Making the Donuts, Week Two

Intense touring, week two! This week, we played four dates in the northeast.

Thursday: The gigging began at The Wellmont in Montclair, New Jersey. For some reason, we flew up reeeeeeeaaaaaaaaalllllly early (landing before noon), so we parked the van and went to lunch before loading in. For me, that meant...INDIAN FOOD! There are two Indian places basically across the street, so I went into one (which was completely deserted at 12:30 in the afternoon) and had a feast.

I believe this is chana saag (spinach and garbanzo beans)

We've played this room before, twice, I think. It's a monstrous cavern of a room--very pretty, but it could use soundproofing to deaden it. Having a lot of people in the room helps, too, but Michelle's birthday party had somewhere around 150, which didn't do much in that regard.

We played ok. The seven of us were pretty fried after a long day.

My funky corner hotel room

Friday: A side benefit of playing the birthday party Thursday night was that we could leave all of our gear set up on the stage, so we had the entire day to recover. After sleeping as late as I could, going for a run, and ordering more Indian food for lunch, I finally gave up and took a Lyft back to the theatre so that I could get a few hours of practicing in without bothering everybody else.

too cold to run outside!

lunch! Vegetable biryani and roti

woooooo

it's big!

After soundcheck, I went back across the street--keeping the streak alive! Once again, I was there at what I thought would be prime time (7 PM on a Friday night), but there was no one there.

the tried and true chana masala

The Wellmont was sold out. How did that happen? I want to say that there were something like three hundred people last time, but this go round was something like 2,100? Who knows. The floor was packed and there were people in the balcony (though it wasn't full all the way to the back wall). The Wellmont said is was sold out, so...it's sold out!

Pretty good gig, and the energy was obviously insane compared to the night before. I played pretty well, though my solo on Biggest Part of Me was a bunch of bullshit, and the harder I tried to play something meaningful, the worse it got. Other than that, though, a good night on the job.

I swapped out alto mouthpieces for this run, replacing my Sakshama Guardala Studio copy with a Vandoren V16 S+. The Vandoren had been my alto mouthpiece on my spare horn, and I've enjoyed it so much, I thought it might be time to try it on a gig. It seems like it's going to take a few shows to find the tuning, though.

This one was broadcast on Facebook, and you can watch it if you want.



Saturday: New York City. Once again, we had time to kill before load in, so we dispersed for an hour.

just to the right of this, there was a giant pillow fight going on

Another Irving Plaza sellout!

As luck would have it, there are Indian restaurants in Manhattan. This place was great.

vegetable curry

This gig was electric. The band was locked in from the first song, and the crowd was right there with us. Crazy.

Sunday: Boston House of Blues, located adjacent to Fenway. One of the only Houses of Blues that we haven't yet conquered.

For the sake of consistency, I want to point out that there's a good Indian restaurant just across the Massachusetts Turnpike--a ten minute walk!--from the House of Blues. I didn't go, though, because HoB provided a buffet.

It's also worth noting that the Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory are both right around the corner, which means that I was within one square mile of a thousand sax players who play better than I do. Go away!

It holds 2500 people.

And guess what...another sellout!

Unfortunately, I played a GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING HORRIBLE TERRIBLE AWFUL SHOW! I played a wrong note in the intro of the first song and it got worse from there. After about an hour, I'd finally settled down (pretty decent solo on Biggest Part of Me), and then everything started going to pieces again before we finished. It was devastating to perform so poorly on such a big night. I hate myself. Sorry Boston. Let's blame it on my not getting any Indian food this evening.

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.