Two More

This past weekend's adventures:

Friday: Yacht Rock played a private show at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. A little strange--we've played more than a dozen times in this room, but this was the first private/corporate party. Interesting. For us, it was a dress rehearsal for next week's big public show at The Tabernacle--this year's Yacht Rock Revival, so in addition to the band, we also had Keisha and Courtney on background vocals, and the mighty horn section of Rob Opitz, Gary Paulo, and Richard Sherrington.

Pretty good gig, all things considered. The horn section (directly over my left shoulder) mostly sounded fantastic, and I felt like I played pretty well doing my usual thing. My EWI rig continues to scare me, though--this gig's hiccup was in Peg, where it randomly decided to play a half step lower than my fingering for a couple of notes. Having updated the MainStage app and the OS, I've hopefully ruled out the possibility that my laptop is ready to die. The EWI itself seems ok, so my thinking is that the MIDI cable is going bad, and it's transmitting bad data to the computer. Saturday's gig is a fly date, meaning I will be on different cables, but the same laptop and EWI. If things are solid there, I'll try replacing the suspects in my regular gear.

Too much about that...the horns were great!

Saturday: 8 AM came much too quickly, and I was out the door and headed to the carpool. We flew (in costume as part of a promo for the Revival) to Boston, then piled into a Sprinter van and drove two hours north to New Hampshire for a birthday party.

First up, check this out--as you may know, carrying two saxophones and the EWI, and my backpack (total weight 44 pounds), is a point of high anxiety for me. I'm always only one cranky gate agent or one tiny regional jet away from having to check my instruments, which would most certainly result in damage, as the leather gig bags in which I carry them are not ATA approved. In anticipation of some big fly dates later in the year, I am trying to find a solution where I can check my saxophones (all the sax players say 'Woah! You're crazy', but so is tempting fate by using soft gig bags). Step one: for this trip, I checked the alto and the EWI in a Pelican (a 1615 Air, which is the largest Pelican that you can check without being charged overweight or oversized).

I'll just go ahead and say that this solution worked great! My instruments survived and life was grand. The end.

The rest of the story: New Hampshire on a lake. Our "stage" was a barge next to lake club. The occasion was a fiftieth birthday party. We showed up at 4:30, set up, ate, played basically 7-9 PM, watched the fireworks/packed up, and were on the road back to Boston by 9:30 PM. Easy gig. The backlined gear was good. The weather was nice. The barge was rocking all afternoon until the boat traffic finally died down. I have no complaints.

photo by Peter Olson

These little guys swarmed us once the sun went down. One came all the way back to Atlanta (still alive!) in my new alto/EWI Pelican!

My fly date EWI rig performed flawlessly (even after I accidentally knocked the EWI off the table), which hopefully means that my suspicions about the cable are correct. Too bad the next gig is FREAKIN' HUGE! I guess if the thing still messes up next weekend, I can throw myself in front of a bus or something.

Sunday: Homeward bound.

The kid behind me kept kicking my seat.

Luftballons

I have never seen this video until now. Cold war reminiscing!

Saturday night, we played a gig in Athens for a company that makes balloons. Check out the decorations! Amazing. How long did it take to make all of these?

The gig itself was no big deal--we had two and a half subs (Greg out front for Nick, Rob Henson on bass for Greg, and Dustin Cottrell for The Great Bencuya), and the set list accommodated the stuff with which they were most comfortable. Easy. Done at 10 PM, home by 2:30 AM.

Indiana Revival

A week ago, Yacht Rock returned to Indianapolis (again!) for a Revival show with Robbie Dupree, Matthew Wilder, Elliot Lurie, and Peter Beckett at the Indiana State Fair.

The travel and the soundcheck were fairly painless and the weather was great. Something about the show, though...I just felt really uncomfortable the entire time. Maybe it's the quicker pacing, the need to keep the energy up, and the less-well-known second and third songs by each of the artists, but I just couldn't get in the groove. All of this discomfort culminated in my failure to change the EWI to the correct sound for the Rosanna solo, the first half of which sounded like a middle school band falling down a flight of stairs.

I went through the setlist a few days ago, thinking that there would be bomb craters next to every song, and other than the Rosanna crash, a three measure faceplant in Arthur's Theme a flesh wound in Break My Stride, my injuries were all in the much less known follow up hits that we never play, so nobody probably even heard them anyway. I felt bad about all of it, though.

Here are some clips where I didn't blow it. Literally and figuratively.

VA-MD-NYx2

Ahh! We're rolling now! Four Yacht Rock Revue gigs last weekend, beginning in Virginia and finishing in New York. It's great to get a little momentum in our schedule.

Thursday: We flew out to a gig in Virginia Beach.

Stacked up in Atlanta. I'm kind of impressed that I wasn't already asleep by this point in the flight.

This one was strange, to say the least. We played a Thursday nighter in a country bar (complete with a Cowboy Troy style emcee)--a free show for god-only-knows who's going to show up. The skies over Virginia Beach/Norfolk are thick with Navy jets, and the largest Navy base in the world is right here. Would it be a Top Gun situation?

Uh, no. More like a Wild Wing Cafe situation. I did watch a bit of the NFL preseason game (Dallas and Arizona), and endless repeats of some bro country jackass's music video/commercial on the ten TVs ringing the room.

Other things...fruit for dinner, courtesy of the Walmart across the street--way better than bar food...opened my garment bag to discover that I'd packed no shirts in my stage clothes--I borrowed a spare shirt from Nick and wore it four days in a row...plenty of possible strippers on the dance floor...easy load in/out.

Friday: On to Baltimore! We spent most of the day in the van, and traffic compounded our problems. We pulled up to the door at 6:15 (instead of 5). Everybody worked quickly to get set up and sound checked in an hour, leaving us about an hour to eat and change. Special thanks to Kip and Zach for getting us up and running so quickly!

Pretty decent gig, all things considered. The crowd was excellent--pretty good for a rare public show in Baltimore, and I had a good solo on Turn Your Love Around. Kind of a boomy room, though, but the stage was a good size. I certainly wouldn't mind coming through here again.

Here's the show:

all hail Kip's pack job

Saturday: Oyster Bay, Long Island wedding. We had to learn some god awful modern pop song, but they apologized for it after the reception. Other than that, kind of a normal gig. Billy Joel apparently lives ten doors down.

Mark Cobb anticipated my boat pictures in this blog, and though I deleted a few, here they are. Amazing views. Being rich looks fun.

little photo session

We spent the night in a very strange Holiday Inn--the most ass-backwards layout in the universe.

this dude passed out waiting for his laundry to finish

Sunday: We finished out this run with a summer concert in Great Neck, NY. This is our third attempt to play here--the previous two years have been rained out (forcing us to use the school auditorium). You can relive our 2016 attempt here, and our 2015 attempt here.

More boats, more Long Island Sound.

This place was beautiful!  The weather was perfect (almost 80 and overcast).

making small talk before the show

smoke from a distant fire

Everything looked great and sounded great, and we played great and had a great time--a very pleasant way to end the weekend. You can see a set of pro photos from the show here.

Monday: We adjusted our flights to beat most of the bad weather hitting La Guardia this morning, but it was still a little wet. Made it home in time for a late lunch.