Back in the Northeast

Wednesday: Brooklyn. This was our first time back at Brooklyn Bowl since the infamous gig a few years ago where we were asked to immediately pack up (in our stage clothes) after the show and load our gear off the front of the stage so that another band could set up.

I want to like this place--it's got a cool vibe, and it's outside of the bubble that is Manhattan. There's something missing, though--maybe it's the hipsters who occupy the neighborhood, maybe it's the tiny dressing room, maybe it's the ok stage sound, maybe it's the fact that the front edge of the stage isn't quite square with the room. I don't know.

Went for a short run before the gig, basically from Williamsburg to Bed-Stuy and back.

Anyway, this gig was a fine warmup for the week's activities. It was almost sold out, so we got off to a good start!

Thursday: We spent the night out on Long Island. After sleeping like a dead guy, I went for a run, and  then made my way to the nearest Indian restaurant. This particular lunch buffet didn't have a lot of vegetarian options, so I doubled up on something recognizable. This was a concoction of rice, corn, spinach, and some sort of sauce to hold it together.

"corn palak"

 Thursday's gig was at our one of our favorite rooms, The Paramount in Huntington, Long Island.

Elvis is in the building!

backstage

In contrast to the night before, this place has plenty of room backstage and a squared-up stage that sounds really good. Uncomfortably cold at soundcheck, though! (see? I found something to complain about).

I found a new note to play--a high G (concert F). For this gig, I used it towards the end of Step, and in the outro solo of Biggest Part of Me. We're definitely in Lenny Pickett territory with this one.

Good gig. It felt like we flew through the setlist.

The post gig hang in Greg and Bencuya's room was a lot of fun. Even though I was tired, it was worth staying up.

Friday: I dragged myself out for a run again, and swung by a Chipotle for lunch before lobby call. Check out my new reusable spork! I bought this to keep in my backpack--my goal is to use fewer plastic utensils when we're on the road. Go green!

Speaking of which, recycling was hard to come by on this trip. Brooklyn Bowl had a recycling bin across the room from the stage, behind the bar. The Paramount had NO recycling.

Today's show was at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair, New Jersey (via a very intimidating drive from Long Island, through midtown Manhattan-on a Friday afternoon!--and into New Jersey). Huge room!...and no recycling! They put out a cardboard box to collect stuff after I asked.

After the set up and the warm up and the soundcheck, I headed across the street for...Indian food! There are actually two Indian restaurants next door to each other, and they are both right in front of the theater. I prefer the place called Chatni. It's funny that I've eaten there three times, and always sit at the same table.

Alu Gobi (cauliflower and potatoes)

This gig was pretty good. I have a difficult time with the boominess, though--it sounds like we're in an underground cave. It looks cool, though. I wish they'd install carpet. I really think that would make a big difference in how huge the natural reverb sounds.

Following the show, we drove about an hour to White Plains, New York (north of the city) to spend the night, because Saturday had a very early load in.

Saturday felt like it was still Friday, and I'd just been woken from a nap. We had a 7 AM lobby call so that we could get to Webster, Massachusetts by 10 AM. Hello lobby coffee!

What a weird place! This small amphitheater thing was built into a campground next to a lake with an unpronounceable name (Lake Chaubunagungamaug).

Sing along!

GREEN BANANAS ARE NOT EDIBLE BANANAS GODDAMNIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We kind of staggered through this one. It was early and we were all fried. At first, there weren't that many people in the audience (I'd heard something about "250 tickets sold," which sounded terrible), and Mark Cobb and I looked at each other and laughed--what the hell are we doing here? The crowd filled in as we went along, and by the end it was comfortably full for a weird gig in the middle of nowhere. As bizarre as it felt, we ended up having a good time.

I was physically and mentally tired when we started, and around forty-five minute in, I could feel my brain starting to brown out. I tried to remember two things--don't close your eyes, and don't try and think about what you're doing, or you'll get lost. So I went with the flow, and made it through without any big problems.

Somewhere around that time (when I couldn't see or think past the edges of my keyboards), I thought "It smells like rain," only to look up and see it pouring on the uncovered people. The shower continued for probably fifteen minutes. Almost everybody made it under the roof except for those who were particularly crazy or hardy.

photo by Tim O'Connor

And then it was over. We made it to the end! Yay!

A middle aged lady came running up to me as we crossed the alley between the back of the stage and the green room. She grabbed my arm, and in the most stereotypical Massachusetts accent you could conjure, said (yelled) "I PLAYED SAXOPHONE IN HIGH SCHOOL! WHAT BRAND DO YOU PLAY? I PLAYED A SELMAH!" and, in a half-dead, post-gig fog, said, "Uhh, Yamaha," took my arm back, and ran away. Not a gear guy, sorry.

Back in the van and back on the road, eventually stopping for the night in Hartford, Connecticut around 6 PM. Everybody fanned out to find dinner, and we were all back in our rooms and asleep by 10 PM.

In keeping with routine, I headed across the river to the nearest Indian restaurant, where I ordered vegetable biryani, medium spice level. It was so spicy, I thought I'd still be working on it when the place closed! Seriously--it took me forever to eat this. I didn't want to spend $3.50 to buy two more bottles of water, so I toughed it out.

Also, what a bummer to see so much plastic! I had a plastic water bottle, a plastic fork, and the food container was a plastic tub with a plastic lid. When I finally finished, I gave back the unused styrofoam plate and took everything else with me--I guess I was thinking that at the worst, I'd wash it out and bring it home to throw in our recycling bin. Instead, I quickly found a recycling dumpster behind an adjoining hotel. Problem solved!

Sunday: 7:10 AM flight back to Atlanta. Ugh. 5:30 AM lobby call. I was somehow rested enough that I never fell asleep on the plane. Wish I had.

Athens, GA

The Georgia Theatre never disappoints.

Nice gig! Everybody (including Keisha and Kourtney Jackson, who were with us for this one) was in a good mood, and you could feel it on stage.

You know how I usually hate my solo on Biggest Part of Me, and then it turns out that it was at least decent? The opposite happened here: I felt like I did pretty well, and then a friend sent me a video of the solo, and it sounds like I'm just randomly trying some shit out. Thus, here's a picture, but not a video!

  

photo cred: Chadwick Hunter

We also played our original, Step, which we had debuted at the Revival show a couple of weeks ago. I'm still trying to get the hang of it--not quite comfortable yet. Also, we closed the night out (like the Revival) with Bohemian Rhapsody. I'm not sure why, but I felt like I was wildly pitchy for the first section--like there was no tonality, and I just had to go off muscle memory.

Anyway, yay Athens! It was good to see y'all.

A Long Day in Santa Fe

Santa Fe! This was our third year playing this gig--some kind of private party at an expensive house on a hill, and every year it gets a little bigger, a little more expensive. This year, they built a boat deck, and we played up in front of the bridge. How clever is that!

The views are beautiful.

And the property is also gorgeous.

We arrived really early--flying west from Atlanta to Albuquerque, we landed at noon, ate lunch at the airport, and then piled into a sprinter van for the trip out to Santa Fe. After helping set up the backline gear and then sound checking, we still had several hours to kill. I went for a run (it was hot and there was altitude), and then we took the house shuttle into town to find food.

I hit the Indian place (of course), and they were so slow, they turned the lights on in the dining room when they seated me! I ordered dal makhani (lentils sautéed with onions, garlic, ginger, and tomatoes) and a side of rice. Pretty good.

Met up with everybody else for a stop at Starbuck's before the shuttle took us back to the gig.

Every year, we've had trouble with the weather, and this year was no exception. Rain passed by our hill on several occasions. When I went to check on the stage (and my stuff), the local guys had tarped everything except my saxophones, flute, piccolo, EWI, and laptop. Dudes! So, I put all my stuff back in the cases and made sure my computer stuff would stay dry.

We delayed the start by fifteen minutes to see if the rain would get us. It held off, though, and I unpacked my horns and we got to work.

This one was tough. It felt like we'd been hanging around all day (we had), and the crowd was pretty lukewarm in their response to us. An 8:30 PM start time felt like 11:30 to us.

At one point, a couple of really big moths (like 3 inch wingspan, bodies like your pinkie finger) came out of the desert to check us out. If there's such a thing as being attacked by moths, we were! I had one that landed on one leg, then moved to the keyboard (noo!), then moved to my other leg (NOOOO!), and I swear he was chewing on my pants, so I brushed him off, and he fell on the stage and played dead for a couple of songs. Eventually, he flipped over and just hung out there, then crawled up on the foot of the keyboard stand. Moth attack repelled!

We finished around 10:30 PM, packed up whatever was coming with us (mostly my saxophones and stuff), hopped in the sprinter van and headed back to our hotel in Albuquerque, an hour away. I was in bed at 12:30 AM, and up at 4:20 AM to catch the shuttle to the airport. Ouch.

Cool car in the airport.

I slept the whole way back to Atlanta. The seat next to me was thankfully empty, and I feel like it was some kind of karmic payback for the giant woman who was sat in her seat AND mine on the way out to New Mexico.

I don't know if I took a nap this afternoon, but I somehow managed to get to my church gig. It's--amazing is not the ride word--maybe it's impressive? how much my physical chops are affected by hard days like this. I knew my brain would be tired and I'd make dumb mistakes reading charts, but my flute face took the whole rehearsal to come around to something sounding decent. Anyway, I made it through the actual service just fine.

Live on the Green

Yacht Rock was on the road again this week, beginning with a Thursday evening show in Nashville a their "Live on the Green" festival. We were in a the 7:30 PM slot. Way back in 2012, we also played this program, though they held in October then, and I remember I was underdressed and very cold, and I borrowed Mark Dannells' jacket. You can relive it here.

Anyway, after a somewhat chaotic load in and set up, we only had time for a super quick line check before giving way to the next band's set up. I guess we were a little late, but the stage crew was also a little slow with the plan for a drum riser, and we had to wait til that was set before we could build around it.

The festival then drove us to a nearby hotel to relax before our set. Urban golf carting!

After about an hour, we made our way back over to the backstage area to eat dinner. Quite a crowd had already gathered to see the band before us, American Authors.

The change-over--one drum riser rolled aside, our riser rolled in, and we brought our gear back into position around it.

Here's a crowd shot. Pretty fun gig. I heard that there were 20,000 people out there? I guess that it's possible, even though I could only see these people who were lit up. The spotlight was also pretty intense.

We finished, and immediately went into a fire drill of running our gear off the side of the stage, laying it down (I commandeered a large table and piled keyboards, saxophones, and pedals on it), and going back for more. Ten minutes earlier, we were rock stars! Now we're just trying to get our shit out of the way so the next band can start on time. So it goes...