The Northeast, Part Two

Back to the Northeast to complete our run of shows up there.

Thursday: First stop, NYC! We were supposed to be back at Irving Plaza, but there was some sort of mix up in the booking, so we ended up at the Playstation Theater in Times Square. On the one hand, cool--bigger room, bigger stage. On the other hand, Times Square...

Pictures from my pre-gig run...

Not a bad gig, by any means. The room felt kind of sterile, but we still had a pretty good crowd (in the 500-600 range) for a Thursday night in a part of town populated by tourists. I'd have no qualms about coming back here. Plus, any time a crew moves the gear for you, I am thankful (or maybe it's the other way around--any time we have to drag our own gear, I'm not so thrilled). A solid warm up for the weekend, let's say.

Drove to Yonkers after the show. Didn't get lost. It's a lot further from the city than I thought it would be.

Friday: Woke up and drove four hours to Boston for our show at The Royale. This one has been sold out pretty much from the week tickets went on sale.

The Royale "marquee". Not impressive.

We were a little light on time, so the pre-gig run was short--basically a lap around Boston Common and back. The weather was excellent.

Col. Robert Gould Shaw--ever see Glory?

somewhere down the road is Cheers-I'm disappointed that I didn't know that when I was running

G. Dub

one for Beth

Boston was predictably crazy, as people were losing their minds by around the fifth song in. As Monkeyboy put it, every song after the first few felt like an encore. It was a really good, berserk show.

The only downside to this place is that they have a late night DJ thing, so you play until 9:30 and then you have an hour to clear the stage, which is a bit of a hustle. Once again, though, there are dudes to move the gear from the stage to the trailer, so it's not a major drag. Maybe a minor drag.

The next time we will play here, we're doing two nights, and we're wondering if we can figure out a way to leave our gear set up.

Saturday: Back down I-95 to Brooklyn. Five hours in the van. Yuck.

We set up and sound checked at The Bell House for a wedding, and then had hours to kill.

The pre-gig run was chilly and wet, and I was sore from sitting in the van too much. Since we were pretty deep into Brooklyn, I tried to run to the opening scene of Saturday Night Fever (86th and Bay 20th Ave), but it was a little too far away. I got as far as 86th and 3rd Ave before turning around.

On this trip, I've been ordering take out for dinner (through the Yelp app). Thursday was Indian food, Friday was Thai food. Saturday, back to Indian food. It's working out really well to pick it up at the end of my run.

Anyway...

ZACH!

This wedding wasn't too painful. Mark Cobb was playing some super hip shit, and that kept me engaged a little more than I might've been on a gig like this.

Nice to see a more diverse crowd, too. Most of our weddings lean towards skinny blonde women and rich looking white dudes, but this one looked like you'd think a bunch of thirty year old people in Brooklyn would be--all creeds and colors represented. Very cool.

We moved our own gear on this one. Not as much fun as "Oh look! The trailer's already loaded and we can leave!"

Sunday: Four hours down the road to Washington DC for our gig at The Hamilton. Another sell out--tickets went on sale for this one midway through our previous gig, and by the time we'd finished, more than half the room was sold.

Trouble at load in--someone was mixing TONS of concrete in the underground loading dock and pumping it up to street level for god-knows-what, and Zach had to do some especially bad ass maneuvering to wiggle the trailer into a good position for unloading.

The local crew guys from the venue (our friend Danny and his assistant) helped drag in the gear, so I guess that's an acceptable compromise.

No time for a run before this one. I needed a day off anyway.

Good show! Watch it here:



There's an above average sax solo at an hour and twelve minutes in. Check it out.

Tickets went on sale for our next show (November 11) right before we hit the stage, and when we finished the encore, they'd already sold over 400 of the 660 tickets. We're pretty popular here.

Monday: And then we flew home. I had a cup of coffee before I got on the plane, and was so wired on caffeine that I could've flown alongside.

Tuesday: How about one more? We reassembled (with Ganesh subbing for Pete and Jason Nackers subbing on drums for Mark Cobb) in Atlanta for a mid day corporate party. Thank god it was a short gig--two thirty minutes sets. I couldn't have done much more.

Austin

It's been a quiet week. The band flew to Austin Saturday for a wedding. More of the same stuff here...

I watched the documentary Pearl Jam: Let's Play Two, which intertwined footage of the band's two nights at Wrigley Field and the Cubs' 2016 season, ending in their seventh game World Series victory.  Excellent! I highly recommend it, even though hearing the hits off their album Ten temporarily rendered me a pile of depressed Gen X mush.

Lots of time to kill in Austin--we finished sound checking just after 5 PM and didn't play until 9, so I tried to go for a run. Unfortunately, it was 90 degrees! Slow going, but I got it done.

waiting for the bats to come out

SRV. 5'5" in real life

And the backline...we got some of the same gear that we had the last time we were in Austin. Different/rusty keyboard stands, and one of the Nords (Bencuya's bottom keyboard) was a crappy sounding Nord 2. The top keyboards were, unfortunately, the same, which meant that I ran into the same problem that I had the last time--the Fantom would not recognize my compact flash card, so I was not able to load my settings. Agh! Last Thursday, I saved a backup onto my laptop, though, so it wasn't a big deal to move that onto the keyboard--I'm an expert at it now. Didn't even break a sweat!

What else, what else...Ganesh subbed for Nick and Jason Nackers subbed for Mark Cobb...the crowd was, once again, full of beautiful women...the song that we learned by request, When the Going Gets Tough by Billy Ocean, sucks and I hope I never hear or hear myself play it again...we walked to our hotel from the gig...the Delta agent at the Austin airport ticket counter recognized us--"Oh, it's you guys again!"...jeez!

The flight home the next day was uneventful.

I watched 12 Strong, a movie about the first US soldiers in Afghanistan following September 11. It's very Hollywood, very predictable. Don't bother watching it. I was mad at myself for getting all the way to the end. Learn from my mistakes!

We're headed back to the northeast this week to reunite with our gear--dates in NYC Thursday, Boston Friday, a wedding in Brooklyn Saturday, and Washington DC on Sunday. Upcoming dates are here.

Latin Big Band

I lucked into playing with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra Thursday night at Venkman's, sitting in the lead tenor chair. The first half hour was pretty uncomfortable, feeling like maybe I didn't belong there, but eventually I got used to how I sounded within the saxophone section, and I was able to relax.

And it was fun! The music is really challenging to me, and required a ton of shedding the book for the few days leading up to the gig. Some of the guys (maybe most of the guys?) are sight-reading the book and keeping up just fine. I'm not sure that I could've done that.

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!