European Vacation

Cool gig of the year for Yacht Rock: we were invited to play a birthday party for about a hundred people at a house (manor?) in Windsor, GB, just outside of London. Built into that was a couple of days to overcome the jet lag/hang out in London. Vacation time! I was able to bring my family to experience the trip.

Wednesday: we took an evening flight directly from Atlanta to Heathrow. No changing planes (some of the guys took a flight that had a connection in JFK and were delayed for hours).

I watched two movies: The Post and Hostiles. Both were excellent.

Thursday: We landed in England on an hour or two of sleep, took an expensive cab ride to our hotel, and then headed off exploring.

the British Museum

the Rosetta Stone

Piccadilly Circus

Buckingham Palace

Thursday evening, the entire band took a field trip to Royal Albert Hall for a special concert--the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and the English Chamber Choir performed the score to Close Encounters of the Third Kind as the movie played on the big screen. The room was breathtaking. The sound was beautiful. While watching the movie, it was easy to forget that the orchestra was performing as well--everything was completely balanced and in sync.

We walked to the train station after the concert.

Harrod's is just down the street

Friday: Another band field trip--the London Eye!

From there, we headed across the river to Westminster.

After lunch in a pub, we made our way along the river (via the Underground) to Tower Hill.

Tower of London

From there, we crossed the river, via the Tower Bridge.

We staggered back to the hotel after this, destroyed by the jet lag.

Saturday: Gig day! The band Ubered to Windsor. Our driver drove us to the address, and upon arrival said, "I don't know where we are, but you are here!" Quite a home.

the backyard

the front yard, with horses grazing

the house!

This gig was pretty great--I have zero complaints! The gear worked, the people were cool...yeah! Piece of cake. It always helps when people are dancing from the first song, as was the case on this night. I think we made a lot of new fans from all around the globe--we'll see where this gig takes us next!

Andy Warhol kept an eye on me

Sunday: The band headed home; my family headed to Stonehenge.

boom

The nearby town of Salisbury is beautiful, and we had a few hours to eat lunch and check out the town before heading back to London.

Salisbury Cathedral

Back in London, we headed out for dinner and some more exploring.

St. Paul's Cathedral

the Globe Theatre 

St. Paul's Cathedral, from the Millennium Bridge

Monday: Off to Paris!

King's Cross Church outside the train station

We took the Eurostar train that runs under the English Channel from London to Paris at 180 mph. Amazing.

lunch in Paris

Arc de Triomphe

Place de la Concorde

Jardin des Tuileries

the Louvre

Got it! Then, off to the Eiffel Tower! We took the stairs as far as we could, and then the elevator to the tip top. Incredible!

Friday: Our first mission was to head to Notre Dame.

Saint-Jacques Tower

the River Siene from Pont Notre-Dame

inside Notre Dame

outside Notre Dame

From there, we headed South through the city.

macaroons!

Pantheon

Val-de-Grace Hospital

We tried to go to the Catacombs, but the line was two hours long, so...to the subway!

Our next destination: Montmartre.

Sacre Coeur Cathredal

the view from the front door of Sacre Coeur

inside Sacre Coeur

And with that, it was time to head back, collect our suitcase, and make our way to the train station for the ride back to London.

zoom zoom

Wednesday: Another expensive cab to the Heathrow, boarded the plane, and sat there for 8 hours. Fun! I watched three movies (Battle of the Sexes, Deadpool, and The Reverant). Dead pool was ok, but the other two were really good.

Customs was hellish--a miserable hour long grind at the end of a long week.

Last Weekend

Here we go...super quick recap of last weekend's Yacht Rock gigs.

Thursday: Played Purple Rain again at Venkman's. We played the record in May, I believe? I had maybe 80 percent recall when I started trying to play it again--it took a few days to get it back together in my hands and head.

Overall, I did pretty well. There were maybe two spots of "Does it do that right here?", but no major disasters.

Here's the show, in case you missed it.







Friday: We traveled to Birmingham to play a regular ol' Yacht Rock gig at Avondale Brewing Co. It looked to be hot, but by the time the sun went down, it wasn't too bad.

I went for a run before the show, guessed wrong on the distance of the loop I had chosen, and had to book it back to the brewery.

TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR THE GIG. Holy hot damn. One of our most impressive sell outs.

I had some seriously bad brain farts on this one, most notably leaving the octave pedal on for the solo in Only the Good Die Young. A little rusty, I guess.

Saturday: After wasting most of the day in Birmingham, we traveled on to Oxford, Mississippi for a private party at The Lyric. Nice room! Sounded good, and the load in was, for the most part, hassle free.

I went for a really shitty run this morning, so no pre gig run. I went for a short walk around town--Oxford is one of those places that I've only ever seen in Southern Living. Mississippi still holds a lot of charm for me, even as my remaining family there grows further away.

William Faulkner

This was not the most exciting gig ever. Nice room, nice people (maybe a hundred and fifty?), but it was kind of a low energy birthday party. Easy enough, though, and I felt a little more together, musically speaking, than the previous night.

Sunday: The drive home was around six hours of mega boredom.

Tis the Season

Another wedding! A year ago, I was certain we'd priced ourselves out of the wedding band market, but here we are, playing another wedding, with the bonus for this one being that the gig was in Atlanta.

This was a WILD one, and included several Buckhead wedding stereotypes; the flock of Ivankas in bridesmaid dresses, to pushy people who wanted to get on stage or make suggestions about what we should be doing, and the guy Nick dubbed "Buckhead Mr. Bean." We played this gig (one big set) under duress, trying to keep the downtime between songs to an absolute minimum. Most of the madness faded by midway through the gig, and then came roaring back at the end, with the bridesmaids on stage for Don't Stop Believing (one of whom accidentally popped Pete in the face while stealing his microphone). There was some very angry confusion about whether or not to play an encore (with us hiding in a back hallway while they sorted it out), a call of help (someone had thrown up more than once and passed out at the bar), and then an uncomfortable silence as people filed out, demanding that the night continue.

All in all, a slammin' party, though--people were dancing from the first song, and the floor was packed for most of the evening. Everybody had a great time. We met up with the groom before the newlyweds departed, and he could not have been a nicer guy, and really appreciated our performance.

Home by midnight!


A few shows this week:

1. Thursday, we're playing Purple Rain at Venkman's. If you missed us in Piedmont Park last month, here's your chance.

2. Friday, we'll be in Birmingham, Alabama to play at Avondale Brewing Co.

3. Saturday, we'll be at a birthday party in Oxford, Mississippi. You probably can't go to that one, but if you see me running around town, say hey.

Park Tavern, Darien

Another weekend with the Yacht Rock Revue. No Saturday gig, which was weird, but also nice to be home for a change. I think we all looked at it like it was a weekend's worth of work with a little gap in the middle. Besides, with flying home on Monday and then playing a gig on Tuesday, everybody's just trying to keep up.

Friday: Back at the Park Tavern! This used to be our big gig of every month in the summer, but now it's just "where are we this Friday." We have this date in May and one in June, and I think that's all our schedule will allow.

We played three new ones on this gig: Jackie Blue, Shakedown Street, and Lady (by Styx--not to be confused with the Little River Band song or the Commodores song or the Kenny Rogers song). I really like Jackie Blue--it's fun and the vibe is cool; Shakedown Street was unexpectedly enjoyable; Lady is pretty over-the-top, but definitely a 70s classic. The rest of the setlist was pretty much our standard stuff these days.

We had a decent crowd for this one--maybe six or seven hundred people? Not a slammin' sellout by any means. Maybe it was the holiday weekend, or school had just let out this week, or the Atlanta Jazz Festival was cranking up, or we were supposed to get rain...who knows. This group wasn't bad at all, though, and it didn't seem any miserably drunk people while I was loading out. Easy gig. Plus, home by midnight! I can't say that very often. 

Sunday: Airport time! The highway was very pleasantly quiet this morning. "Nobody's in town this weekend," I thought. Turns out, they were all at the airport, and everybody was acting like they hadn't flown in fifteen years. Major traffic jams at the check in, the security, the gate--the kind of annoyance that makes you want to push old people and little kids out of the way. 

This crap carried over to the plane. The main cabin had three seats (A, B, and C), the aisle, and then three seats (D, E, and F). My seat was F. A couple got on the plane after me, and their seats were D and E, except that instead of a seat, D was a jump seat for a flight attendant, so the Dude decided he was going to sit in C. Then his girlfriend/wife asked if I would switch with the Dude because she's a nervous twit and hates to fly and all this crap. Fine. I'm half asleep. I sit in C, Dude sits in F. Five minutes later, a huge, muscular guy shows up and says his seat is C, and I say, "Cool. My seat is actually F." The Dude in F jumps up to sort this out by calling the flight attendant. The flight attendant sends him to the gate person, who is apparently standing in the jetway. All I want to do is go to sleep. 

The Dude and Muscles go to the front, and according to the Dude, the gate person basically tells him to go sit in his seat and shut up, so he's all worked up--the gate person was rude to him. Muscles sits in F. I'm in C. Dude sits in the jump seat. Flight attendant quickly nixes this. The dude whines, the girlfriend whines--"Why did Delta sell me a seat that doesn't exist?" Fair enough. The flight attendant finds them two empty seats two rows back. I go to sleep...

18F

...only to be awakened an hour later by a flight attendant, trying to get Mr. Muscles' attention in seat F: "Mr. Freeman? Mr. Freeman?" Out of REM sleep I stumble and tap the flight attendant--"I'm David Freeman." "Oh! We at Delta want to thank you for flying with us and congratulate you on your Platinum Medallion status." Cool/godfuckingdamnit. Please--NEVER do this to me again when I'm sleeping. Seriously. Sleeping on the plane is how I got to Platinum Medallion. My status should say "ASLEEP."

Onward--we landed at LaGuardia, and a van drove us to Darien, CT for a birthday party in a tent next to a house. Incredible house.

Darien is apparently pronounced Dairy-Ann. It should not rhyme with Marion. Got it.

I had another crappy Fantom keyboard--the pitch bend joystick was weird, the high G# was broken, and the thing didn't read my card, so I had to upload my settings from my laptop. The lower keyboard was a pretty nice Nord stage, but I'd much prefer a Nord Electro. At soundcheck, Zach had to do a lot of extra work to find some open frequencies for the in ears. The sax line went bad right before we started, too. Once we got up and running, though, things were fine--it was all easily tolerable for one gig.

Lots of time to kill before our first set, so I went for a run, this time on a route suggested by the birthday boy. It was a very quiet day.

The house where we'd set up was right on the water, with a long pier right across the street. Check it out. Super cool.

the crow's nest patio outside of our green room

our green room

we watched Jaws and Jaws 2

When I started playing, it looked like we were going to mostly be ignored, with most of the party congregating around the bar. However, people gradually made their way over, and by the start of the second set, we had a everybody's attention. It turned out to be a nice gig, and we played two encores before shutting it down. 

None of the three new songs made it on to the set list, though, which is disappointing. I was hoping we'd at least play Jackie Blue a few more times.

The van was waiting for us when we finished, and drove us all the way back to Queens. We spent the night in the hotel almost across the street from LaGuardia. Monday morning, we hopped on the plane and headed home, thankfully without any seat swapping or mention of Delta medallion status, and I slept for as much of the ride as I could.