Texas

Our tour of Texas--before it gets too hot. Actually, it got really cold there for a day! Check it out:

Thursday: Houston House of Blues. We flew to Houston early enough to take a long lunch before load in. Around 4:30, the gear started coming up from the street. 

I'm trying to think of the last House of Blues we were in that didn't sound that great...maybe New Orleans? This stage is really nice.

There was still time to kill after soundcheck, so I went for a short run around the city. The weather was overcast and low 70s, which felt pretty good.

So, on to the gig...which was just really sloppy. We were tripping over each other all night. It was not good. I couldn't wait to get off stage.

Friday: We had a private event scheduled in Stafford, TX tonight as the monetary anchor of the trip. Stafford is right outside of Houston, so we had most of the day to kill. I did some more exploring on foot.

The fundraiser was at a place called the Redneck Country Club, and it looked to be a predictably Guns-and-God Republican shit show of a place. I mean, Ted Cruz was there the week before us, and his name was still on the marquee. Fuck that guy.

A little pregame basketball--it was warmer outside than it was in the venue.

There was a menu full of dinner options, but finding one without meat was impossible. I had a salad and french fries (do they still call them freedom fries here?).

What a pleasant surprise! This gig was really good--we bounced back and played really well, the crowd was excellent, and we helped to raise a ton of money. Plus, no guns and no rednecks. We survived.

Saturday: On to Dallas.

We played four nights in Texas, and the daytime temperature for three of them was in the low to mid 70s. The ONE NIGHT where we had an outdoor gig, the high for the day was in the low 40s. Conditions in Dallas were tough.

We stopped for gas at a Buc-ee's. I didn't go in.

Lunch in middle-of-nowhere Texas was difficult. We pulled into a shopping center with a Wal Mart and a Mexican restaurant so that a few of the guys could buy some warmer clothes for the evening. The restaurant menu had no meatless options, so I tried to order fajitas with no meat, which completely baffled my waitress. She didn't seem to understand, and I was trying to ask without explicitly saying "I'm a vegetarian and I'm not going to eat that" (which probably would've been better than just asking for meatless options). Eventually, I said, "Can I get fajitas with JUST the vegetables and no meat?" to which she replied, "Soooo...do you want chicken?" "This isn't going to work" I said, and walked out. Kip was nice enough to let me borrow the van and drive to a Subway for a veggie sub.

Onward! The wind was particularly brutal today, but lucky for us, the back of the stage blocked it, and the venue rented two heaters for the stage. We smelled of kerosene exhaust, but no frostbite.

This is the one on our side of the stage, with its replacement just outside. The first heater that they brought in would occasionally (once every few minutes) belch a stream of black smoke and seem to stop working, so the swapped it out.

After all of my griping about the temperature, the gig was fine. I was cold for the first hour, but I eventually was comfortable enough that it was no big deal. Once my hands were warm enough, I was fine.

Most surprising of all was the crowd--we thought nobody was going to come out and freeze with us, but there were several hundred rabid fans at The Colony. I would never have predicted it.

Load out was chilly.

We got to our hotel around 1 AM, and they'd sold some of our rooms. Three of us were bumped to the place across the street, but the guy across the street didn't seem to know anything about it. Then he locked up his computer and couldn't check us in. Then he was on the phone with their corporate help line, but they were no help. Then he couldn't run the credit card to pay for the rooms. Then he made keys for us, but wanted to follow us upstairs to make sure we could get in. It was not a good situation. Evidently, he woke Pete and Nick up in the middle of the night because he didn't copy down the credit card number correctly, too. That's some one star service right there.

Sunday: To Austin, but first, Buc-ee's. Yee haw.

We were under a time crunch today--the venue (3Ten Austin City Limits) had booked an early show in front of ours, so we had to soundcheck and get out of the way pretty early. We picked up lunch along the way into town.

We got there right as a church service was letting out--this room gets used a lot. Finally, it was our turn to drag the gear in and set it up. We plugged our stuff in, sound checked, and then pushed as much of our gear to the back third of the stage as we could, and put several things in cases in the storage room. Still, the early show band (6 pieces!) was not happy about having to work around our stuff. What was 3TenACL thinking, booking two big bands to play on a pretty tight stage?

Anyway, we had a few hours to kill, so we went to our hotel. I went for a run. The weather was perfect.

We came back right as the early show was finishing, reset our gear, and line checked everything.

Pre show porn watching? Everything was pay-per-view, so we stuck to scrolling through the options.

This show was easily our best playing of the weekend, and the crowd was electric. Was it sold out? Not sold out? The internet said yes, but maybe there were a handful of tickets available at the door. So if it didn't sell out, we can really close. Great gig.

One little hiccup: my laptop did the "mouse cursor moving all over the place on its own" thing for the first third of the gig, and a couple of times, the MainStage page would fly away and it'd just be my desktop (though it didn't close MainStage, so I could still play). It was a piece of dust in the track pad or something. After some clicking on it, everything calmed down. Fun!

Monday: A waffle for the road.

Our flight home was delayed, first by a half hour, and then by a full hour. Lots of time to wander and/or sit.

Apparently, our plane had a tire problem earlier in the day. Once we finally boarded, things were smooth--I slept the whole way home.

Georgia Theatre and Venkman's this week! See you there. 

Stop Making Sense and The Signal

Some different stuff this weekend! Dig it:

Thursday: Yacht Rock road tripped to Athens to play the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense at the Georgia Theatre. Most importantly (to me), this was the debut of my new Prophet 6 synthesizer--a pretty awesome machine, especially considering how small my role is in this show. I shopped around and considered several different synths (price tags and analog vs. virtual analog) before finally biting the bullet. This is the real thing.

Highlights from the post-soundcheck pre-gig run...

Saved By the Band opened with a very strong set of covers.

The room was nowhere close to full, but there were enough people there to give us some positive feedback--maybe 300 in attendance? That was just fine, as we needed a shot at this show before our Friday night back in Atlanta.

Once I got going, I was fine, but I blanked on the first thing I was supposed to play, and I just stood on stage thinking, "Why does this sound so weird?" It's because you're fucking up, dumbass.

Friday: Variety Playhouse back in Atlanta.

Nick bought a new pedalboard/guitar interface and debuted it this week (he actually pulled it out of the cardboard box on stage in Athens and used it that night). It sounds great and it's very user friendly.

Our show sold out! I'm shocked that this show, hatched on a plane ride home from somewhere, has gone from something fun to do at Venkman's to selling out the Variety Playhouse in four shows.

Greg plays guitar on this show, and he bought a pretty new Telecaster for these gigs.

I remembered to play all my parts tonight. Other than a couple of minor flubs, I played really well.

You can see the whole show here. Kip's mix sounds perfect.




Saturday: Back to our regular programming...Yacht Rock at The Signal in Chattanooga. This is a new venue--a converted warehouse in a hipster looking part of town. Easy load, great local crew, and a nice green room. Excellent.

I drove separately since I live up I-75, and got there a little earlier than the van and trailer. After setting up my gear, I still had about a half hour to annoy everyone in the room, blowing solo saxophone over Just Friends and Airegin. I must admit that after hardly playing saxophone in the past three weeks, things felt and sounded good.

Ready for the show...

We came within a hundred people of selling out (1,200). Wow! I thought we'd be really flat after Friday night, but this was a solid show. The room sounded good and the crowd was great--that definitely helped. I like this place a lot.

Monkeyboy's amp went to sleep after soundcheck, and they had to unplug it to wake it up, all of which caused some chaos when we walked out on stage. Once we got going, though, things were fine--just some weird gear shit.


Remember how great I was playing before everybody else showed up, when I was showing off on some jazz tunes? I thought that would translate to a good solo on Biggest Part of Me. No such luck--it started well but plateaued pretty quickly. Maybe I wasted all my good stuff too early in the day...booo.

A few professional shots from Ray Soldano Photography:

Headed to Texas this week. See y'all out there.

FLA

The Yacht Rock Revue spent last weekend in Florida (central and north, I should say). The weather was perfect, which means we probably escaped right before the heat and humidity arrived.

Friday: Orlando! We were once again at the House of Blues at Disney. I still wish we were closer to the city, but daaaaaammmnn this room sounds good. Like, so good that I would almost forget to play my parts because I was just listening.

I went for a short run before the gig, and there were people lined up around the building.

Aaaaaaaand...holy cow! There were something like 1,100 people at our gig. It was packed! According to Pete, it was technically a sell out because the floor was completely full, but there was some kind of thing where they could've made some more room in the balcony?...I don't know. It was a frickin' TON of people, they loved it, and the room sounded fantastic. I might also say that we collectively collectively kicked ass. This was the most fun I've had on a Yacht Rock gig since our show in LA a month ago. I should've high five'd myself. I high five'd Mark Cobb instead.

Saturday: The money gig...some kind of fundraiser for a private school in Tallahassee.

I went for a run before this one, too, because we had three and a half hours to kill, and I was pretty speedy on the ol' track, if I do say so myself.

Meanwhile, Kip and Nick plotted the staging and input list for next week's Talking Heads shows. There's also a Garfield rendering by Mark Cobb, a dog made from the number 25 (Pete's contribution), and Mark Dannells' caricature of me.

This one could have been brutal.

1. We were in a tent, so the sound was not so good, especially compared to the previous evening's.
2. We'd been there for hours, sequestered in the AV room of the library, so we were dulled by boredom (also, the provided food was very unappetizing).
3. Our start time was pushed an hour late, so we played two hours straight. For the first forty-five minutes, people were in the adjoining tent, watching FSU lose to Michigan in basketball.

However...there was a plethora of hot moms on the dance floor. It made it all bearable.

Sunday: Lunch in Tallahassee at some hipster Mexican place before we left town. I had two big bowls of black beans and rice. It really hit the spot, even though that quantity of beans going into my body probably scared some of the other guys.

Our first show in Pensacola was at Vinyl Music Hall, a room (if you're familiar with Atlanta) of approximately Smith's Olde Bar size, maybe slightly smaller. I didn't have particularly high expectations. On the third floor was a massive green room with a giant TV, pool table, and ping pong.

The load in was pretty easy, and though the stage was small, we were set up and sound checked pretty quickly. After dinner, I walked down to the pier to witness the sunset.

Back to the gig...

All in all, not bad! The people who showed up (maybe 150?) were pretty into it (though it did feel like there were quite a few music nerds there to see us), and we had fun. I'd play here again. Good energy for a Sunday. Hopefully if we come back, we won't have a guy doing a "live painting" like we did on this night.

Monday: Five or six hours in the van. Truck stop hacky-sack. What the hell?

A Quick Spin Through the Midwest, Then Unplugged at Home

Last weekend was maybe a little different from our usual routing, as we began north of Chicago, then hit Indianapolis, headed north again to a private party in Lafayette, Indiana, and then flew home to play an Unplugged show at Venkman's in Atlanta. As for me, it was sleep on the plane, sleep in the van, sleep in the hotel room.

Thursday: Where in the hell is Palatine, Illinois? North of Chicago--north of Evanston, too. We played a St. Patrick's Day kickoff on Thursday night at Durty Nellie's. 

Kind of a strange gig--the stage sounded good, the crowd (maybe 200?) was solid and enthusiastic, but I think the Thursday night/unfamiliar town thing got to me. I guess I could never shake the "Wait-what day is it and where are we?" feeling. From what I recall, we played pretty well--no disasters.

Friday: I-65 between Chicago and Indianapolis. Mellencamp to the max. Rain on the scarecrow, blood on the plow, little pink houses--all that shit.

Back at The Vogue for another packed show. This one had been sold out for months. We are folk heroes in Indianapolis.

Pretty great show for our people, I would say. It sounded good, felt good, and the vibes were excellent in the room.

I shared the hotel room with Monkeyboy, and we slept like we were dead after this one. Neither of us moved until 12:30 PM.

Saturday: I'd been to Lafayette, Indiana on other time in my life, probably twenty-five years ago to see a jazz concert with Craig Handy, Lee Konitz, and Joe Lovano. I remember Craig Handy was so out of tune that he had to stop in the middle of a solo and crank his mouthpiece. Not relative to this blog, really, but that's all I remember. Also, Lovano was really cool at that moment.

The room we were in was an event space in a nearly abandoned (looking) strip shopping center. The stage sounded good, but I don't even now how to describe the building. Sad, like a midwestern winter day? We ate at Arni's (an Indiana restaurant chain) on the other side of the shopping center, and it took about an hour for our food to come out--somebody at Perdue U. had ordered twenty pizzas.

Anyway, this was somebody's birthday party. Especially after the high of last night, this one was a much more low energy gig. We could've/should've watched The Empire Strikes Back to pass the time. Also, we faked our way through I Will Survive. Big fun.

Sunday: We trudged back home, regrouping at Venkman's to play an Unplugged show on our spare gear (our main stuff was on the way home from Indiana). I enjoyed the vibe of this one, relaxed and silly at times, and the off center approaches to some of the songs kept us on our toes. It was nice to relax at the end of this weekend's run.