Nashville + Indy

On the road again!  Yacht Rock made stops in Nashville and Indianapolis last weekend.  Dig it:

Thursday:  We hadn't made it far up I-75 before we stopped for gas.  When we did, we discovered that the cap on one of the trailer axles had come off, exposing the bearings to the world.  This has happened to us before, and it's not pretty.  All of the grease is spun out and the bearings burn up.  Very fortunately for us, we happened to be at an exit with a truck/trailer repair place, who sent us up to the next exit to another trailer repair place.  The new cap cost us $5.   Back to my nap.

We arrived at the City Winery in Nashville a little bit late (which caused us to miss our field trip to the RCA A Room, a legendary recording studio which would have been really cool to check out).  Too bad.  More importantly, we had to deal with the trailer of gear.  By this photo, I would say it was not my best packing job of the suitcases.

Pretty easy load in.  We were set up in a decent amount of time.  I also had enough time after soundcheck to thoroughly warm up.  Maybe it's a coincidence, but I had a much better time on saxes and flutes tonight.

I guess City Winery gives you commemorative bottles of wine when you play their room.  Nifty.

So...City Winery.  The load in is painless, the on stage sound is good, and the green room is nice, but the layout of the room is very weird.  The room fans out in an arc from the stage, and directly in front are tables that line up like spokes on a wheel.  Halfway back, they put up a barrier/fence, and behind that is standing room.  The seated people tend to be very reserved and the standing room people go nuts, so from the stage you can hear the roar of the crowd, but can't see where it's coming from.  The last time we played here, they didn't put up the fence halfway, and as the night progressed, standing room people made their way down between the tables.  Mayhem!  I understand that the table people are worth more money to the venue (they buy more food and drink), but I wish there was a way to give the standing room people access to the stage.

The setlist, with a little love for our Nashville friend Scott Sheriff.

Friday:  We stopped for gas somewhere in Kentucky, and a dude who may have just been a dude, or may have been the local distributor, gave us a two six packs of local ale.  All based off of his conversation with a few of us while waiting to pee.

We crossed into Indiana right around noon.

Lunch was Mexican food at some hole in the wall place.  Very good!  My only complaint would be their posters advertising dessert.  There's no desert in southern Indiana.

Controversy of the day:  we left at 10 AM instead of the original 9 AM, opting to sleep more and show up less early.  We made it to the back door of the The Vogue in Indianapolis a half hour late.  Oops.  By the time we'd dragged our gear in and set everything up, we were right up against the time to open the doors to the public.

Friday (today) was at one point a gig in either Cincinnati or Louisville, but we couldn't find a suitable venue, so then it was going to be a day off in Nashville or Indy.  Two weeks ago, we settled on playing a night of Beatles in Indy at The Vogue.   Sweet.

I did my big warm up again before the gig.

Pre-gig, The Great Bencuya and I walked around the corner to the Cuban place for sandwiches.  Though I'd eaten a ton of food at lunch, I was concerned that by midnight, I'd be falling apart with no good options available.  This hit the spot.

Kip joined us, demonstrating how to eat without wasting any energy holding the sandwich.

This show was not particularly well attended (less than two hundred), but I was relieved to be playing tonight instead of sitting in a hotel room or running around wasting money somewhere trying to pass the time.  The Beatles show is almost as much fun to play as Yacht Rock.    Plus, no loading in gear tomorrow (or loading out tonight!).

The Indiana guys (Nick, Pete, and Cobb) all spent the night with their parents, so the rest of us headed to the hotel after the show.  I'm glad that I ate the Cuban sandwich so that the vending machine wouldn't be responsible for providing dinner.

Saturday:  We slept late and killed time until our 3:30 PM lobby call.  The Weinermobile was parked at the hotel next to ours.

On our way to The Vogue we passed a Yat's (a chain of New Orleans style restaurants in Indiana that I love, even though the one in Columbus uses instant rice, which is gross and shameful), and the Jazz Kitchen, one of Indy's jazz clubs.  When I was in college, a carload of us drove up from Bloomington to see Chris Potter right as he was starting to become famous.  I remember he was playing on #4 or #5 reeds (he said it hurt for weeks before he got used to it), and we cornered him after the show to ask him music school student questions.

Another nifty tidbit that I hadn't noticed at the time:  Mark Buselli was playing that night--his name is on the poster right above the SUV windshield.  Mark was a grad student when I was an underclassman.  My college roommate could do a hysterical impression of him, and the thought of it still makes me smile twenty years later.

More alcohol with our names on it?  Reports from the more experienced beer drinkers said that this was pretty bitter.  I think Zach (our excellent monitor guy) ended up drinking most of it.

The Vogue is great, but if they could figure out how to make the dressing room big enough to accommodate more than one person, it'd really help.  Fortunately, the weather was nice enough that we could hang out by the stage door before the show.  We have the same conversation every time we're here--"How does [whatever famous band] handle this shitty green room?"  We're guessing they use their touring vehicle as the green room.  It's a bit like loading into Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta.  Every time you drag your gear up those rickety back stairs, you wonder why the venue has never done anything to improve what is otherwise a great gig experience.

This show sold out--in fact, it sold out a while ago.  The first set was a private benefit, and then they opened the doors to the general public.

It was a very long night, but very cool to play for a thousand people crammed into the room.  Indy loves us, and vice versa.  We'll be back soon!

Sunday:  7 AM shuttle to the airport for our flight back to Atlanta.  Getting up that early wrecked me.  Better than spending the day riding home in the van, though.

Friday Night Lights

I got a call about subbing Friday night in the pit of a musical at a playhouse south of Atlanta.  Sure!   I thought when I began playing professionally that this would be the bulk of my work, since my degree was in multiple woodwind performance (flute, clarinet, saxophone).  This job was for flute and clarinet (and a tiny bit of piccolo in the opener), so...right up my alley!  I got the book late Wednesday night, hacked through it once before bed (approximately 100 pages), played through it one and a half times Thursday, hit the really tough stuff Friday, and then jumped into traffic and headed to the playhouse.

Fortunately, in checking out photos of the playhouse, I noticed that it was outdoors!  Yikes.  Friday night was in the low 50s, making acoustic instruments that much more challenging.   We were basically a little carnival set up in a pasture in the middle of nowhere south of Atlanta.  Kind of weird.

So, here's what I walked into:  the "pit" was in the tent in the photo below.  I showed up a few hours before the "curtain" and the music director took me through a crash course of the show.  The musicians were three strings (violin, cello, bass), three woodwinds (flute/clarinet/picc, oboe/english horn, bassoon), and two keyboardists (one also being the conductor/music director).  Not too bad for blitzing through the book, and I thought, "No sweat!  The tent will keep us warm."  I'd dressed in several layers, and I was fine.  Here's hoping I hadn't destroyed my face by practicing this stuff almost non-stop from Wednesday night until showtime.

 

Around ten minutes before showtime, the MD opened the flap between us and the stage.  Noooooooo!  Cold air came pouring in.  The strings kept tuning with their phones, and at first I wondered why, but in thinking about it, they were going to try and hold the pitch up to the electronic keyboards.  Hmm.  I would be going long-ish stretches of playing either flute or clarinet, and then picking up the other (which would be cold and flat).  I was doomed!  I pushed my flute and picc headjoints all the way in, put on my shortest clarinet barrel, and hoped for the best.

The first set began at what felt like a frantic pace--it always takes some time for me to get used to the pacing of playing a show, and trying to read the music, follow the conductor, watch for instrument switches, and follow the penciled in notes and cuts was difficult.  Plus, the violin, oboe, and I were about a mile apart in terms of pitch.  I was hanging on for dear life, and then around three or four songs into the first act, my stand light faded out over about three seconds.  Just like that, the whole pit had lost power!  No stand lights, and more importantly, no keyboards filling out the music!  HOLY SHIT!

The actors on stage were unaware (the power outage seemed to only affect us) so they kept glaring at us like WHAT THE HELL ARE Y'ALL DOING!  The MD kept frantically texting the tech people across the stage, and eventually settled into conducting.  I just about had my nose pressed to the music--only the violinist had a battery powered stand light.  In between songs, the cellist ran to her car and returned with a battery powered stand light as well.  That gave the tent a little bit of light.  I could kind of see the left pages of the music in my binder, but the right page was in the left side's shadow.    I tried to figure out a way to angle my phone at the page, but in my lap it would only point up.

The show continued unabated.  At one point I was completely lost, hoping to see enough notes to figure out where we were.  Got it!  I know where we are!  Unfortunately, I had the wrong instrument in hand.  Thank god the rest of the people in the tent had already played a dozen shows and knew what was supposed to be happening.  I was in and out, trying to read the music, hacking up parts, looking over at the conductor, losing my place, back in the music, trying to line up the tuning in the cold, nailing something, guessing.  I was all over the place.

We sat there in the dark, trying to give any musical support six freezing acoustic instruments could provide to the cast.  During dialogue, we could hear a motor trying over and over to start.  Over and over, but it wouldn't catch.  Another skeleton of a song, and then silence, and then the motor would chug-chug-chug, but it wouldn't kick in.  I found out later that the center of this entire nightmare was a generator that had run out of gas.  Once they'd refilled the tank, the engine was cold and didn't want to go back to work.

After probably forty-five minutes, we were limping through the Act 1 finale when all of the sudden...wirrrr...my stand light came back to life!  HOORAY!  Silent cheers from the pit.  The keyboards came back and we finished with renewed enthusiasm.

Everybody seemed a little shellshocked on the break.  Because it's me (and it wasn't my fault), deep down inside I thought this was all really funny, of course.  I mean, I know I needed to be focused on doing my job--subbing on a gig like this is really difficult!--but this was a fantastic disaster.  If we'd all laughed about it, we'd probably have felt better.

On the outside, I ate my apple in silence and hoped that I wouldn't freeze to death.

In the middle of the intermission, the power went out again, so they decided to plug us into a different generator powering the other side of the stage.  Back in business!

Act 2 was much better.  The pitch settled down, the MD settled down, and I felt much more in sync with the ensemble.  Also, I could see my part.  Also, the parts were easier in Act 2.  Whatever--I was better!  However, my feet went numb from the cold, my fingers got slower and slower, and my legs were shaking.  In between songs, I sat on my hands to try and keep them warm enough to move.

Random thought:  oboists are the squirrels of a pit orchestra.  Every time I looked back there, she was working on a reed with her knife, pulling a swab through her instrument, adjusting a screw on her instrument, blowing spit out of a tone hole, texting somebody.  The whole night, she used every spare second to do something other than pay attention to the action on stage.  I kind of expected to look back and see her cooking something, or dissecting the bassonist's frozen body.

At the end of Act 2, the lights started to droop again for a second, in they went out again in the last eight measures of exit music.  We made it, though.  The music ended, and the eight of us packed up quietly and left, like walking away from the casket at a funeral internment.

I hopped in my truck (which started!) and turned the thermostat over to heat to warm my feet.  The knob broke off, plastic pieces falling into the darkness on the floorboard.  Time to go home.

Sold Out

Yacht Rock is back in Atlanta today following last weekend's run of sold out shows in the northeast.  Here's a quick recap:

Thursday:  We flew to Boston for our show at The Sinclair in Cambridge.  This show had been sold out for a month or so (550 in attendance).

The flight was uneventful (I fell asleep just after take off), but the decent into Boston was a little rough--very windy and the plane was making a strange noise.

Kip and Zach picked us up in the van and trailer and we headed to Cambridge, where a prime parking spot awaited us.  Unfortunately, a truck was there unloading food for the restaurant.  Fortunately, the guy had the most awesomely stereotypical Bahstan accent.  We enjoyed that a lot.

We were early to load in, so after the truck moved and we parked in our spot, everybody broke up for lunch.  A few of us went to an Italian restaurant down the street.

After lunch, we still had two hours to kill, so I walked around Cambridge and Harvard.

Harvard Yard!

This was our first regular Yacht Rock gig in three weeks.  In that period we'd played a lot together (the thing in Vegas, Dark Side of the Moon/Abbey Road), but there was definitely a little bit of rust on our show!  I felt like I was a split second off for most of the first set.

Regardless, it was an outstanding crowd and a really solid first show.  The second set felt better than the first, and we gave into the rabid fans and encored with Baker Street.  I'm so happy that Boston has become one of our regular stops in the northeast!

There a couple of clips of Baker Street floating around on Instagram, one of which captures the moment where I flubbed a note in the riff.  What crappy luck!

Post show sugar rush:  waffles that had been fried and topped like doughnuts.

Friday:  on to New York City!  We stopped in New Haven, Connecticut at Modern Apizza for lunch.  Their Italian Bomb pizza (sausage, pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, onions, pepper, and garlic) was fantastic, and much more appetizing than the Clams Casino pizza (made with real clams!) that Monkeyboy insisted on ordering.   I'm pretty sure I ate half a pizza (an apizza?) here.  Totally worth it.

Our New York show at Irving Plaza featured Steve Augeri and Robbie Dupree.  As it was April 1, we also worked out our April Fools show opener.  It looked like this (you have to sit through about a 65 seconds of us coming out on stage).



In between the soundcheck and the gig, I ran around the corner and bought socks and a belt, as I had left my accessories (hat, shades, belt, socks) out of my stage clothes bag.  Bad, bad stupidity.

Here's a couple of random things about this gig:

1.  Tenor reeds...I use synthetic reeds on the Yacht Rock gig because I have to pick up my horn after it's been sitting for an hour or more and have it make sound.  A traditional reed would dry out.  The plastic reeds that I like are ok, but I can't quite decide whether I like the medium or medium hard strength.  On this trip, I only brought the mediums.  One gig into this run, and I wish I'd brought the medium hards as well.  My reeds felt bleah, like there wasn't enough resistance to deal with the air I was putting in the horn.  The medium hard reeds often feel a little too strong, though.  I need a medium kinda hard.

2.  Crappy solos on Takin' it to the Streets.  Good solos on Robbie's I'm No Stranger.  I like playing that one a lot.

3.  I was asked to learn a new harmony part for Lovin', Touchin', Squeezing' at soundcheck.  I had it fine, but I was worried that in the three hours between soundcheck and playing that song at the end of the second set, I'd forget it.  For some reason I had it in my head that the part started on A (then F# and E), and when it came around on the gig, I tried like hell to make those three notes fit...unsuccessfully.  After about three attempts, it clicked that the part started on B (then A and then F#).  Damn.   The right notes sounded so much better, and it was so much easier to sing.  I suck.

4.  Zach mutes my keyboards when Nick is playing them and I'm out front on saxophone (otherwise, that's all I'd be able to hear), but sometimes he forgets to unmute them when I return.  This was the case on Robbie's Hot Rod Hearts, which I played with no sound--just looking at my hands and trying to hear it in my head.

This show sold out!  1,100 people on a Friday night in New York felt really great.  As always, we rose to the occasion and delivered an awesome show.  Robbie and Steve were both in perfect form and the crowd was electric!    Now that I'm comfortable on Robbie's other songs, they are fun to play, and the Journey stuff with Steve can't be topped.  Don't Stop Believing felt like we were on the verge of a riot.

After the show, we drove about an hour north of the city to our hotel in Connecticut.  Unfortunately, their computer system was down.  The first room assigned to Monkey and me was occupied (which I'm sure was great for the occupants when we tried to open the door and 2 AM).  We went back downstairs and got a new room.  The room keys wouldn't work for that room.  We went back and got another set of room keys.  Back upstairs.  Those didn't work.  Monkey went back downstairs, and the security guy came and let us in the room.

Still without a functioning set of room keys, we were confined to our room until the next day.

"Sleeping" in the hallway outside our room, waiting on the overnight security guy to let us in.

Saturday:  I need coffee in order to live.  The guy at the front desk finally got us a set of room keys, and not a moment too soon, because after trying unsuccessfully for 10 minutes to order a cup of coffee from the bar in the restaurant, I gave up and walked up the street to McDonald's.  Shitty coffee is better than no coffee at all.  Norwalk, CT, I love you but you're bringing me down.

The gig of the day was a birthday party for a friend of the band at a mansion in Connecticut.  Robbie came with us to load in and soundcheck, and spent a good chunk of the down time amusing us with a ditty inspired by Kip's spot for his mixing console called The Bar Becomes the Barrier (Eee Oh Eee Oh Eee Oh).   The only other line I can remember off the top of my head was She was too big/I could not marry her/Eee Oh Eee Oh Eee Oh.

As is often the case with these kinds of gigs, we had a good time and didn't work too hard.  The first set included special guests Robbie Dupree and Steve Augeri (former lead singer of Journey!).  The birthday boy joined us on drums for a few songs in the second set.

It's quite a house!

Load out was quick (everything in the trailer in under an hour) because of bad weather on the way.  We went back to the hotel in Norwalk and fell asleep to the sound of thunderstorms.

Sunday:  We woke up to a light dusting of snow (and a lot of wind), and after a quick coffee stop at Starbucks, pointed the van south.  Destination:  Washington, DC.

By the time we'd pulled into the loading dock at The Hamilton, our DC show had sold out (700 people).

The Hamilton is an exquisite venue.  I don't think we've ever had a bad show there.  My in ear mix was the best of the weekend here.

My flute face sucked real bad on this one.  I had trouble with the first note everytime the Lowdown riff came along, and the piccolo slipped off my lip on Call Me Al.

Post gig, the manager took us up on the roof for a quick look around Washington at night.  Pretty cool.  I bet the snipers on the roof of the White House were happy to see us.

We drove to Baltimore to spend the night.  Mark Cobb was as sick as a dog.

Monday:  Fly day.  The end!