Less Than Total Recall

Another wild weekend of travel and hot gigs.  Here's what I remember:

Wednesday:  Knowing that I would basically not be home for anything until Sunday, I stayed up late Tuesday night tying up a bunch of loose ends.  Unfortunately, that meant that I only got about three hours of sleep before it was time to get up and run downtown for a commercial shoot.

Yacht Rock was invited to rework our original song Can't Wait for Summer and star in a commercial for the Atlanta Streetcar.  I believe they're trying to have it finished by the end of June.

I was asked later where we went on the streetcar, and I really have no idea.  We traveled the 2.7 mile loop, but I kept falling asleep when the I wasn't directly involved in a shot!  Groups of extras and a couple of band members got off at a few of the spots and shot things outside of the train.  Here's my bit at Woodruff Park.  It was, I guess, a nice break from enduring questions from people who had no idea who we were and why we were there, or--even worse--the frat boy who engaged me in conversation by saying, "I played saxophone in eighth grade."  I never now how to politely respond to super dumb shit like that.  I suppose, "Me too!" would've been effective.  Later in the shoot, he followed up with, "I always preferred alto,"...like I care.

photo by Peter Olson

Enough of that!  We finished up just after noon, changed and ate lunch, and then piled in the van for our trip to Sea Island for a private show Thursday night.  Dinner was in Pooler, GA.

Thursday:  We spent the night in Brunswick, GA, in a hotel right off I-95.  It's safe to say that we all slept pretty late.  I went for a run before we headed off to Sea Island.  It's already too hot!

Lunch included a nice spread of our usual backstage fruit, trail mix, and beer, plus BBQ.  We all signed this guitar (a door prize at the evening's big event) on the way out to the stage.

Golf carting to the stage!

Here's the view out the back of the stage.  Low tide was very stinky.

Off the front of the stage:

We were set up in an area right off the driving range.  At the time that we began setting up, the winds off the ocean were pretty strong--so much so that wind noise kind of wrecked everybody's monitor mixes.  Later on (after a brief sprinkle of rain), things calmed down quite a bit.  By nightfall, the ocean breeze and the temperature were perfectly agreeable.

photo by Peter Olson

After sound checking ourselves, we rehearsed with almost all of the guests (Eddie Money declined the invitation).  Everybody else:  Mickey Thomas and Stephanie Calvert from Starship;  Steve Augeri from Journey;  Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss from Player; Matthew Wilder; and Robbie Dupree.  

photo by Peter Olson

 Sterling came by to hang around off the side of the stage.  Great dog!

Pre gig picture with most of the guests.  Neither Eddie Money nor the Starship guys hung out with us.

photo courtesy of Matthew Wilder

A little backstage warming up.

photo by Peter Olson

I was doing well until we got to Matthew Wilder's Kid's American.  In between the last double chorus and the outro sax solo, there's sixteen measures of groove.  I got excited about trying to mow down front row of people and left those sixteen measures out, and as soon as I laid into the first note, I knew I was wrong.  The only thing to do was keep going.

The only other songs that worried me were the Starship songs Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now and Sara.  I didn't lay an egg on either song, but neither is comfortable, even after a couple of weeks of working on them.

Eddie Money appeared side stage during the Starship songs.  He was in pretty good form for his songs, and we got another dose of his jokes/stage banter, which Greg mentally filed away for use on Yacht Rock gigs.  Eddie's only Spinal Tap moment was that he thought we were in Jacksonville, and made mention of it a couple of times.  In his defense, it was probably a lovely night in Florida, too.

photo by Zach Wetzel

Here's my best story from this trip:  we finished the show and people from the audience began to congregate off the side of the stage for pictures.  A drunk girl came over and asked a few of us to sign her chest.  Monkeyboy almost ruined it by insisting that she expose more boob, declaring that he was unwilling to sign her neck.  No nipples or anything, but she pulled the front of her sundress down more.  Awesome.  David B Freeman sliding off her right boob and into her cleavage.  I gave her the Sharpie back, and we turned around and took several photos with the stars and various guests.  Three minutes later, I stood up (I'd been kneeling in the photos), turned around, and there she is again.  "Do you want to sign my boobs?"  "Hell yeah!"  So, David B Freeman right across her left breast.  Bam.  Here's your Sharpie.

Load out:  we made a big pile of gear, and then it was loaded into wagons pulled by tractors.  Zach met them at the trailer and packed everything.

I have no explanation for this, but it was funny at the time.

Friday:  back on the road, back to Atlanta.  We did our annual show at the Druid Hills Golf Club--always a very relaxed night.

New gear!  Mark Cobb's new butt kicker showed up.  For those who may not know what this is:  the green box is an amplifier.  Kip and Zach send him a low frequency signal (mostly coming from the bass guitar and kick drum), and the amplifier shakes his drum throne so he feels it much more than he would be able to if only using his in ear monitors.  This is a brand new system.  It looks fantastic.

This gig...I had a hard time getting going.  The whole first set, I was mentally about a half second late.  Maybe I was still a little burned out from the night before.  The second set was better.  Good crowd, and Druid Hills is always nice to us.  I went home with a boatload of bananas.

Saturday:  after a good night's sleep, it was time to get going again, this time to Lake Lanier for a show in Gainesville.  Nick was out, so Greg Lee rotated to the lead singer position and Rob Henson subbed on bass.

But first...another new keyboard stand!

This is the stand we (Bencuya and I) used in Iowa last month that we both liked.  It has the same features as the stands we currently use, but the construction is much better.  I think we have a winner!

I drove an hour and a half to get to the gig, and Kip advised that in a half hour, the weather would get bad.  Correct!  The deluge almost washed us off the stage.  I had set up most of my stuff, but there was enough of a warning to get almost everything back in its case before the storm hit.

The storm was over within ten minutes, but because it blew water everywhere, we had to take everything off the stage and let the local crew attempt to dry it.

After a second, less powerful shower, the crew attempted to once again dry the stage (there was no way we could lay in electricity down with that much standing water).

In the mean time, we waited.  Pete suggested that we try and play with less gear so that we could clear the stage quickly if another thunderstorm popped up unexpectedly.  It was a tough call--the organizer guy was definitely not happy about that option.  Ultimately, we decided to go for it with full gear, but quit early if the weather threatened again.  The local guys came through with a drum kit so that Mark Cobb wouldn't have to risk any of his gear.

Monkeyboy took his in ear monitors home Friday night and forgot to bring them, so he used Pete's regular old headphones.  I think he might have liked this option too much!

Here we go!  We played 8-9:30 PM--one regular set and a short second set.  The setting was pretty cool--this was the setting for the Olympic rowing and kayaking events in 1996.  All of the tables were full (even with the earlier thunderstorm) and maybe twenty boats were tied up behind us.

When we finished (but before the encore), about half the people booed us.  I'm not sure if that was a "Don't stop now!  This is amazing!" boo or a "Y'all haven't played a long enough second set and you're pussies about the weather!" boo.  Regardless, we packed up and got away from there in record time.  I hope it poured after we were gone.

Here's a brief article about the show:  http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/m/section/6/article/117330/


We have a slow week ahead.  The next gig is Saturday night in Duluth, GA:  http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/entertainment/duluth-concert-series-features-three-bands-one-place/article_f10e27fc-9c74-56e0-910e-05bc449db4cf.html

The Heat is On

Summer is definitely here.  Yacht Rock played two indoor shows and one outdoor show last weekend, and all three were approximately the same temperature.

First up:  keyboard stand crap.

The Great Bencuya and I are still looking around for a better keyboard stand.  While we like the model we've currently got (the Quik Lok 642), neither of us is completely sold on its sturdiness.  The "eyebolt solution" (you can read about that here) for the knobs seems to be acceptable at the moment, but I still worry about it them every time we begin setting up gear.  I mean EVERY TIME.  So, we (I) are investigating other options before these fall apart.

This week's contender:  the On Stage Stands Two Tiered Z Stand.

Pretty cool.  Definitely more robust, and the knobs all turn (all fifteen of them).  You can certainly customize the width of the stand and the heigh and angle of the top keyboard.

My first big problem with this sucker:  the stand height.  It's either going to be around four and a half inches lower than what I'm used to...

...or around three inches higher than what I'm used to, meaning I would have to sit really low, or really high.  If it's really low, your knees also bang into the cross pieces.

Why this thing sucks, exhibit B:  want to break it down and get it off the stage?  Your options are to completely disassemble it...

Or leave it in two large, awkward pieces.  I read online that some dudes say, "Well, it takes a little more time, but it's totally worth it because the stand is rock solid."  I'm not so sure I agree.  I like the idea that the thing gets small enough that you could put it in some sort of case for transporting, but it took me almost five minutes to build the thing.  I can get the X stand that we currently use in position in under a minute.

It's cool, but I think it's a stand that stays set up in your studio or a steady gig on a TV show or something, or you have a roadie.  Perhaps he is barefoot.

More shit I read on the internet about this stand:  if you drill more holes in the vertical parts of the Z, you can have any height your keyboard heart desires.  Sooooo...I drilled, bringing the bottom keyboard to the same height as the not-so-beloved X stand.  Hmmm.

Even after all that, I'm still not convinced that's the way to go.  I still bang my knees on the cross braces, transporting it seems like a pain, and if we used backline gear and asked for this stand, would I also have to request a drill so I could get it to a comfortable position?  I think the search shall continue.  There's a Quik Lok 742 (which we used and liked in our recent visit to Iowa) headed my way via Amazon.

On to the gigs!

Saturday:  a wedding for some Yacht Rock fans at Paris on Ponce.  There was a time when I liked Paris on Ponce, but that time has ended.  There's no parking, the load in terrible (though we no longer have to push our gear through the maze that is the antique store to get to the room), the place is dark, and there's no where to change.  The signs in the bathroom are funny, though!  Maybe I'm just bitching because it took me over an hour to get there (a 35 minute trip normally).

We got an emergency text from Nick saying he forgot that we had to play Sailing by Christopher Cross.  Something about that string intro scares the shit out of me...probably because of the one time at Variety Playhouse when it was next on the setlist and my mind when blank.

To make matters worse than I've just described, the air conditioning was out, making our night in polyester pretty uncomfortable.  All of the attendees were really laid back, though.  It made for a really relaxed gig.

I had a particularly good night on the saxophones.  Some above average soloing, if I do say so myself.

Sunday:  to the Florida Panhandle!

Here's our new van (pulling our old trailer), parked for lunch in Eufaula, Alabama.  I went to a Subway in a Wal Mart.

More driving.  The van design has not changed on the interior.  I did my best to sleep the whole way there.  Big thanks to Zach for driving the whole way there and the whole way back.

Tonight's gig was at a brewery in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.  It appeared that they have concerts there all the time.  Not a bad set up--the stage was a good size.  Even though we were indoors, we were in a warehouse with all of the beer making stuff, and I don't think it was air conditioned.  More sweating.

Good news, though!  The Cajun Meat truck was outside providing the food for the evening.  I had 16 oz of jambalaya.

Followed by 16 oz of red beans and rice.  Both were very good.  I probably could have forced myself to eat another 16 oz of something.

Check out the pretty lights:

This gig sold out!  I didn't know it was a possibility, but 400+ showed up.  Nice gig, though my sax solos were pretty lame.  There were some Atlanta musicians sprinkled into the crowd, and I tried too hard to play something cool.  No dice tonight.

Monday:  after a night's sleep, we headed back to Atlanta for our final gig of this run.

The van, this time parked in Columbus, GA, while we ate lunch.  I had a sub from Publix.

Pete bought a box of ice cream sandwiches before we got back on the road.  We had to eat all twelve before they melted.  I ate three.

Other than that...just a boring ride in the van up I-85.

Today's show was at the Cathedral of St. Philip in Buckhead.  This is at least the third year we've played this gig.  The past two years have been rained out.  This year, Kip convinced them to spend the money to upgrade the stage and the power supply.  The stage was nice (one of those semi trailers that opens up into a stage with a roof and a back).  The power supply was another matter--the breakers were not installed in the breaker box.  Once again, thank god we had Kip, who either 1. knew how to install the breakers, or 2. was brave enough to figure it out.

Everything worked fine.

My clip on fan tucked between my keyboards was my best friend at all three of this weekend's gigs.

Nice stage!

No rain this year!  We made it all the way to the end.  The crowd was pretty reserved for most of the show (it was at a church, after all), but they finally got into it by the end.  It turned out to be a pretty evening, too, once the sun went down.

Super mindfuck of the evening:  the C# pad on my tenor got stuck, unbeknownst to me.  I'd already played solos on a couple of songs, but never sat on a C#.  When we started Maneater, the pad was still glued to the tone hole, which pulled the pitch down about a quarter step.  I played the first note of the opening solo, and it felt really bad (a quarter step flat!), but then the other notes were all in tune.  So...maybe I just imagined that I was out of tune?   I went back to the C# for the next phrase, and it was bad.  My ear/brain couldn't decide if I was out of tune or not.  It was really uncomfortable!  A quick flick during the verse and I was back to normal.

After it was all over, we loaded the trailer again.  We head out again Wednesday.

Saturday

Yacht Rock played two shows at Venkman's Saturday night.  The first show was "unplugged," the room was emptied and filled with new humans, and then the second show commenced.  

First show:  the unplugged set was in the style of the MTV Unplugged series from the 90s, i.e. acoustic guitar heavy, drums and synthesizers light.  Difficult, I would say because so much of the keyboard stuff has synths and electric pianos.  We took our own approach, so I avoided using my top keyboard and the EWI.  Bencuya used his Wurlitzer electric piano instead of his usual stuff.  Mark Cobb was mostly down front on bongos and hand percussion.  

It was definitely something different!  With our overall volume being softer and the crowd being seated, the vibe was much more intimate.  It was pretty cool.  The only one that really concerned me was the solo on Africa, which I always play on EWI.  For this show, I played it on flute, which because of the way I play it, felt like it was down a whole step and up an octave (I have the EWI set up like a Bb saxophone).  It was a very intense moment of DON'T THINK ABOUT IT!  JUST PLAY!  I got through it, but I was not comfortable. 

It was nice to play a few of these tunes that we don't play too often, such as Lotta Love, Thunder Island, and Right Down the Line.

Other than that...I was thinking about what I could do keyboard-wise in the future if we had more unplugged shows.  Bencuya was joking that I could've brought my rhodes, but I don't know that that would be the right move--even on a normal gig, I don't play rhodes on any of these songs.  I moved the string parts to organ, and I played the regular organ parts on several of those songs, so should I come up with an organ?  We couldn't have fit a real Hammond organ on stage, and what would I do about the piano stuff?  Acoustic piano was the other sound that I used on this show.  To get both of those on stage would put me right back on a digital version like a Nord (which is what I was already playing).  I don't know...maybe a Leslie speaker for the organ?  I think I ended up talking myself into sticking with what I already have.  The Leslie would be cool, though. 

photo by Kip Conner

Second show:  Venkman's kicked everybody out after the first show (except for the half dozen people who'd purchased tickets to both shows), and then allowed in the second show people.  This one had sold out a week earlier...which is nice.

The dance show was closer to what we're used to doing, and the two sets were short enough that they went by very quickly.  I can't remember anything particularly exciting about this show other than that.    It was a relief to to play well in both shows.  My performance anxiety is creeping back up these days.

photo by Kip Conner

Big news for Monday:  The Yacht Rock Revival show in Atlanta has officially been announced.  Time to start getting nervous.

Dig the poster:

Callaway

Yacht Rock played an awards ceremony for a golf tournament at Callaway Gardens on Wednesday.  Nothing too exciting about this one, just a long drive (100 miles each way).  It feels like the first hot gig we've had this year, so time to add my clip on fan back into my gear.

I noticed upon setting up my stuff that one of the knobs on my sax effects pedal (a Line 6 M9) was severely bent.  Thank you Southwest Airlines for throwing my stuff around.  I was able to bend it back, though it's now a little loose.  It still works, though.