restaurant.  Total stoner food.  I had some kind of Thai-spring roll-burrito thing, with a chips and salsa as a side.  It was different, but good.

The was an entertaining gig.  My only really bad moment was on (ironically) Couldn't Get it Right, where I had a major brain fart and couldn't recall what I was supposed to play during the verse.  Everything else was pretty solid.

We spent the night upstairs, which was really convenient--Kip decided that it would be best to leave the gear in the building instead of loading it into the trailer, so no load out and no driving after the show.

The bed I chose, was unfortunately dirty--when I pulled the sheet back to climb in, there was...uh...plenty of someone else's body hair on the sheets.  Hmm...not sure how worked up I should be about that.  I decided it was too late to go searching for a different place, so I slept on top of the sheet, under the blanket and a sleeping bag.

We woke up early on Sunday morning with the intention of fueling up at the coffee shop downstairs before our return to Atlanta, but it didn't open until 10  AM.  What?  What kind of coffee shop isn't open Sunday morning?  Where's the brunch crowd?  Ugh.  We had to drive a few miles to find caffeine.  Not cool.  Plus, I left the green room bananas on the counter, so we had none to eat on the way home.  Booooo.

Dud

A dud of a gig last night for a bunch of doctors.  A couple of sets of us playing while they stood around in the back of the room and talked.

nobody on the dance floor for "Power of Love"

Highlights:

1.  Easy load in

2.  Monkeyboy's new amp logo (designed by Kip)

3.  Easy load out

Georgia Music Day

Yacht Rock was recruited to close out the ceremonies at Georgia Music Day at the state capital building Wednesday.  I really don't know exactly what the specifics of the day were--as usual, I showed up and did what I was told.

photo cred:  Peter Olson

We played Brandy acoustically (acoustic guitars, bas, shaker, saxophone, and a single keyboard), most of us planted in a line on wooden stools.  As we launched into the song, I noticed that everyone except Nick had a microphone.  He strode directly to the podium and performed the entire song like he was delivering a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was amazing.  In a room full of big time music people, Nick laid claim to being the baddest motherfucker in the room.

500 Songs

Yacht Rock ended the weekend with a nice afternoon gig at Park Tavern, part of a food and music festival for 500 Songs for Kids.  It was a really comfortable show, playing for a crowd sprinkled with friends and familiar faces.  On top of that, there were twenty-something restaurants present, and I did my best to eat all the tacos and gumbo available.

It was really weird to load out of the Park Tavern when the sun was still up, though.

Duo at Oglethorpe

David Ellington and I played an afternoon duo gig at Oglethorpe University Saturday afternoon.  I'm not sure what the occasion was.  We were background music for some type of reception in the student center (which is beautiful, by the way).

Special thanks to the student who, with a mouth full of food, leaned across the organ to tell Ellington we needed to stop at 4:30 so her boss could do something.  He spent the break wiping that off.

Also thank you to Mr. Enthusiasm, whose dragging claps on two and four almost brought one tune to a halt.  Later on when he yelled for Mr. Magic from across the room, I knew we were in trouble, and soon after that when he sat down in front of us a sang Oye Como Va at full volume while I was soloing, I almost screamed.  I bet your teenage son was really proud of you.

Anyway...most of this is really good.  Check it out.

Madness in Athens

Yacht Rock was back in Athens Friday night, this time for a private party at a country club.  We were there plenty early to set everything up, soundcheck, and eat (we headed out to an excellent Mexican restaurant).  By the time we returned, the audience was pretty drunk and disorderly--lots of really bitchy demands for the hand percussion, people falling onto the stage, people trying to get on stage, one girl swinging a guitar cable like a jump rope while the guitar was being played, and a woman who repeatedly slapped Pete in the leg with a party favor while he was trying to play.  When we're the sane ones who are scolding people over their behavior, that's saying something!  

There's a special sort of attitude that comes around when alcohol meets affluence, the kind of thing that makes you wonder how they'd like it if we came to their jobs during the week, sat on their desks, spilled a beer, yelled at them when they were on the phone, and insisted on using their computer to look at porn.  It's all in good fun until it's no longer fun.

Anyway, all's well that ends well;  ninety-eight percent of those people were harmless.  We finished up at 1 AM (a rare three set night!), packed the trailer, and headed back to Atlanta.  Home at 4:05 AM.

More Keyboard Stand Crap

The keyboard stand thing continues to frustrate Mark Bencuya and me.  In Houston last week, my eyebolt solution took a hit when one of the bolts failed--the threads had once again flattened out in one spot, and thus would not tighten properly.  We swapped it for a fresh eyebolt and played the gig.

However, I'm still wondering: why?  I brought Bencuya's stand home, retapped the threads in the stand, cleaned up the threads on the eyebolts, and reinstalled everything.  I could already see, though, that the threads were beginning to flatten out in one spot just from one gig, so it is only a matter of time before it needs more repair.

In checking my own keyboard stand, my eyebolts began to hop off the threads right then.  It made me wonder:  if the threads in the stand are good and the threads on the bolt are good (and their sizes match), what is causing the bolt to deform when they are tightened?

I now believe that the root of the problem is a strong spring that fits in the joint of the keyboard stand.  When the bolt is tightened, the spring is putting too much force on the threads, causing them to flatten and eventually fail.

No springs for me, and even after tightening and loosing these bolts several times, the threads still look good.  Maybe this is the solution?  I'm less sure of this than ever.