Utah, Johnny

Yacht Rock played the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last Saturday. It was a loooooooong day, faaaaaaaaar away, and I was tiiiiiiiiiiiiired when it finally ended.

Got on a plane in Atlanta around noon...

Watched all of Mission Impossible: Fallout and half of Gone Girl. Mission Impossible was pretty good. Gone Girl was kind of slow at the beginning.

Nice views. 

Landed in Salt Lake City three and a half hours later. Got in a van and rode forty-five minutes out of town with our driver dude, who talked to Zach for the whole ride about things like "totally shredding the gnar." We might have egged the conversation on a little, too (brah).

Got to Park City, dumped our bags, and hung out around all of these people who were working/networking/being seen/hanging out. We also ate a bunch of food, and then they brought us the food we had ordered, and we were too full to eat that too.

 More hanging out. Someone brought a dog (Eckie) to the hang, so we all got a chance to say hi.

We set up and sound checked, and then went back for more waiting.

Eventually, it was time to get dressed.

We played the first set. This TV was on a loop playing clips of the Bee Gees, Smokey and the Bandit, the Roseanna video, a few 70s commercials, the intro shots of Dallas, Falcon Crest, and Dynasty (but NOT Fantasy Island), a weird Fleetwood Mac video that looked to be late 80s, the part of Caddyshack where Rodney Dangerfield's boat is out of control in the harbor, a Chuck Mangione Memorex commercial (and I was like "Hey, that sax player (Chris Vadala) just died like a week ago!"), and I don't remember what else. I was certainly distracted, though, which was good and bad.



Ella...the real answer is "Who geeeeeeves a sheeeeet."

Guessing what was next helped me pass the time, because holy shit my in ear mix sounded bad. Not a good room for a live band. In spite of that, social media videos show that the out front sound was good.

This was a pretty raging party, if I do say so myself. Definitely didn't feel like a corporate event--it felt more like a house party.

The second set happened, and then we went into overtime, and at some point, my brain started to brown out because it was 1:30 AM inside my skull.

And then it finally ended, we changed, got back in the van, and headed back to Salt Lake City to our hotel. Greg woke me up in the middle of the night because I was snoring like a freight train.

Back to the airport. Bought a shitty, overpriced veggie panini from an SLC airport restaurant. Got on the plane. The rest of Gone Girl was good--it gets a thumbs up from me. I also squeezed in a viewing of Bohemian Rhapsody, which was super damn great, and I managed to get the whole thing in, with the credits rolling right as my row in the plane was ready to exit. Boom.

I'm working Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, this week, so check back frequently for more exciting moments in my life. OK bye.

The First Busy Week of the Year

This week was our first intense week of gigs for 2019. Monday was the first day of recording some originals, Tuesday was a gig in Indianapolis, Wednesday was another studio day, Thursday was a gig in Florida, and Friday and Saturday were both back in Atlanta at Venkman's.

Monday: We have begun a new project, recording an album's worth of original songs. Day one of recording involved a lot of checking to make sure everything was making sound, balancing mixes, and later in the day, some recording. I haven't been involved in any of this; I spent the day as a spectator.

The song that the guys recorded today will eventually have string and horn parts, which I have mostly written. Once my arrangements are finalized, they'll be added as overdubs.

Tuesday: The whole TSA/government shutdown thing cost me some extra sleep, as we decided to play it safe and get to the airport extra early for our flight to Indiana. The traffic on the interstate ended up being more of an inconvenience than the airport, though. No delays in Atlanta or Indianapolis.

I slept like a dead guy on the plane, but was awake for the very hard landing/very soft crash at the end.

There was snow.

The gig was...something. Five days later, I can't remember anything about it. It was a late developing gig, I guess you'd say--what I mean by that is that we had almost no crowd for the first hour. They softened up a little later on, and we actually went into overtime, which will be a nice boost to the ol' paycheck. More positives: easy load in/out (we used our own gear), good pre gig meal, single hotel rooms, and the gig ended at 9 PM.

Wednesday: It's deicing season.

I slept on the plane because that's what I do. I wonder if my hands went to sleep, too, because I had this wild dream where we were playing Baker Street, and I was sitting at my keyboards and couldn't pick up my saxophone--like, my hands wouldn't work--and then I realized that I didn't have my hat or sunglasses on, and I couldn't pick them up either. I looked down and I didn't have fingers or thumbs on my hands. The whole dream kept repeating; it was the two measures right before the saxophone riff starts--the band just kept chugging on the eighth notes while I struggled to get my horn off the sax stand.

So, is the nightmare:

1. I can't pick up my horn to play Baker Street?

2. The band is going to vamp and therefore Baker Street is never going to end?

3. I'm dreaming about Baker Street?

The rest of the guys headed to the studio after lunch, but after spending almost all of Monday looking at my phone and planning out my pee breaks, I opted to stay home and work on the aforementioned arranging homework.

Thursday: Van ride--approximately six hours down to the Florida panhandle for a gig. We played a show to kick off the 30A Singer/Songwriter Festival. Wrap your head around that one--they hired a cover band to launch a singer/songwriter festival.

Not a bad gig, though. The crowd was decent, the weather (we were outdoors) was just under 60 degrees, and...that's it. It was fine.

Friday/Saturday: We played two shows at Venkman's back in Atlanta. Both shows were pretty fun. I'm not always a fan of gigs at the V (the small stage, the potentially shitty in-ear sounds), but both of these sounded really good, and neither dragged on and on. The crowd was very good Friday; Saturday felt a little like a throwback to our drunken Thursday nights at the 10 High (which I guess has some strange charm to it).

we added an extra song or two, but I can't remember

No load out Friday night after the gig! I put my horns back in the case, but it was kind of nice to otherwise just drive away.

It's funny...things that I didn't practice worked on Friday's gig, but things I DID practice Saturday afternoon didn't stick at all Saturday night. Overall, though, I played well. These shows were surprisingly fun.

we also tucked PYT in there somewhere

Sunday: Unpacked all my gear, played my church gig, and nailed it if I do say so myself. Thank you very much.

Athens

Yacht Rock played the Georgia Theatre in Athens last Saturday night, a sold out show without the drunken football madness. We managed to sell it out for either the third or fourth time.

It was good to get back on the horse, gig-wise. My brain didn't start to crumble until the last four or five songs--all of the sudden, I was missing parts and playing string lines that were a fourth away from where they were supposed to be in All Night Long. Raspberry Beret was ok, but then I crashed through most of I'm So Excited, and then snapped back to normal.

In other news, I almost got I Just Wanna Stop completely right. That string part is tough.

Marty

Yacht Rock played a weird corporate gig in downtown Atlanta Wednesday afternoon. It felt like a concert in the food court at a mall. Surprisingly, the monitor mix sounded really good, but the vibe was pretty lame.

Home by 9:30 PM. Not bad.

New Year's Eve

I was thinking about it the other night--this is my twenty-fourth consecutive New Year's Eve gig. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess that if I didn't have a gig:  1. I'd be incredibly jealous of everybody who was working when I was sitting home; 2. probably not do anything different than I usually do--practice and stay up late poking around on the internet. So yeah, I'll take the gig and the money.

Yacht Rock was back at Park Tavern again, where we've played the overwhelming majority of NYE gigs. There's nothing great to say about this one, but it was pretty easy, and it was over by around 12:15 AM. Our gear was even loaded in and out for us. Not a bad night.

Before and After Christmas

Things have slowed waaaaaaaay down since mid December, but I did play a few more gigs here and there. My church gig continues to chug along, and because Christmas Eve was during the week, I got an extra service out of it. I also got a call to play two services after that with some friends at another church, so three on the night, which was pretty cool. All on flute, which was good...and tiring! I made the mistake of doing a normal day's worth of practicing at home, then playing all the prelude Christmas carols, and then playing the mass, so by the second service, my face was starting to get pretty fried. I recovered by midnight mass, but if this happens again, I guess I have to either play more leading up to the big day, or play less and literally save face!

On the Friday after Christmas, the Yacht Rock Revue played a show at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham. What a beautiful place!

Lots of places to explore...

It's a really cool building--kind of reminds me of the "old building" at the IU School of Music (probably of the same vintage). It sounded great, too, though the lack of a standing section directly in front of the stage maybe wasn't the best for our crowd. Still, just under 1,300 showed up and stood up in their seats. I can dig it!

For us, this show took a while--the first fifteen songs felt like I was watching us play a gig. I didn't feel connected to anything until about halfway through. It doesn't come through on the broadcast, I don't think. The camera angle kind of makes it look like we're on a soundstage somewhere. Check it out!

Big Gig Week

This week of December is usually one of the busiest of the year, with Saturday usually being the pinnacle. There's even a term for this--#gigmas--which is slung around social media. In Atlanta, it seems to be a favorite of trumpet players, but my quick search of the internet indicates that it is also shared with oboists. Interesting.

Anyway, beyond this date (this year it's the 15th), the calendar slows down for most musicians. For us at Yacht Rock, we were fortunate to have two mid week gigs before our big holiday special on the 15th.

Tuesday: The Miller Theatre in Augusta. Beautiful room, easy load in, multiple dressing rooms, great acoustics. We played some sort of fundraiser that was not particularly well attended.

Still, what a great room! I would love to come back here for a regular Yacht Rock show. Excellent on all counts.

Thursday: Stamford, Connecticut. We had an early flight--9:40 AM--which meant that the carpool meet up was at 7:45, which meant that I had to leave home at 7, which meant that I had to get up at 6:30, so why was I texting Bencuya stupid shit at 1 AM? That's just what we do.

Arriving early in the afternoon gave us ample time to eat lunch and crash/run on the treadmill for an hour. I passed out in the green room for a while before the gig.

This gig was pretty rough. The Fantom I was issued (top keyboard) was in pretty bad shape--the card reader didn't work, so I had to import my settings from my laptop, a few control buttons didn't work, and a few keys didn't work. Great! I was also given some shitty Yamaha volume pedals. My whole setup was wonky.

There's more! This room sounded TERRIBLE, and the crowd was, for the most part, not interested. We played most of the gig to an at best sparsely populated dance floor. The majority was across the room with their backs to us.

Special shout out to the stink bug that crawled out of my wireless microphone receiver. Considering that it hasn't been outside of my fly-date-case since the Fenway/Boston gig a month earlier, that's impressive, and I would guess that it probably crawled IN there six weeks previous to that when we played an outdoor gig in Louisville. Can bugs hold their breath for that long? That thing earned its freedom.

Saturday: EPIC holiday special at The Roxy in Atlanta. Wow! 2,500+ in attendance.

For this one, we added Keisha and Kourtney Jackson on background vocals, a horn section (Rob Opitz, trumpet; John Sandfort, tenor sax and flute; and Tim Pitchford, trombone), and Pete's wife Alyssa on guest vocals.

The Roxy is an incredibly good room--looks great, sounds great, big stage, easy load in, loaders!--all my usual superlatives. We played really well (for the most part!). I had some weird nervousness issues that came and went in the first half of the gig (this weird thing where my embouchure would basically disintegrate while I was playing), but I had a solid night on all my horns once things finally settled down.

Here's the setlist:

That's it! We're off until December 28, when we appear at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham. See y'all there.

BTM

I was fortunate to be available to play with Bumpin' the Mango Monday night, holding down the bari parts in a five piece horn section. The band is really good, the charts are great, and the song selection is fantastic--it's a thrill to take on a lot of the classic Tower of Power tunes and similar music. On top of the that, it's a good hang. Some of these guys I've known for twenty years at this point.

It went well, I think. Everybody seemed EXTREMELY happy with my playing, which makes me 1. wonder what the other subs have been doing on the gig; and 2. hope that I never get called again, because I already feel the pressure to live up to whatever I did Monday night.

Anyway, here are the two sets:

Chattanooga and Dalton

Friday night, we headed up I-75 for a show at The Signal in Chattanooga. We hadn't been here since the end of March. Good to be back! This was an excellent show--the crowd of around a thousand was fun but not obnoxious, the room sounded great, and we played well. Nick is still fighting his cold, so the setlist avoided most of his more difficult songs.

Saturday's gig in Dalton was only a half hour away, so killed a lot of time in Chattanooga before heading there. For me, it was the usual combination of sleeping as late as possible, getting some exercise, and then finding lunch. Pete and I dined at an Indian restaurant on Market Street.

This evening's show was a corporate Christmas party in the convention center. At the start of it, the most enticing thing was that were able to put the van and trailer inside the building, just behind the stage (making for a quick and dry load out).

The first set was a snoozer. On the break, we were all thinking about wandering through the next hour so that we could get back to Atlanta, when someone from the company came in an offered us a ton of money to play until midnight. Why yes, we'll take that offer!

The next set had a little more enthusiasm from both the band and the crowd, and though we were working around Nick's limited vocals, we were able to put together and an extra hour and fifteen minutes of music. Finished at midnight, home around 2 AM. Not a bad night after all.

Two More in Indy

Friday: We started the weekend with an early flight and crash landing in Indianapolis (slept the whole way!), meeting up with the van, gear, and crew just after noon. So...lunch.

chana masala from India Garden buffet

We still had plenty of time to waste, so we went ahead and checked into our hotel. I also went for a run.

the Northwestern U. football team headed to the stadium

Peyton Manning statue!

This evening's gig was a joint 50th birthday party. Very tame. Nick was super sick with a cold and we drastically shuffled the setlist, but nobody seemed to notice.

Saturday: Public show at the Murat! We've finally left The Vogue behind and moved on to a bigger room in Indy. The ballroom holds 2,000 people, and we sold it out.

dinner at The Garden Table on Mass Ave

Soooo...pretty good gig tonight! Nick was still sick, so the setlist was duly adjusted (though we did pull a soundcheck version of Elvira off).

One with the Indy horn section. 

Finally, next year's schedule has been announced with great fanfare. 

Turkey Time

Two Yacht Rock gigs this week--the day before Thanksgiving, and the day after.

Wednesday night was pretty good. The only song that kind of bit me was Minute by Minute--there's a tricky spot where I have one beat to change sounds and get both hands lined up correctly. Sometimes I need a little extra time. That was the case this evening. Everything else was fine. I never could really find my groove, though.

Other thoughts: local jazz legend Kevin Bales was up front checking us out all night. It was cool that he was there checking us out, but I think it got in my head that I needed to impress him.

Alyssa Olson (Pete's wife) guested on Islands in the Stream. She sounded great and looked to be having more fun than anybody in the room.

Here's video of the gig.



Friday's "Black Friday" gig unfortunately didn't Steely Dan's Black Friday (which would've been cool). In fact, with a couple of subs in tow, the setlist stayed much closer to songs we've been playing for years. Mark Cobb and Mark Bencuya were our designated survivors for the evening, so we had Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums and Dustin Cottrell on keyboards filling in.

This show seemed to flow a little better than Wednesday night, and I didn't start watching the clock until we were well into the right hand column. The crowd was really good on this night, too, and that helped. Whatever it was, I was quite a bit more comfortable.


This one was also broadcast across the internet: