Colorado Interrupted

This week, the Yacht Rock tour headed through Colorado. Originally, the plan was Boulder-Denver-Aspen, but a private gig in Houston won out, sooooo...here's three days.

Thursday: Headed to Boulder (via Denver) on a middle of the day flight, which actually proved to be quite comfortable. We left Atlanta at 1:30 PM, and with the time change, we landed in Denver and made it to the Boulder Theatre in good time.

I finished up Can You Ever Forgive Me? (see the previous blogs if you don't know what I'm talking about). There was nothing else I wanted to see, so I tried out the documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, titled RBG. Hot damn. It's really good.

Anyway. The weather for Boulder was supposed to be snow/rain, high of 38. Nooooooo! Not in May! Fortunately, there was no snow, and other than a few sprinkles, no rain.

After soundcheck, I squeezed in a short run (including picking up my order at the closest Indian restaurant). This Aloo Saag, which is a spinach and potato dish, served over rice. Looks like cat vomit (according to cat owners), but tasted great. It also stunk up all of the downstairs dressing rooms.

Boulder Theatre was terrific. Not quite sold out, but very full, and the audience was excellent (and there was plenty to look at). The stage sounded good, and we all played well, too. It was a nice, relaxed start to this little run of shows.

Friday: We spent both nights at the same hotel in downtown Denver, and as a bonus, we each had our own rooms. I woke up at 6 AM, went back to sleep until 10, went downstairs for coffee, and then headed out for a run. The weather was gorgeous.

didn't go in, just ran past it

Near the end of my run, I circled around to...ta da!...another Indian restaurant. Hello lunch buffet. Plate #1: the sign said that this was Aloo Paneer, but I think it's the same thing that I had the night before in Boulder. Note the similar cat-vomit-like color and texture. It had a good kick to it.

All you can eat, so plate #2! This was Aloo Gobi, which is mainly cauliflower and potatoes. Honestly, this one didn't really taste like anything. I still ate it, though.

I managed to run back to the hotel without throwing up, and after a shower, stretching, and a failed attempt to nap, I walked the .75 miles to the Ogden Theatre for load in.

This is another nice looking, nice sounding room, and sold out always makes for a good gig. After soundcheck, most of the band wandered down the street to feast on ramen (yes, I checked, and there are no Indian restaurants within walking distance--there is a vegan place a block away, but it's a lot of quinoa and raw stuff, and ramen sounded like a better option, and everybody else wanted to go there and it wasn't busy). This was good, even though I had to fish out the half of a hard boiled egg (yuck!).

So...jeez! Denver was sold out. This was a really fun night. We had a good laugh talking about the couple in the front row who looked so miserable for most of the gig--it turned out she was Nick's cousin and her husband!

you can count 'em if you don't believe me, but that's 1,600 people

Back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep, and then it was time to head to the airport.

Saturday: 7:15 AM lobby call, headed to Houston for a private gig. It was our first time flying United--kind of interesting to deal with another airline after so many rides with Delta. Right before I passed out, I wondered if we were on one of those Boeing 737 Max planes. No? Great. I woke up somewhere over Texas as we bounced around the edges of a thunderstorm.

This was a 70s themed party for a corporate client. The doofuses that provided the backline were all over the place with the gear, and it took a while to get everything in the right place. The major bummer of this one (especially considering the difficult acoustics of the room) was that the backline guys forgot to provide the in ear monitoring system, so we had to use wedges. Needless to say, the stage sound was not what we were used to.

I guess we were at the end of a long party, because we had around five hours to kill after soundcheck. I went for a run, and we still had time to watch Pulp Fiction and Coco.

So, yeah, this was not the most inspired evening of our lives. There was some really good stuff to look at, but we were tired, we had to wait around all afternoon in,  the room didn't sound good, and those two nights in Colorado set the bar really high.

Oh well. Back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep, and then we were off to the airport again, this time for a flight back to Atlanta. Once again, I was able to sleep the whole way. Home, lunch, church gig, laundry. We're off again tomorrow!

Two More

This busy week continues! Thursday night, I had the good fortune of playing lead tenor in the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra. It's always a challenge--sometimes I'm on bari, sometimes second tenor, sometimes lead tenor--and the setlist changes just as frequently. It's super fun, though, plus it's good to hang out with a bunch of guys I don't see every week. And I didn't totally suck! Great gig.

Here's the video from Venkman's, in case you missed the gig.

Friday night was the Yacht Rock Revue's annual performance of Purple Rain. This year, we were lucky to avoid dragging all of our stuff out to a tent deep in Piedmont Park, instead performing at The Roxy (fifteen minutes from home!). I'm not sure if it sold out, but it was definitely packed.

This was another really fun show, and it felt like we zipped through it. We've played this album enough times that the performance is really relaxed. I'm as cool with column two as I am with column one!

Extra kudos to Ganesh Giri Jaya for learning all the drum parts on short notice!

Airports and Jazz!

More airplane hangers! This time, though, we were in Atlanta at the Delta Flight Museum for a little jazz trio gig, playing background music for a small group checking out the planes and eating dinner.

I still can't decide if it was just a super easy-no pressure gig, or they forgot that they hired us. We got there, set up, and hung around for about an hour. No word from the client. Finally, I called and said "We're here! Just checking in." They were like, "Cool, it'll be great," but no directions or timeline or anything. Do your thing! Use excellent corporate jazz judgement!

People started to trickle in, so we played for about forty-five minutes. Just super casual--calling standards out of a fake book. I once had a handler/agent tell me that any longer than ten seconds between songs was too long. This was not one of those gigs!

At that point, the group meandered into the other room. Soooooo...now what? I tracked down the contact--"Where do we go?" She was fine with resetting the band wherever, so I picked an outlet on the wall in the other hanger and we brought our instruments in. After about forty-five minutes of tunes, we were passed the end time, so we stopped playing and hit the buffet, and everybody was cool, and then they had a Q and A while we munched in the corner. Easy gig!

The trio was Scott Glazer on bass, Nick Rosen on keyboard, and myself. As we were loading out, Nick mentioned that he was going to hit the jam session at Venkman's on the way home. I wanted to go, but I was also anxious about it--I thought I did a good job playing host Joe Gransden's big band a few weeks ago, and I didn't want to spoil my impression by stinking it up at the jam session.

But I went, and Joe saw me and called me up, and I played on a blues (Sandu), and actually played really well! Success! Huh! Maybe I can do this after all!

Then Joe called Nick and I up to play a tune together, and I called Invitation, and then played a good amount of bullshit, and I was not feeling so good about going to the session! I should've gone home after my gig! I have stuff to do at home!

I went to the back of the room to kind of hide and possibly sneak out, but I got called up to play on Caravan, and I felt like I mostly redeemed myself. Two out of three ain't bad?

So anyway, now I kind of feel like a goober for avoiding this jam session for so long. Joe does a tremendous job of making everybody feel welcome, and I was comfortable with the vibe and everything. Guess I'll have to make a point of coming through here a little more often.

More Airports!

Last weekend: relatively easier in comparison to the previous weeks' travels.

Friday: We played some sort of hospital fundraiser at the community airport in Covington--the usual "stage in an aircraft hanger" situation. Right? One would think this would be a boomy sounding mess, but it was a surprisingly good stage sound.

In typical corporate fashion, the first several songs were played to an empty dance floor, but after about thirty minutes, we broke through, and the dancers were plentiful.

Very easy gig. Really, the only tough thing was sitting in traffic on a Friday afternoon to get out to Covington. 

Saturday: Noon flight to Connecticut. 

someone left their breakfast in the Park and Fly

This gig...maybe some kind of fundraiser in Darien? I guess I wasn't paying attention--I have no idea. Anyway, we flew up there, set up, sound checked, and still had four hours to kill. I went for a run around town.

This gig (I mean the room) sounded terrible, but it didn't matter because there was A LOT to look at. Money and good genes everywhere you looked. Good lord. Thanks for that.

Sunday: We (most of us) were on a lunch time flight back to Atlanta, so I did a loop around White Plains, NY before we caught the hotel shuttle.

I'm trying to watch the movie Can You Ever Forgive Me? but between the two flights (and two naps) I still have about ten minutes left. I'm not wishing to get on another airplane, but I would like to see how it ends.

Week Four

Off again! This week's run was Wednesday-Saturday, starting off in Michigan.

Wednesday: Grand Rapids! Not where I thought we'd first dip our toes into the gigging...waters..of Michigan? I thought that was going to work, but maybe not. Anyway--you'd think we'd begin our midwestern expansion in Detroit, or maybe Ann Arbor, but...no. Grand Rapids it is. Second largest city in Michigan. Home to several breweries.

Awww! The Great Bencuya in his home state

Step one: lunch! And wouldn't you know it, there's an Indian place right up the street. I hit the buffet for some chana masala. 

The evening's gig was at 20 Monroe Live, a newish concert venue in town (capacity 2,600!). Big room, but really nice and clean and well run. They had some sort of private event between our early soundcheck and the gig.

After a nap (thought the pollen was bugging me, but I guess I caught a cold), I didn't really feel ready to eat dinner, so I went for a short run.

I think we were all very pleased by this Wednesday nighter! Maybe 500 people showed up, but it didn't look super empty, and they were mostly enthusiastic. And generally, the place was just really cool--nice green rooms, nice stage, PA sounded good. All that stuff. Any easy start to the week.

Somehow, I ended up quoting Santa Claus is Coming to Town in my flute solo on Lowdown. It just kind of happened--not on purpose! I played the first phrase of it without realizing what it was, and when my brain caught up, I had to play the next bit to complete it.

Thursday: We headed out in the late morning across the empty fields of rural Michigan, northern Indiana, and Ohio, bound for Cincinnati.

we're in good company

Bogart's was slammed. Not quite a sellout, but it was still packed, and the show was really good. Also good: Indian food over by the University of Cincy campus (though they use a disappointing amount of plastic and styrofoam).

Immediately following the show, I packed up my gear as quickly as possible and jumped into this van with Nick and Pete for a late night ride to Indianapolis. We were scheduled to perform as a trio on the morning news.

It was a rough ride. The weather, the roads, and the driver were fighting the entire time.

Friday: My cold was in full bloom this morning. It probably would've helped to sleep late, but we zoomed over to the TV studio for the broadcast. Strangers in a strange land.

They'd asked us to play for the weather portion and then to play again after the interview, but right before the weather, I was taken by the producer and told to basically walk into the shot and play. Uhhhhhhhh...ok! It was pretty exciting to have to play on the spur of the moment, but I think it came out ok.

After a short interview, we played Summer Breeze. I swear I'm not trying to drown out the vocals!

Then I went back to my hotel room and crashed for a couple of hours. I had a very difficult and realistic dream that I'd played Careless Whisper wrong on TV and repeated it over and over and over. Once I had peeled myself off the bed, I went out for lunch at Yat's, my favorite cajun place in Indy, then a short run on the treadmill, and then off to work!

The gig du jour was in the Egyptian Room at the Old National Centre. We've played this place before, and though the room itself doesn't have a lot of vibe, the building is pretty neat.

Lotta people here. Indy is always a really great place to play--it's just a great city in every way.

We had a horn section for this one, and they dealt with my horn charts pretty well. Someday I'll even get all the mistakes out of them!

In other news, I had a really good solo on the end of Biggest Part of Me. Everything that could go right, did. Made me want to high five myself.

Saturday: Chicago! Also, last day of the run! We're almost home! 

Things started off with a photo session. We started off with some shots on a bridge (maybe Dearborn Street?), and then worked on some stuff at the marina basically directly under the Wilco Buildings (and the House of Blues). The HoB let us take some pictures up in the "Foundation Room" as well.

Chicago, lookin' mighty fine

 Another good show and...a sellout! This was a nice ending to four pretty intense weeks.

I crawled back into Atlanta with enough time to eat and head to my church gig. I made the mistake of not warming up before I got there, and it took the entire rehearsal and soundcheck before my embouchure finally started to come together. I did find some nifty stuff to play a pseudo-Latin flavored song, which hopefully made up for some of the rough stuff I played earlier in the mass.