Northwest America

Off we go...

Tuesday: Flew from Atlanta to Reno, Nevada (through Salt Lake City).

Checked into the hotel. We had individual rooms for our time here. I was given room 666, and it was just like any other hotel room.

Everybody was kind of wrecked from the travel and the time zones. I wandered a couple of blocks in search of Indian food, and landed at a place called Thali, which served sampler plates, but all you can eat. A guy would come by occasionally and ladle more food into each cup. I went nuts, ate too much, and got a belly ache.

On the way back to the hotel, I found the dog park, so I stopped to visit even though I didn't have a dog.

this dog did not like me, and it hurt my soul

home for 48 hours

Later that evening, I went for a run and burped a lot.

Wednesday: I got up and went swimming.

Then it was time for lunch, so I went to Maya's (which was the same place as Thali, but somehow a different restaurant during the day). Anyway, more Indian food.

The afternoon was hot and Reno frankly just wasn't very exciting, so I hid in my hotel room with my iPad for a few hours. For dinner, I wandered off to a different Indian place.

Vegetable Jalfrezi

Aaaaand, I squeezed in a run after the sun went down.

We were originally going to be playing a show Wednesday night here in Reno, but the gig died/got canceled the week before due to low ticket sales. At that point, it was too expensive to alter our flights, so that's the reason for this day and a half of non-musical stuff.

Thursday: On to the next gig! We finally left Reno, headed west into California to play the Sonoma County Fair.

We stopped for lunch in Auburn, California. If pay attention to running stuff, you might know that Auburn is where the Western States 100 (100 mile trail race) finishes. Maybe only interesting to me...

Anyway, such damn fine luck landed another Indian restaurant (once again, an all-you-can-eat situation!), this time across the street from a running store and a bike shop. Sounds like a nice afternoon.

some kind of dahl and some vegetable rice

main street

And then it was back in the van, working our way to Santa Rosa for the fair.

no Indian food--I had a veggie burrito

This was not the most exciting of gigs, for sure. I'm guessing that was a hundred people in attendance? It was certainly nice to finally get on stage and play, though. Too much down time is too much.

After the show, we piled back in the van and drove ninety minutes to Sacramento. A long day in the van.

Friday:  Off we go! Our crew drove the van and trailer to the next gig, but the band was afforded the luxury of flying. From Sacramento, we headed up the coast to Seattle.

McClellan, CA

inbound to Seattle, WA

We landed at SeTac, changed planes, and headed south to Portland, Oregon. 

Notice that the engine and wing are now facing the other direction!

Seattle, WA

Tacoma, WA

Tacoma, WA (again)

Vancouver, WA (very confusing, eh?)

Alright. Landed in Oregon.

Another night off! I started with a little exploring.

Then, I went for a run down by the river.

And then, the usual...

Saturday: Coffee in the lobby. This place was pretty hip(ster).

Seriously--you could borrow a record player to play all the vintage vinyl you bought yesterday.

Anyway, another run around the river loop...

...and a different Indian restaurant.

vegetable vindaloo

Finally, to the gig! We played at Revolution Hall, a former school that had been converted into a venue. Wow--what a cool property!

The performance hall holds about 800 people.

Groovy green rooms.

Plus a restaurant with veggie options and comfortable outdoor seating. I dig it!

We had 660 or so people in the room for our first shot at Portland--incredible!--and they were REALLY into it. Awesome crowd. I liked everything about this one.

I decided to try a stiffer tenor sax reed on this gig, hoping that it would stand up to a little more jaw and air pressure when I lean into solos. We played Ambrosia's Biggest Part of Me tonight;  my solo went well (so well, in fact, that we went longer than usual), and the reed did exactly what I wanted, but...I got tired! My embouchure wasn't used to the harder reed, and my face was TOAST by the time we got the cadenza at the end. I'm going to need a week or so to get used to it. Definitely the right move, though. I probably should've moved up a while ago.

Sunday: One last run around Portland before we left for Seattle. The plan was either coffee, run, lunch; or run, lunch, coffee. Instead, it was run, coffee, Apple store (for new headphones), lunch, frantic shower.

yes! they are serious about recycling here

Seattle. The internet said that Portland and Seattle were only about three hours apart, but there were several traffic obstacles, and we ended up in the van for more like four and a half hours. Why would there be so much traffic on a Sunday? Nobody knows...this part of the country (in between the cities) definitely felt like the frontier--trees and space and right-wing militia types.

Neumos (which apparently replaced a place called "Moe's", and the quirky spelling stuck), was dark and dirty room with lots of flies. Much different than the vast majority of gigs we play these days! It felt like we were back to playing bar gigs (albeit without all the cigarette smoke).

One last round of Indian food...

For a Sunday, this was definitely a good show, particularly considering this was our first time here. I had a couple of giant houseflies on my keyboards at the beginning of the gig, but I guess they didn't like it. The crowd sure did!

I felt better about my reed situation on this night, but this setlist didn't involve much sax playing.

Monday: Flying diagonally across the country takes a long time. I slept through the first third of it, waking up just east of the Rocky Mountains.

With this flight, I achieved Gold Medallion status on Delta. Slightly more legroom for all these cross country naps.

Indiana

Thursday: Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Did you know they have an international airport there? It was...not very crowded. We hopped in two Lyfts. One smelled of cigarettes, one smelled of poop. I ended up in the poop car.

waiting for our ride

This was a tough travel day. I was up at 5:30 AM and out the door at 6:15 to make an 8:30 AM flight, which put us in Ft. Wayne at 10:30 AM. Then, lots and lots of hanging around. Fortunately, we were at the Sweetwater Amphitheater (Sweetwater is a mostly online company that sells music gear), so we hung out, looked at instruments and accessories that we didn't really need, ate lunch, and looked at our phones.

Finally, it was time to go--they even asked us to start early! A quick ride across the parking lot in their sprinter van.

Surprisingly, not too bad of a crowd. Five or six hundred--something like that--but it was a nice stage, great weather, and this aircraft hanger looking thing sounded pretty decent. Too bad we were a little rusty and a lot brain dead--I was functioning at about 70 percent.

Special shout out to the people who made their own yacht (which I signed after the show with a ballpoint pen).

Friday: From Ft. Wayne, we drove to Fishers, Indiana (an Indianapolis suburb), for a two night stand at Conner Prairie. Last year's gig was epic (reread about it here), and this year looked to be just as good. After a good night of sleep, I was optimistic.

our Indiana horn section: Clayton, Keith, and Vince

It was a pretty slammin' night. Somewhere around 5,000 people joined us. The weather couldn't have been better. The playing was good, particularly Mark Cobb's drum solo.

Here's most of my outro solo on Biggest Part of Me. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I was really frustrated with this one, as I was overblowing (and getting mad and blowing even harder, which is stupid), and I felt like I was just playing a bunch of garbage, and I was hoping somebody would shoot me so I wouldn't have to finish it. Listening to it now, it sounds pretty good, and I can hear my musical train of thought. Guess I should just let it rip and not worry about it.

Baker Street. Photo cred by someone in Mark Cobb's family

Saturday: Night two at Conner Prairie. I'd guess there were at least 5,000 people in attendance again. Another really good night, though maybe a little sloppy. Still fun, though. Pete's wife, Alyssa, came up and sang Islands in the Stream and Queen of Hearts with us. We also had the horn section, plus Keisha and Kourtney Jackson on background vocals.

Biggest Part of Me got cut from the setlist, squashing the opportunity to maybe redeem myself, but I did put together good solos on I Just Wanna Stop and Turn Your Love Around.

Baker Street was the second song of the encore, and some guy right in the front row had his phone on a selfie stick, which he held very close to me each time I was playing the theme. Not cool. I did my best to ignore it, though I knew it was there. 

After the gig, I ended up having to talk to him (he stood in front of the stage, bellowing YO BOSS! in my direction for nearly five minutes until I finally acknowledged him). He was really proud of his photography. He also wanted to know what it would take for me to give him my hat so that he could have bragging rights within his group. 

Some people suck, even on nights like this one. 

Two Night Stand

Thursday: Unplugged. Right as we were beginning the first song of the evening, Lovely Day, I decided that instead of playing my parts on keyboard, I would play flute. That was a stupid idea.  I played a gig's worth of wrong notes in the intro, verse, and chorus. Fortunately, things got better from there.

The rest of the gig was fine. Monkeyboy didn't feel good about his playing, so Reeling in the Years was a much slower shuffle, and felt like it should've been a bonus track on Eric Clapton's Unplugged record.

Also, not actually part of the gig, but I took a decent organ solo on Heart to Heart at soundcheck.

Ganesh, holding it down on the drums

We left all the gear set up for Friday, which meant no load out and no Friday soundcheck, which was...really nice! I packed up my horns and split. 

Friday: It didn't occur to me until we'd already played the left hand column, but there wasn't much saxophone on Friday's gig. I'd guess that we played an hour and a half before we hit Reeling in the Years.

Other than that, it was a pretty regular gig. Home by midnight.

I forgot to take any pictures all night. This is the last note of the gig.

No Saturday gig, but I did play my church gig on Sunday afternoon, and somehow lucked into a good day of flute playing, one where I felt confident in my intonation and dynamics (often I am NOT confident in my intonation and everything goes straight to hell) . I even got a couple of compliments, ending the weekend in stark contrast to the musical hand grenade that began Thursday night. 

A twenty-ish year old girl came up to ask me about my flute and getting a good sound, and I wandered off for a good five minutes talking about eBay and European headjoints and Jeffrey Kahner (principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra) before I realized that the correct answer was just "It's a Yamaha flute." Sorry!