The Northeast, Part One - The Restraint of a Gentleman

Here we go - a weekend in the the Northeast, playing gigs, sleeping, and running.

Thursday: Montclair, NJ. We flew into Newark, hopped in the van, and rolled over to The Wellmont Theatre for a show. This is our second (?) time playing this room, which is an enormous cave of a place. It looks cool, but it's really boomy. 

We had a good size crowd (800-850, I think?) but there were lots of tickets given away, so maybe a third of the people there had no idea about us. Still, not too bad for a Thursday.

Friday: We slept late, and I went for a run through East Rutherford, NJ.

This woodchuck no longer chucks wood

Then, off to Long Island! We were back at The Paramount in Huntington. I remember that the first time we played here, this place looked to be the size of a hockey arena. Now, it just looks like the same size room we play everywhere else. That being said, this is an incredible venue.

this, on the stage of the Paramount, never gets old

The first time we played here, there were 300 people in the audience (we weren't even advertised as Yacht Rock Revue-the marquee said 70s Light Rock Music or something like that). The second time we were here, 400 people. Tonight, 1,300 people. We're catching on at The Paramount.

I can't say enough about how excellent this place is, from the guys that bring our gear in, to the hospitality, to the sound of the room, to the audience. This is one of the best places we play.

We played a great show, by the way. It was a ton of fun.

Saturday: More sleeping, more running, and another dead animal. Shout out to CVS for letting me use their restroom. Desperate times.

Back to Jersey, this time to Asbury Park and the Wonder Bar. We've played a couple of public shows here, but tonight was a wedding.

This load in suuuuuuuuuuuucks.

random building with my middle name on it

Kip, Monkeyboy, and I walked up and down the boardwalk (quite chilly today), ate dinner, and watched the Kentucky Derby. I had veggie pho. It was outstanding.

The Asbury Park boardwalk in all its glory

If you can imagine Jersey shore people who rent out their favorite bar to host their wedding reception, that was our crowd Saturday night--they were ready to party, which made for a fun evening. They liked everything we played. Even the guy from Fox News who was there--he liked it.

Fun gig, and it sounded pretty great on stage.

Sunday: Let's see--NJ on Thursday, NY on Friday, NJ on Saturday, so....back to New York! But first, another late morning run after sleeping as late as possible.

Most of this run was on the shoulders of four lane roads. Not ideal, but ok on a Sunday morning.

no dead animals!

Tonight's gig: another wedding! This time at City Winery in Manhattan. Another less than ideal load in and small stage, but at this point, who cares?

Much time to kill after soundcheck, so I went for another run, this time around the southern end of the city.

This gig was unusual in that bride was a Broadway actress (not sure about the groom), so she was one of the performers at the reception. We played What the World Needs Now, backing a choir of about twenty people, Jersey Girl, backing one of the actors from Jersey Boys, and a four part vocal arrangement of You Make My Dreams Come True. It was a lot of work (especially on What the World Needs Now), but the performances were kinda awesome! I really enjoyed putting that together.

We flew home Monday, but we'll be back a week from Thursday to pick it up again with shows in NYC at Playstation Theatre (Thursday), the Royale in Boston (Friday), a wedding in Brooklyn (Saturday), and The Hamilton in DC (Sunday). Keep keepin' on. 

In the mean time, I'll be playing with The Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra this Thursday night at Venkman's. 7:30 PM!

Full Moons

Scott Glazer was nice enough to invite me back to Blind Willie's to play his monthly residency in a band that included John Sandfort (tenor), Nick Johnson (guitar), Dan Lawrence (keyboard), and Adam Goodhue (drums). 

a selfie of Scott, John, and me

 Unfortunately, we vastly outnumbered the audience. Eight people in attendance over the course of the night, including Kevin Scott, who sat in on bass for several songs.

In spite of the empty room, we had a fabulously silly time, and for the most part, we all played well. It was also not quite as loud as last month, which made a huge difference in my playing. In other words, I could hear myself, didn't overblow, and Sandfort didn't kick my ass quite as much!

Good hang!

AAA

That's Arizona, Atlanta, and Austin--a crazy weekend of travel and gigs.

Thursday: Head west! We flew to Tucson, a three hour and forty-five minute ride. Long enough that I could sleep for a few hours and still wake up and watch a movie.

On this trip, I watched Darkest Hour, chronicling Winston Churchill's rise to prime minister at the dawn of the second World War.

We landed, grabbed our bags, and boarded a spacious limo bus to Marana, AZ, on the north side of Tucson.

Unfortunately, that wasn't our bus! We had to get off, grab our bags, and walk to our much smaller van parked in the next ring of parking.

First thing first, we checked into our rooms...at the frickin' Ritz Carlton! Sweeeeeeeeet.

With a few hours to kill before soundcheck, I went for a run on the nearby Wild Burro Trail, which ran through a canyon directly behind the hotel!

(not part of the trail--the cart path behind the hotel!)

The weather was in the low 80s and kind of overcast, so it wasn't too brutal out there. Off to soundcheck.

A stage with no cover and some pretty rough rental gear met us. Everything worked, but everything felt old and dusty. I guess there was only one Nord Electro available, so I ended up with a Nord Stage, and the sustain and expression pedals provided wouldn't work with it. I tried all the usual stuff (flipping the polarity on the pedal, flipping the polarity on the keyboard), and nothing fixed it. Eventually, I put the Fantom sustain pedal on the Nord (which worked), found another sustain pedal in the gear box that worked on the Fantom, and played the gig with only one expression pedal. Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying.

Back to our hotel rooms for an hour (and a snack).

Ready to go...

The weather was pleasant for the evening, and I didn't mind the bugs that congregated on my keyboards. The crowd wasn't rabid by any means, but they danced, and this gig was a pretty easy 100 minutes.

Our set ended with a fireworks show.

We were back at our hotel by 10:45 PM, which was good because our lobby call was at 4:15 AM. Ouch. "It's 7:15 Atlanta time!" you say, but that's still early for The Dave.

Friday: Head east!

We got back to Atlanta just after lunch, everybody went home/fought through some hellacious Friday traffic, and then we regrouped in Piedmont Park for our annual Purple Rain show. I'd practiced the hell out of this stuff last week when we didn't have any gigs, so I was ready to go.

Earlier in the week, we'd packed all of our gear in the van and trailer, and so when we arrived at the stage, everything was roughly set up. Hallelujah. This must be what the next level of gigging feels like.

After soundcheck, I went for a short run around the park.

The gig was one giant set with the album on the back half--a little over two hours long. It was a great gig with somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 in attendance, and we gave them a really good show. That tent we were in sounded terrible, though--too many sound reflections and too many microphones. I got used to it, but there was nothing Kip and Zach could've done to fix it.

Once the gig was over, I packed my gear up and left it in a pile on my corner of the stage. Home by 11:30 PM. Oh yeah.

Saturday: Head west! We had an early afternoon flight to Austin for a fundraiser. I felt a hundred percent better after a good night of sleep in my own bed.

There was no line at security. Nick's backpack got pulled for closer inspection (his harmonicas are mistaken for gun clips), and the security guard pulled out a bottle of vodka that he'd taken from the green room/tent the night before.  Whoops! He said, "I thought my backpack felt heavier."

We got upgraded to first class. Ha ha ha ha...I don't know what to do with myself up here. At least they didn't bring around the hot towels on this flight.

Aaaaannd...I couldn't sleep! Maybe I'm dying. Anyway, it's about a two hour flight, so here are some pics of the world. I watched Black Panther. It was ok.

We were outdoors (though covered on a nice size stage) for our show, and the temperature was right at the edge of being too hot to be outside on a gig. I was in the shade, though, so it was bearable.

The big story of the day...this Roland Fantom had a broken compact flash card reader, so none of my settings would load. Usually I just pop the card in, "restore" my stuff from the card, and it's just like my keyboard. This one would not. The same thing happened to me last year in Santa Fe, and the backline guys had another Fantom brought from their warehouse. I asked the backline guy about getting me another keyboard--"I'm from Oklahoma City, so the warehouse is seven hours away. That's not going to work." No, it's not. Hmmm. Or should I say, HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!!

So, I'm freaking out. I tried a different card, I tried a different card reader. It's not happening. I did have a backup of my settings saved onto my laptop, but 1. The file was over a year old; 2. I've moved the files from the keyboard to the computer, but never from the computer to the keyboard. How do you do that?

The internet wasn't terribly helpful, and I had almost resigned myself to having to program the entire night's setlist from scratch. I could get as far as being able to see the "backup" files in the menu on the keyboard, but I couldn't figure out how to make them load. Finally, I found a page on Roland's website that helped--when the icon pops up on the laptop, delete the existing files and replace them with hour backup files. Ah ha! Did that, powered down the computer, powered up the computer, and bang! My keyboard was back, and my stress level went from one million to zero.

The Tito's Vodka RV was set up close to the stage.

After the whole keyboard thing, this gig was really easy; the weather was great, the food was delicious, and the sound on stage was excellent. No problems at all. Also, most of the women in the audience were really good looking. Thanks for that, too.

Sunday: A pretty good night of sleep in a familiar hotel, and a late morning flight home. Home by 3 PM.

We're back at it this coming weekend, with public and private gigs in the northeast. Check back here maybe Tuesday for an update.

Backtracking

I was trying to think of a clever title for this blog post--something about how we didn't really travel in the sense that there was an airport or a long day in the van. This past weekend we hit Athens, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. Not local, but regional? Short trip? Athchattatl? So...not quite local. I woke up in my own bed every day, but I also saw some monotonous interstate. Here we go:

Athens: Weren't we just here? Yes, but it was Stop Making Sense. This was a regular Yacht Rock show, and it sold out weeks ago, which is fun because the vibe at the Georgia Theatre is really hip. We played well, too (though goddamn I Just Wanna Stop is still kicking my ass). I had a good alto solo on Reminiscing, a song which has come back into our sets very recently, and a good flute solo on Lowdown. After however many years, my body has stopped trying to solo on flute like it's a saxophone--my embouchure would kind of fall apart during improvisations.

Set One:




Set Two:




I also purchased a cool new t shirt after the gig. Take a good look at it before it's covered in ice tea and salsa stains.

Chattanooga: Weren't we just here? Yes, but this gig was a private fundraiser in a hotel ballroom. Lots of down time between soundcheck and the first set, so I went for a long run in the rain. Other than that...I can't really think of anything. This was one of those gigs were it felt like we were the animals at the zoo, and the people on the dance floor kept banging on our cages to try and see what they could make us do. Money makes some people weird.

Venkman's: Weren't we...ok, whatever. An Unplugged show on Sunday night. I guess it was sold out? Hard to say--the cap at Venkman's is flexible.

Some entertaining moments on this gig. I had some good solos on piccolo and flute, and some good organ moments on Islands in the Stream. I am also pleased to report that I have slain the mental dragon that was ruining the intro to Sailing. Other things: the soprano sax made an appearance for Hey Nineteen and bari for Your Momma Don't Dance, and my triangle part on You Can Do Magic was not nearly as amusing as last time, I guess.

Here's the show:




No gigs this week, so check back here in two weeks, where (assuming I make it through), I'll have a recap of the Arizona-Atlanta-Austin run. Something about three A's may end being the blog title,  I bet.

What?

I played at Blind Willie's in Virginia-Highland last night with Scott Glazer's Mojo Dojo, alongside John Sandfort, Nick Johnson, Jez Graham, and Adam Goodhue. A great hang, but it was sooo loud, sooo loud. I'm deaf.

Everybody on this gig is good, but I must mention how great it was to stand next to John Sandfort all night, with his huge sound, great time, and killer ideas. Just...wow. Love his playing.

Scott has some crazy stories, and last night he introduced Sam and Dave's Broke Down Piece of Man by saying that Sam had sung at Col. Bruce's 70th Birthday Party at The Fox here in Atlanta, and he went through the whole thing about Bruce collapsing onstage and ultimately dying at the end of the night, and how he'd afterwards talked to one of the musicians who was  on stage at the time--he just got completely off track from Sam and Dave for several minutes in describing Col. Bruce's night, and at the end of the story he turned around to Nick and said, "Nick--you were there, on stage too!" Eventually, it came back around that Sam had sung that night, and Nick said, "No. I think you're thinking of the Greg Allman show," and Scott goes, "Oh...anyway, here's some Sam and Dave!"