Florida, Joe

The tour begins...in Florida! Four nights in a this strange time capsule, where it always looks and feels like it's 1994. Florida is ageless in that way.

We added Easy by the Commodores for this run. My chart:

Thursday: Ft. Lauderdale. The van and trailer picked us up at the airport, already showing the stress of being on the road--someone attempted a break in the night before. Thankfully, it was unsuccessful because the door is secured from the inside. Still, ugh. That would've been a terrible start to the year.

Within an hour of being here, I'd already seen a large (nearly three foot) iguana. South Florida is wild, man. An iguana right in a parking lot in the middle of town.

We've never had a show in south Florida and weren't sure what to expect inside Revolution Live, but the crowd was good for a Thursday night in a new room. Maybe three or four hundred people were there? Mainly, this was a good gig to ease back into being on the road--setting up the gear, pacing our energy through the show, and managing the downtime before and after.

agressive guitar tuning

Not the coolest place we've ever played, but I'd be down with coming back here a couple of more times until we can find a better, nicer venue.

Friday: Orlando. We motored up the turnpike to central Florida for a giant corporate event for Staples. Four thousand in attendance. At the start, it looked like the event space was too big with too many options, and we'd be playing to nobody in particular.

The crowd gradually filled in, though, and this suddenly felt like a really slammin' outdoor concert...complete with fireworks!

And by the time we we had reached the climax of the show, it felt like all four thousand people were hanging on every note--very cool.

We went right up to the 10 PM noise curfew, but the client asked us to keep playing. After about twenty minutes of negotiation (which felt way too long to be successful), we got on stage to play a few more songs, only to be shut down by the venue management. Soooooo, we played acoustically for maybe four or five songs. At that point we were down to a couple of hundred people directly in front of us--it was cool, but it was also a little weird.

Still--a killer night night, especially for it being a potentially stale corporate event.

We spent the night at this convention center/resort, too. Miles of hallways.

Saturday: More of Orlando. With basically all day to kill before our gig, I slept as late as humanly possible, and then went for a run on the nature trail.

The evening's event was a fundraiser at UCF. We had to load in in the afternoon, but didn't play until 9:30 PM, which left us with hours and hours of downtime. I made the most of it by practicing in the alley behind the venue for a couple of hours. Probably the best part of this night.

Steve Harvey MC'd the evening (yes, that Steve Harvey). When he finished and turned the night over to us, much of the audience began to filter out of the room, leaving us with at most two hundred people to entertain. Kind of a bummer after the previous show.

Sunday: Another spring day in Orlando. One more day on the nature trail.

other than the little lizards that were everywhere, this is the only wildlife that I encountered on the nature trail

I checked out of my room at 1 PM, ate lunch, and sat on a couch in the lobby until 3:45, when we headed to the next gig.

this Lyft had barf bags available

 This evening's show was back at the Orlando House of Blues.

left hand on top, buddy

Big show! I'm pretty sure this one sold out--the morning of the gig, less than one hundred of the 1,900 tickets were available. Great crowd. This was an awesome gig.

Monday: Flying home!

I was really excited for the opportunity to sub on bari sax with the Joe Gransden big band Monday night. Joe's been a friend for over twenty years, and the band and the music are great. The other guys in the sax section--John Sandfort, Michael Opitz, and Matt Miller--made me feel like I was part of the gang, and they all played such incredible stuff (a little inspiration, but also the terror that everybody else is so much better than me)! Even though I felt out of my league, it was a wonderful night.

Here's the show, if you care to watch:

Yacht Rock is back out this coming week, with shows in New Jersey on Friday, New York City on Saturday, and Boston on Sunday. 

Twice in Athens, Twice Stop Making Sense

Before I begin the weekend recap, I want to mention that Yacht Rock put out a live album a couple of weeks ago. The recording is from a show in Boston at The Royale in May 2018 (there's a blog recap that mentions nothing about the gig here).

You can find it on iTunes here. I don't think there are any physical copies to be had.

Thursday: Athens, GA. It's time to play the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense again, beginning with a show at the Georgia Theatre in Athens.

Here's a broadcast, in case you missed it:



Saturday: Stop Making Sense at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. This one may have sold out, though it didn't look like it to me.

Sunday: Back to Athens for a private Yacht Rock show at the Georgia Theatre--I think it was for an insurance company. We played an hour and a half to a pretty empty room. People were kind of lukewarm about it, but I don't care. I think it was a good rehearsal for us to start thinking about these songs again. The big Yacht Rock tour starts next week in Florida!

South Pacific

In the middle of last week, I got a phone call about subbing on clarinet in the pit for South Pacific at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center. Awesome! I'm always trying to 1. play with some different people; 2. play more musicals; 3. play more woodwinds (especially flute, clarinet, and alto sax). This was a perfect situation. I worked on the book Thursday night, all day Friday, and most of Saturday, and when the show started I was relaxed about what I would find on the next page. 

The Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center is a really nice room, by the way. And oh yeah!--we wore tuxedos! I gave away my tuxedo to Goodwill (my family is like, "Of course you did") maybe six or seven years ago, so I wore a tux shirt, a black bowtie, and an old black suit. Close enough. It's going to take more than one tux gig for me to reinvest! 

Great gig, though. I was pumped.

Odds and Ends

Another week without much going on. Yacht Rock did a video shoot for the stuff we recorded in the studio earlier this year; I look forward to lots of shots of me standing at this microphone, doing nothing and trying to remember what I played a month ago.

Immediately following that, we went to Venkman's for another "Unplugged" gig. I was pretty braindead by that point, but I did pull off a good flute solo on Lowdown. We also learned Welcome Back, Kotter. Kinda random (and it took me waaaay too long to get the rhodes part together), but a good 70s learn nonetheless. Keisha Jackson showed up at the end of the night and sang on two songs.

Last night (Monday), I played bari sax with Bumpin' the Mango at Cafe 290 in a horn section full of subs (Joe Gransden's big band took all the regular guys away). I guess it was inevitable that eventually I'd have a crappy night playing this gig--last night was it. I couldn't get my brain to cooperate and count, and then I also had the annoying sax problem of trying to drop my jaw to play a bunch of low notes, only to have no sound come out.

Nobody complained about me being there, though, which means that either I got away with a mediocre performance, or everybody was sympathetic to my pathetic (which doesn't make sense, but I like the way it sounds when I read it). Good hang with Neil Newcomb, who killed it on tenor sax.

Lil Abner

Last week, I got a random phone call from a friend asking if I was working Monday night.

"Nope."

"Cool. I need you for a recording session. We're recording the musical Lil Abner. 8 to 11 PM. I'll email you the book."

And away we go! I was sent Reed 2, which was mostly clarinet and bass clarinet, and a little bit of alto sax. Lotta clarinet. Good thing I've been practicing. Wednesday night, I read through the first act. Thursday, I went through everything twice. Sunday night, I went through a lot of it, and then again on Monday (though I was trying not to wear myself out before the session).

Monday night, I met up with Kevin Lyons and Lee King on trumpet, Tom Gibson on trombone, and Seth Kuehn on Reed 1 (piccolo, flute, clarinet, and alto), plus a string quartet, to rip through the book. The recording was to be used as backing tracks for a high school musical. 

The goal was to record as much of the show as we possibly could in three hours. In order to accomplish this, we flew threw songs, often taking the first take, regardless of any mistakes. In our headphones was a click track and piano track as a guide, and we did our best to keep up.

In the end, we probably recorded almost two-thirds of the musical. I assume that everything we did will go into Pro Tools and be severely edited. A very interesting evening!

Napa

Another one gig weekend--this time in Napa, California, playing the fiftieth birthday party for our friend Pat from Train.

Just like our trip to Utah the week before, we were fortunately able to fly the night before, sparing us the longest-day-of-your-life feeling of flying for several hours, riding in a van for an hour and a half, and then setting up and playing a gig. It also afforded us the opportunity to kill half a day before our scheduled soundcheck. Some scenes from my run around town:

our hotel

On a trip with nothing exciting to tell, here's something--for the first time, I used Lyft. I've gotten in Lyfts that others have called, but this was the first time I've ever opened the app on my phone and requested a car. This particular ride took me to an Indian place for lunch. Doubly fun was the Lyft back to the hotel.

aloo gobi and saffron rice

On to the gig--we played at a nifty little theatre called the JaM Cellars Ballroom. Nice room! The gear was also good, provided by SIR San Fran.

Maybe I expected this gig to be a little more wild, but then again, fifty years old, so maybe not. The crowd definitely liked us, but they were also very polite and quieted down between every song. It was almost corporate in atmosphere.

We learned How 'Bout Us for this one, which was really fun and vibey (especially since we had Keisha and Kourtney with us). Pat came on stage after I Can't Go for That to complement us on how much better we are than Hall and Oates. Everybody got a kick out of that.

Sunday: Another full day of travel. The flight home was quicker, but the guy in the seat next to me smelled much worse. And you annoying old ladies behind me! Shut up! The whole damn back of the plane can hear everything you're talking about.