The Long Run

Every time we play a gig in Houston, all I can think of is the line from the Eagles' The Long Run that goes, "All the debutants in Houston couldn't hold a candle to you." It has no bearing on anything we're doing, but that line always ends up stuck in my head. Frickin' love the Eagles (until Don Henley and Glenn Frey went insane).

Anyway...

Thursday: Got up and flew to Houston. 

And the approach was a little bumpy! Here's Mark Dannells in full grip.

We arrived in the city a few hours before we could even load in, so I killed time with a run around the town.

Refueling with the House of Blues chips and salsa. I was hungry, but this salsa was terrible--kind of a spicy tomato soup. What the hell?

On with the show. We had a really solid first night in Texas, and the crowd was really great for a Thursday.

The Houses of Blues continue with the same stuff...a good sounding stage and enough green room space, but the venue is dirty and the staff is burned out.

Friday: On to Austin. The Scoot Inn is an interesting place. It's a gravel lot with a corner stage--felt kind of like the Mallow Run gigs we've played in Indiana, where the stage is a little small and there's no backstage and it's hot and buggy and the people are kind of right on top of you.

Post soundcheck, we dispersed to find food, and I found some Indian cuisine just a few blocks away.

This hit the spot.

Not much of a backstage. Several of us ended up changing outside the back of the green room because there just wasn't enough room. This must be the big time.

The green room--small, but also small.

Anyway, nice night! We sold this sucker out, and even though it was cramped and dusty, the crowd was good (and good looking), and it turned into a good gig.

After the show, I came back to change and found that this beer tub had either leaked or sweated a big puddle of water, most of which had been soaked up by garment bag. Great! All of my stage clothes (except for what I was wearing at the moment of this picture) were soaked. Thank you backstage!

Saturday: Here we go for the hard part. We were up at 6 AM to fly to Aspen (through Salt Lake City).  Planes and planes and coffee and bananas and sleeping sitting up. Goddamnit.

Landed in Aspen on a beautiful day.

Greg and I ate lunch at some weirdo Thai place near our hotel. Check out the bench in the restaurant--wonder what kind of wood that is?

I was pretty awake (in spite of my lack of sleep), so I left Greg in the room and went for a run/hike.

This evening's gig was a private thing for a food and wine festival in Aspen, and our part of it was at the Belly Up.

More weirdness. On this small stage we had the four largest, heaviest versions of the keyboards we use, plus a drum riser. I think some of the equipment was rented, and some of it was house gear. That top keyboard is 65 pounds. I spent the whole night wondering if it would hop off the top tier of that keyboard stand and land in my lap.

I had dinner at a really mediocre Thai place (it was that or Mexican food) and then got a forty-five minute nap in before the 10 PM start.

Everybody was at this show was super cool and really happy to host us. However, we did this one for the check, and also for the exposure to others who might write us checks in the future. It was tough. The gear, the fatigue, and the altitude made for a long night.

And when the show ended at midnight, we had to run like hell back to the hotel because we had a 5 AM lobby call.

Also, when we unloaded back at the hotel, a fox walked up behind us. Hello nature!

Sunday: Back to Texas. We flew Aspen to Salt Lake City to Dallas. The flight attendant announced that we were going to try and get the door shut so that we could take off when the airport opened at 7 AM, and I was like, "but we've been at the airport since 5:30?" I wonder if that meant that no planes could disturb the peace before 7 AM or something, because clearly there was TSA and coffee before that time.

I was hurting. Super tired.

Staggered through SLC airport.

I was sound asleep (haaaaaard) for this leg of travel, but I guess we were on a really new Airbus that had this cool new 3D  "flight tracker." Really cool looking.

Standing around at DFW.

After a quick coffee stop, we headed into Dallas for this evening's gig at the House of Blues.

Aaaaand just before load in, the skies opened up! Big downpour, and hey, the ceiling directly over the stage is leaking really badly, right where all of my gear would be spending the evening.

The best solution we had was to kick the drum riser off center and move me closer to the middle.

Garbage cans were set out to collect the drips. "This one is empty!" he said (among other things).

It looked like we were going to wash away, but the rain let up, and I found time to sneak out for a short run around the neighborhood.

More House of Blues problems (other than the room leak)...our food order went in around 6 PM, and they repeatedly told us it was on the way, and it finally showed up at 7:55 (five minutes before we were scheduled to play), and most of it was cold. Thanks. They tried to make up for it by bringing boxes of mushroom tacos (which were pretty good, even at room temperature), but jeez.

This gig was tough. Right when we were walking on stage I thought, "I actually feel pretty normal, considering the lack of sleep. I'm going to be fine." Six songs in, I was like "I'm brain dead. Do not resuscitate." When I walked out front to play Baker Street as the first encore, I realized that I'd forgotten to turn my sax mic on. That was dumb. Also, I forgot to put my in ears back in. Earth to Dave!

OK crowd--not quite 500. I guess if you look at the weather and the fact that it's a Sunday night, that's a win, but it just feels like we still haven't found a good place to play here. This place sounds good, but the staff is a drag.

Monday: DFW->ATL.

I was actually awake for this flight, so I watched the new Aretha Franklin documentary Amazing Grace. Incredible! It's so good, it's almost unwatchable. I think I cried through the whole thing.

North Carolina +

Thursday: We drove up to Asheville from Atlanta for our show that evening at the Orange Peel. Remember that first time we played the Orange Peel back in the summer of 2012? (it's right here). Still pretty great to play here; big stage, big fan, big room.

And hello! Back to the Indian food! There was a place around a half a mile away, so I went for it...and then the rain came, and I got wet. The food was really good, and even though the waitress wouldn't let me order what I wanted (telling me it was too spicy...but how can I find out if I can handle it if you won't let me try it?), I got over that. I was sincerely pissed for a while, though. Their stuff is definitely spicier than average, so...ok.

potatoes and cauliflower = aloo gobi

photo by The Kippen Conner

Asheville! Sold out. It was kind of boomy, and 1,050 people are pretty noisy, but it was a fun first show of the run. Man, it was hot, though. The feeble air conditioner just couldn't keep up. We were all pretty sweaty at the end.

Friday: We went ahead and ate closer to Asheville at a Mexican place that appeared to be a former Pizza Hut. Not great, but decent. As I am much more aware of the every place's recycling situation, it was really annoying to see that the salsa bar was stocked with little plastic cups.

I drove most of this day's trip, mostly in the rain, and everybody else in the van was scared to death.

The Ritz in Raleigh where we played was different from other venues where we've played recently. For one thing, it was kind of in an industrial warehouse sort of area, so the food options were limited. It looked like we were going to order pizza for after the show, so I ordered...INDIAN FOOD!...and had it delivered after soundcheck. This turned out to be a good move because 1. It started raining, and the dudes who were going to walk to Subway were turned back; 2. the after-show pizza thing fell apart, so those who intended to eat then were left with nothing. Grubhub for the win.

I know that security is there to keep us safe, but they were pretty tight--we all had wrist bands put on us as we got out of the van, and then we had to go through a metal detector. It's for our own good, but I really don't like having to wear a wrist band when we perform. I wish there was a nicer way to deal with it.

Chana masala. Wassup.

One other thing that was weird about this place was that the staff was kind of pushy. They had some sort of party in the lobby at 6:30, and we were given the vague threat that they'd cut power if we hadn't finished sound checking by then. At 7:30, a staff member came to me off stage while I was warming up to tell me that the doors were now open (nothing directly, but I took that to mean that I should stop playing). I took my saxophone and found a backstage stairwell where I could play a little more.

Nice looking crowd! The place where we used to play in Raleigh was kind of dark and dumpy, and this place was quite an upgrade. According to the internet, this place can hold 1,974 people. We had something like 1,300 people (I think---I'm fuzzy on this one). Where would 650 more people go? It was really full, and super cool to find that many people here when we haven't come through that often.

And now I would like to tell the story of my most gloriously stupid fuckup in recent memory. Remember how I took my saxophone and went into a stairwell to play some after the doors had opened? I stuffed the socks I'd worn the previous night in the bell (to cut down on the volume), aaaaaaaaannnnnnddddd...I forgot to take them out, and when we got to my big solo in Biggest Part of Me, my saxophone felt really stuffy and the sound was really muffled, and neither I nor Zach could figure it out. Assuming that something in my microphone set up was failing, I tried to play my big solo into Nick's mic, and it was tragic. 

Zach took my sax mic and tested it during the next song, and it seemed to work fine, so he thought maybe I should change my frequency. When I laid the horn across my lap to adjust the transmitter, I could see the dark brown of the socks in the bell keys. I'm an idiot. Nothing I could do but laugh...for like four songs. Damn.

I do love this sign backstage, though. A few weeks ago I started carrying a large travel mug so that I wouldn't have take a plastic coffee cup from a hotel lobby, and in the evening I fill it with water when they have a water cooler instead of opening a bottle of water. Doing my part! I hope they're also recycling all of those plastic cups and aluminum beer cans that get dropped on the ground during our show.

Saturday: On to Charlotte! Why does North Carolina feel like you can drive half the day and not leave the state?

We played to a sold out Fillmore in Charlotte (2,000 people!). Wow! Best sounding stage of the run, too. As you might expect, I was disappointed that I couldn't redeem myself--no big sax solo this evening. Damn those socks. Then again, I got multiple positive comments from the band about my outro solo on Maneater, so I guess that'll have to do, even if I didn't think there was anything particularly outstanding about it.

This place is really easy to deal with--the load in isn't bad, the stage is pretty big and sounds really good, the green room area is decently big, and there are a couple of food options in the immediate vicinity. Even with the a massive downpour after soundcheck (a couple of us got trapped over at the pizza place), and a massive downpour at load out (fortunately, the band isn't involved in loading gear anymore), we had an easy time of it. And jeez...a massive crowd. Things were loose on stage, but it was still a nice night of work.


A little saxophone stuff here: I have played altissimo B on alto like this for years.

It turns up as the last note of Baker Street, and it's also in the Heart to Heart solo. It's also crazy sharp, so I try and lip it down. I heard yet another social media post of me playing Baker Street with a painfully sharp high B, so I changed to this fingering as of today at soundcheck:

which is just as stable, and a lot closer to being in tune. So...going forward, I'll use this and it'll sound better. Thank you very much.

Sunday: Ugh. 8 AM lobby call to boogie back to Atlanta. After a couple of hours at home to eat lunch and (um) "use the bathroom," and grab some gear, we went back to work, this time at Venkman's for an Unplugged set. These are mostly fun, as the "try anything" nature of the evening means that some things (talking about my fiery crash on the Hey Nineteen solo) start well and then fall apart. All in all, it's nice to play the songs and not be so married to the recorded versions, though. We can all be a little creative in our approach.

I did have some nice flute moments--Sara Smile was cool, and I was heating it up on Lotta Love and Lowdown. People cheered loudly for the solo on Africa (maybe because I didn't mess it up? I don't know).

through the secret window

The highlight of this night was the addition of Fleetwood Mac's Say That You Love Me, which Nick started playing at soundcheck. Everybody fell in behind him (tambourine for me, which limits my mistakes), he looked up the words, we checked the harmonies, and boom! New song, and one that I really sincerely love. The crowd liked that one, too. It's a keeper! Yay!



Off to Texas (mostly) this week.

Two More

Friday: Yacht Rock traveled up to Nashville for a show at Marathon Music Works, a venue that I was excited to see. We've been searching for a better room to play for quite some time, and this looked to be a winner--good size (1500 capacity), big stage, nice green rooms.

Post-soundcheck, I walked a couple of blocks over to a vegan place called Vege-licious, which was a weird whole-in-the-wall kind of place behind another shop. I had a vegan Hot Chicken Sandwich and roasted potatoes. Excellent! Very spicy (also, a near-lethal amount of sodium). Still, it was nice to try something different.

I still had plenty of time after eating to go back and warm up, and hang in the really nice backstage area (apparently the owners of Exit/In also own Marathon Music Works, so there's lots of memorabilia here).

On to the gig! Yay! Big crowd, good vibes. This is definitely the best place we've played in Nashville.  We were told that the guy who owns this place also owns The Signal in Chattanooga, and there are definitely many similarities. I like it. Easy gig.

Saturday: This was a long day. Things started with a late checkout from the hotel (with an hour run in the heat before that), then Chipotle for lunch, a couple of hours in the van, and then we were in Birmingham to headline a festival. We were scheduled to play at 9 PM and we got there in the middle of the afternoon, so the van dropped us at somebody's office/clubhouse place about a block away. Nice room! Non stop Grateful Dead played on the sound system, though.

Over the course of the evening, people (and these two sweet dogs) filtered in, and I ended up in a thirty minute conversation with one of the owners (of the dogs and the building), and the whole time he was sipping nitrous oxide out of two large balloons. At one point the guy asked me, "Does this offend you?" (what?) and I was thinking, "No, but it's really fucking weird!"

On to the show! This was a throw-and-go situation (throw your gear on stage and start playing), but we were able to uncase and preset some things off to the side, which cut the set up time down to maybe fifteen minutes.

Pretty decent gig. Pretty good crowd, and the weather wasn't nearly as godawful as predicted--I think it was maybe 80 degrees when we started. It felt longer than the night before, which usually indicates to me that the energy isn't quite there, but sitting around all day doing nothing didn't help with the flow either. Anyway, we did it, babe.

After the show, the local crew guys started grabbing our stuff and running it off stage (I took that to mean that their day was probably finished when the stage was cleared), and once we insisted that they leave everything and let us pack on stage, they were kind of worthless. So it goes.

Slice (major sponser of Slicefest 2019!) came up with some pizza that REALLY hit the spot.

After we loaded the trailer, we headed back over to the clubhouse to change, but things had gotten even weirder over there (nitrous, alcohol, fatigue, "bros"), so we took off for the hotel. When we got to the hotel, it was suggested that we just drive back to Atlanta, which we did. That kind of wrecked Sunday, but you never know if getting up and driving the next day is any better. I slept on and off the whole way home anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

North Carolina this week. Stay tuned.

Bumpin'

I got a last minute call/text to sub in the bari sax chair for Bumpin' the Mango's regular Monday night gig at Cafe 290. Sure, of course. I got the set list early enough that I was able to go over everything once before heading to the gig.

Weird gig. First of all, I was not the only sub, and it sounded like they were all pretty last minute--both saxes (Luke Weathington and me), one trumpet (Rob Opitz), and the guitar (Grant Reynolds) were all doing our best on short notice. Secondly, early in the second set a woman passed out in the back of the room, so we paused to ask if there was a doctor in the house. No? The paramedics were called, and the band played on! Once they arrived, we did take a short break while they loaded her on a stretcher and carried her out, and then...here's an original called Cold Drink (Shots!)! Not even ten minutes after the ambulance had left, there were flashing lights again, this time because the apartments across the street were possibly on fire! Jeez. Let's get out of here before something else happens.

Anyway, playing-wise, I felt pretty good. I realized that one of my problems playing bari is that after a certain number of low notes, my mouth get dry and something in my embouchure changes, and if I'm able to stop and reset, things are more consistent.

Also, it was cool to catch up with Grant Reynolds, whom I hadn't seen in at least a year. His guitar playing is as virtuosic as ever.

Some Non-Yacht Rock Stuff

As the title says...non-Yacht Rock stuff this week. Also, no Steve Gadd.

Thursday: I played with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra this week down by Georgia Tech (4th Street and West Peachtree) on a private gig for the opening of a building. I was kind of stressed out about this one, mostly because Rob had scheduled three sets of potential tunes and I hadn't found much time to prepare (and the music is hard). I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of work on it last week in San Francisco, but really, I just wasn't as ready as I'd like to be.

Fortunately (?), the gig had some really loose scheduling--like two thirty minutes sets with thirty minute breaks--and then an incredibly isolated rain cloud soaked the stage and killed our final set. Kind of a bummer, though--I really do enjoy playing with this band.

Saturday: After forty-eight hours of of desperately trying to get my flute chops back in shape after this week of bari playing, I was down at my church gig for a Saturday morning service. Geez, my face was tired; sounded tired, felt tired. There was a lot of playing on this one, too, and sometimes I'd play something that sounded really clear and pretty, and then the next phrase would be tight and dull. The rest of the band is tolerating it well, though.

I'll be back there on Sunday evening for the usual, and I want to practice (since I have Saturday night off), but I know I probably just need to rest tonight and get in a good warm up tomorrow.

(Monday update: my flute face was better, but not great!)