This Week's Trips

Yacht Rock played two private fly dates this week--a corporate party in Austin, and a wedding reception in California.  Too far apart (and too far away) to drive our gear, we had to fly to both, which meant dragging my gear through a few airports, and the anxiety of making it past the guardians of the airport gates.  Fortunately, I made it through without incident.

Thursday:  The nine of us (seven band plus Kip and Zach) assembled at the airport for our trip to Austin.

This particular show was a private party for a corporate client in a small club downtown.

Another tiny corner stage!  It took some time to figure out how we could get everything on stage and still play.  Pretty tight.

Nick was out for this gig, so Greg Lee rotated up to the front line, and we had Rob Henson sub on bass.

The backline gear was pretty good for this one.  My only problem was a wonky sustain pedal for the top keyboard.  During the first song, I stepped on it and it stayed on, so I quickly reached up and yanked it out until I could figure out what was wrong.  A few songs later, I finally had enough of a break to flip the polarity switch, which solved one issue, but illuminated another:  the connection inside the pedal must've been messed up, and the pedal would fully sustain sometimes, sustain for two seconds sometimes, and not sustain at all sometimes.  Through trial and error, I figured out that if I stepped on it at an angle (sort of pushing it out as I pushed down), that gave me the most consistent results.  The game of gig!

Decent crowd, though!

Friday:  Travel day.  I found a kiosk in Austin's airport that was self-serve coffee for $3.00.  I like the idea of not having to deal with anyone before I'm caffeinated, but it also meant that there was no one restocking it.  I ended up with some weird blend of Ethiopian brew--not Dave's fave.

We flew from Austin to Salt Lake City, changed planes (SLC's airport is a mess--the gates are too close together to accommodate all of the people sitting around, and then they talk over each other on competing intercoms), and then from Salt Lake City to San Francisco.  The view as we left Salt Lake was really cool, but I was in a middle seat, and the lady next to me didn't seem like she'd be very tolerant of the needs of my blog.

On the flight from Austin, I watched All Things Must Pass, a documentary about the rise and fall of Tower Records.  It's very well done--you should watch it!



Anyway...San Fran!  Never been here!  We rented two minivans and headed to our hotel an hour and a half away.  First, though:  Haight Ashbury and Amoeba Music (one of the last great record stores in the US), and then the Golden Gate Bridge!

photo cred:  Peter Olson

Just up the 101, we stopped in Sausalito to eat lunch.  By sheer luck, we picked a really great neighborhood Italian restaurant.  I ate all of this, plus ten breadsticks.  It really hit the spot.

Dave's food

The weather here is pretty amazing;  the owner of the restaurant told us that they average 60 degrees as the high.  It felt like it was maybe 70 when we were walking around.  We stood for several minutes and watched clouds roll over this hill and break apart.  Eat your heart out Jim Cantore.

Our accommodations:  we had hotel rooms at the Flamingo Hotel in Santa Rosa, CA for two nights.  Not too bad!  It was built, I'd guess, in the 50s, and it still has a lot of that vibe to it.

With nothing to do this evening, we headed over to the Russian River Brewery.  This place was packed!  We had a nice hang out on the patio (it got pretty cold after the sun went down!).  A few beers and it was time to crash.

Saturday:  One nice things about being on the west coast with my body clock still on eastern time:  I can sleep as late as I want, and it's still pretty early.  Breakfast time!

Charles Schulz was a longtime resident of Santa Rosa.  This guy was in the lobby.

Lunch time at In and Out Burger.  Did you know that you can order a veggie burger at In and Out?  They give you hamburger without the meat (bun, lettuce, onion, a slice of tomato, and their sauce).  It was ok--I wish they'd had some sort of bean burger patty.

photo cred:  Peter Olson

The gig:  a wedding reception at a vineyard in Sonoma County.  Definitely one of the prettiest gigs we've ever had, with stunning views in every direction.  That being said, I'm never wild about an uncovered stage.  The gear roasted for several hours, temporarily erasing the screen on the top keyboard.  I kept my laptop under a shirt and several charts I needed for the evening, and moved my saxophones and flutes into the shade behind the stage.  We got hot and a little sunburned.

The gear for this one was a little more roughed up than Austin.  I had a mixer die before I ever played a note through it, and the keyboards had some wobbly knobs (I also got stuck with a Nord 2, which is plagued by a pretty terrible piano sound).  All of their pedals worked, though!  

photo cred:  Peter Olson

photo cred:  Peter Olson

The sun finally went down, and with it, the temperature.  By the time we fit the second set, my hands were beginning to get cold and stiff.  Easy gig, though;  my gear worked, and we were up against a hard cut off at 10 PM, so no lingering encores or anything.  I'm still terrified of what my EWI might do, by the way, but it seems to be behaving again.

Sunday:  Travel day.  We were out of the hotel pretty early, leaving us ample time to drive through San Francisco before heading to the airport.

We drove down Lombard Street, the "crookedest street in the world."  A crowd at the top and bottom, a policeman directing traffic (on a Sunday morning!), and tourists standing in driveways taking pictures.  Pretty wild.

Next, we drove through Fisherman's Wharf.

Finally, it was time to head to the airport.  We flew from San Fran to Los Angeles (the gate agent was hesitant about my horns, saying "Well...I don't think they'll fit, but you can try."  Of course they fit!)  The flight was delayed and then it took forever to taxi into LAX, and I was pretty concerned, but we made our connection without any issues.  

This was the snack on the flight.  Never seen these before.  Pretty good!

LAX to ATL, I watched The Last Man on the Moon.  Wow!  Very cool.  I highly recommend it.  It's on Netflix.

Indianapolis No. 2

Back to Indianapolis on Saturday for a festival appearance downtown.  The high was projected to be 79 degrees, and we were all pretty excited about a break from the summer heat.

Before we even left Atlanta, we had a major emergency:  Monkeyboy's Delta app on his phone crashed right before we were called to board, and the person working the gate was unwilling to help him--he'd obviously had a boarding pass and photo ID to make it through security to the gate, and THEY COULD EVEN FIND HIM IN THE COMPUTER FOR OUR FLIGHT, but for some reason they couldn't print a new boarding pass, so they were going to leave him standing there as they shut the door to the airplane and pushed back.  We were on the plane asking the flight attendants to do SOMETHING to intervene, and eventually the asshole red coat Delta dude let Monkey come through.  Things were TENSE.  Delta screwed up BAD.

Anyway, we made it.  Airport lunch in Indy.  On to the gig!

There was some sort of awful battle of the bands before us.

A few thoughts about this gig:

1.  The weather was great, but as we progressed through our time slot, the direct sunlight found more and more of us, and it got hooooooooooooot.  Too bad, too, because if we could've stayed in the shade, this gig would have been in perfect weather.

2.  The gig was over at 6 PM!  Woo!  If we'd planned a little better, we conceivably could've flown to Indy, played the gig, and flown home all in the same day.

3.  I'm still scared to death of my EWI set up.  The patch-switching snafu from Birmingham has been cured by a new MIDI cable, but Tuesday night, the transpose button turned off unexpectedly (I think? Maybe a brushed it by accident or something), and the setup button next to it turned on.  The transpose button thing happened again at soundcheck, which spooked me, and I spent fifteen minutes after soundcheck trying to figure out if I could make it do it again (which I could not).  However, I paid extra extra extra close attention to it on the three EWI songs we played.  I put in new batteries (when the batteries start get old, the EWI tends to get weird), and hopefully this solves all my problems.

4.  After the gig, I spoke to a woman who asked me, "When did you learn how to play the saxophone?" Trying to explain to her that it's kind of lifetime long endeavor did not go well.  I immediately began to plot my escape from the conversation.

There was no green room available, so we changed clothes literally in the street, in between the production truck and the double-parked van and trailer.

And...Kip stole my phone...

After we ate, Kip and I walked to the hotel (with a pit stop for frozen yogurt).  It wasn't even 9 PM and the weather was so nice that I took the opportunity to go for a walk around downtown Indianapolis.

Check out the rubber bands on this dude's alto.  Several things we also duct taped in place.  Ouch!  He saving up to buy a new horn, so I put extra tip money in his case.

The Indianapolis Indians (minor league team) finished their season on this night, so I got to see the fireworks show and check out right field.

No.

I passed a bar that had a mechanical bull in the window, so I went in to check it out.  They were also having a mustache contest, so I thought, "Why not?"

This dude came off the bull a couple of times, and it kept swinging after he fell and pinned him to the mat.  Should I ride?  It's easy to think of how many way I could injure myself in front of strangers, so I got out of line.  Leave it to the experts.

I did a lap around the bar to see what the other mustaches looked like.  Clearly I would not win, so I left.

Look at those sad eyes.

Bus terminal.  MARTA doesn't have anything like this.

I walked into another bar and listened to this trio play a couple of tunes.  Nobody I'd ever heard of, but they were great!

War memorial.

More war memorials.

By this point, the foot traffic had begun to thin and the motorcycle and cars had begun to cruise around, so I headed back to the hotel.

I didn't notice this earlier, but the Indiana Roof Ballroom was right across the street from our hotel.  Yacht Rock played a wedding reception there, and years earlier I had performed on a regional healthcare commercial shoot while still in college.  I don't think I've ever seen the front the building before.

The state capital was also right on the corner of the hotel.

The next morning, we flew back to Atlanta.  I stole the hat of the dude next to me while he was sleeping.

Something I'd never seen before at the Atlanta airport:  as we were riding the long, two or three story escalators down to the plane train, we heard "LOOK OUT!" behind us, and turned just in time to see a suitcase bouncing down the steps.  The Great Bencuya stuck a leg out and caught it.  Seconds later, we heard a scream, and looked up to see a woman summersaulting down the escalator.  Ouch!  Paramedics were thankfully on the scene in seconds.  Pretty freaky.

Indianapolis No. 1

Yacht Rock played a private gig Tuesday night in Indianapolis.  Following our usual arrangement, the gear (and the van and trailer and the Kip and Zach) headed north Monday, and we flew up Tuesday morning.

The event happened to be in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis, so after lunch, several guys killed some time with Duck Pin Bowling (the ball is grapefruit sized, and the pins are half as tall).  Check the technique.

Somebody inadvertently used two balls, and they got stuck on the ball return.  We dispatched Kip to retrieve them.

So...the gig was pretty happening for a Tuesday night!  Nice crowd.  The room was dark and very hot, though.

No food was provided at the event, so we hit a gas station before heading to the hotel.

Lotta mustard.

Wednesday morning,  Kip and Peter took the trailer to Pete's mom's house for safe keeping.  We'll need it again for our next gig at Indy Laborfest this coming Saturday.  We regrouped at the airport.

Indy's airport, by the way, is super awesome.  Maybe if the Atlanta airport was less concerned about being the busiest in the world, they could focus a bit more on making it a slightly more pleasant place to visit.

The whole band was upgraded to economy comfort on the way home, which I guess was cool, though we usually request the exit rows, so the legroom was approximately the same.  The flight was only about two-thirds full anyway.  We have a few long flights coming up in the next two months, and I hope we get upgraded for those.

Random thought on the ride home:  If I fell out of the plane at this height, how long would it take for me to hit the ground?  Would I pass out and never realize I was falling?  Would I have time to call home?  It's probably better that I sleep on the plane.