January 2025

January was busy for Yacht Rock! Here are some highlights...

Thursday, January 9, 2025: Montclair, NJ. We arrived in New Jersey pretty early in the day, so as soon as we arrived at the venue, it was time to go to lunch. Fortunately, there's an Indian restaurant across the street from The Wellmont Theater, so off I went!

maybe it's a joke, but...wrong kind of Indian?

So...usual stuff. Cold load in, set up the gear, eventually sound checked everything, went for a run. I think I had a peanut butter sandwich for dinner, since lunch was pretty filling.

a fellow runner

It was really cold, mostly because the wind--gusts up to 44 mph!. I ran off down the street, thinking that I was doing really well because 1. I wasn't too cold, and 2. I felt like I was running well, and just before my turnaround point, it dawned on me that the wind was at my back, and the second half of the journey was going to be a lot more difficult! (and I was correct!)

The Wellmont was really good. It definitely sounds like a big ol' cave of a room, but we had a huge crowd and they were into it. Maybe we were kind of rusty? It seems like that's always the case when we have a week or more off.

Friday, January 10, 2025: Huntington, NY. The vans/trailers caravan made its' way out to Long Island for two nights at The Paramount. We decided to not stop for lunch, and instead got to the venue early and ate in Huntington. My Indian restaurant was closed, but there was a Thai place (RuCha Thai Cuisine) across the street, so that's what I had. I can't even remember what this was, but it really hit the spot. That's some kind of fried...zucchini on top? I ate the whole damn thing.

damn right it's mine

Coming back from taking this picture of the marque, there was a guitarist busking on the corner, and at first I thought he was making fun of me, but I guess it was just serendipity. Baker Street in the freezing cold on a guitar with questionable intonation. Right on.

meanwhile, the party backstage raged on

The Paramount is great! Sold out. Great energy. More accuracy than last night!

birthday cake for me, courtesy of the Queen of the Anchorheads!

Saturday, January 11, 2025: Huntington, NY. Gig number two here.

Our hotel could've been mistaken for a bank, and my shower used to be the water fountain. Nobody else said anything, so I guess I ended up in a room with no water pressure.

Back to RuCha for more Thai food. This was the more traditional stir fry with tofu kind of thing. Delicious.

Monkeyboy showed Bruce (our new guitar tech/crew guy) how he wants his instruments restrung. We'll see how it goes. I want to believe that the look on Bruce's face is at least fifty percent sarcasm.

Night number two. I was kind of hit and miss. I can't say why. I slept, I ate, I ran, I warmed up. Maybe I tried too hard? I dunno. It was still probably fine, just not a home run.

Sunday, January 12, 2025: Staten Island, NY. A new venue for us--the St. George's Theatre. Wow!

I shared this dressing room with Pete and it had a space heater and it was glorious

Really nice place. Nick did his best to watch the Packers game while we were performing (his iPad was hidden between he and Greg). I don't remember any detail about our playing, but I do remember warming up in a bathroom downstairs and listening to Hans talk to everybody who came into the catering room...for at least an hour.

This show was early--maybe like 5:30 pm? Early enough that we packed up, drove to Newark, New Jersey, and I was running on the treadmill at 10:20 PM. Four miles. The two guys who were coaching each other through some weight lifting were really loud. I ran six miles in the morning before we left Long Island, so regardless of whatever I played on stage, at least the exercise part of the day was successful.

Thursday, January 16, 2025: Evans, GA. Evans is a suburb of Augusta, and they have a very nice performing arts center. We played here last year.

This gig was pretty terrible for me. I just couldn't get my shit together. Monkeyboy was the same way, and we were equally frustrated. At one point, he turned around to me and yelled "THIS. GIG. SUCKS!" It turns out he was getting sick with Covid, too, but he didn't know it at the time.

We signed the wall last year. They haven't painted over it yet.

After the gig, I was going to jump on the treadmill, but the exercise room closed at 11 PM, so I missed it by about ten minutes. That's the way this day went. Briefly I considered running outside (the weather was acceptable), but hmmm...Augusta at 11 PM just seemed like a bad idea.

Friday, January 17, 2025: Charleston, SC. Since I got shut out of running last night, I got up and ran on the treadmill this morning. The ride from Augusta to Charleston took a few hours, so I was able to grab a solid nap before we arrived.

I had this excellent lunch at Big Gun Burger Shop and Bar around the corner. 

We played a fundraiser for the College of Charleston baseball team. They do an excellent job hosting us.

Good gig here. We played the Charleston Music Hall for the first time, a pretty decent venue. Limited dressing rooms, though, and the one I was in had the only bathroom, so it got really stinky.

The schedule was really relaxed, and I squeezed in about an hour of flute playing before soundcheck. After soundcheck, there was still lots of time to kill, so I went for another run. Twelve and a half miles on the day. Woo.

Thursday, January 23, 2025: Sarasota, FL. Florida in January is the way to go. We started in the purple performing arts center in Sarasota (it has a name, too--the Van Wezel). Not bad. Plenty of time for me to do sax and flute noodling in stairwells. I also went for a run, which was awful because the weather was surprisingly bleak--cold, very windy, and overcast. 

This place had catering, including some kind of killer vegan soup (it tasted like a meatless gumbo), but it was so hot that I burned my mouth with every bowl. I mean, it was so hot that you couldn't hold the ladle to get the soup for more than two seconds. I had four or five bowls anyway. 

I left a pair of running shorts hanging in the dressing room. I guess their time was up. RIP.

Friday, January 24, 2025: Clearwater, FL. It's a short drive from Sarasota, thankfully, about an hour. Greg Lee, Nick, and I did a three song radio performance in Tampa. Do people still listen to the radio? Unknown. This place had a nice little setup for acoustic performances. 

We hit some strip shopping center Mediterranean joint for lunch.

This day's show was at Ruth Eckert Hall. Soundcheck was slow developing, so I got in plenty of noodling beforehand (also remembering that I got yelled at by the production manager last year for noodling side stage when the union rules said nobody could noodle on stage at a certain hour). I also went for a run, but the path along the bay was closed, which was kind of a bummer. And it was kind of chilly.

I guess the gig was fine. Nothing memorable.

Saturday, January 25, 2025: Orlando, FL. Woke up in Plant City, went for a run, blew up a bathroom at a Ford dealership. We had lunch at a shopping center, so I had a pub sub from Publix. I also bought one for later, because the House of Blues has pretty bad food.

The Orlando House of Blues was packed! Pretty good gig, though we were zooming through songs so quickly that I missed the beginning of Lotta Love (it starts with saxophone), and I was pretty mad about it for a couple of songs. But other than that, it was a slammin' show.

After the gig, I grabbed my pub sub out of the green room fridge and started in on the first half...the ingredients were not what I was expecting, but it say "veggie" on the sticker, and it was the only sandwich in the fridge. It was at that moment that Bencuya came over to tell me how he'd hidden Kip's sandwich behind all the drinks as a joke.

Uh oh. He'd actually hidden MY sandwich, and I'd just eaten half of Kip's sandwich. Kip was furious at Bencuya about it. He refused to eat the other half of his sandwich (or the other half of my sandwich), so we had to make a pit stop at Steak-n-Shake on the way to the hotel.

Sunday, January 26, 2025: Fort Lauderdale, FL. 

today's warmup room

Last year, we played a different venue in south Florida that was really crappy--this place was better in every way, plus we had a big crowd.

Not pictured: the five pounds of pasta I ate for dinner, or the chocolate lava cake I had for dessert.

Monday, January 27, 2025: travel day. We drove from Fort Lauderdale to Saint Augustine. Another pub sub in a parking lot.

We had dinner at some steak place (I had an impossible burger). It got ok reviews from the band. Most of the guys headed on to a second location (a bar). I walked back to the hotel and ran three miles on the treadmill, bringing me to eight miles on the day.

Tuesday, January 28, 2025: Jacksonville, FL. The Florida Theater. If you're willing to climb a lot of stairs, there are ample dressing rooms in which to play flute.

A little saxophone repair here: this felt was coming off the arm on my alto, so the key on the right was not closing all the way. Super glue saved the day. I'm glad I noticed this before the felt broke completely free.

Dinner was catered, but the vegetarian option was shepherd's pie (basically a bed of veggies under a two inch blanket of mashed potatoes). Not my thing. Peanut butter it is!

Really good crowd for a Tuesday--even the balcony looked full.

Friday, January 31, 2025: Brown County, IN. Our lighting guy (James) things that the Brown County Music Center feels like one of those non-traditional church places, and I would agree. It sounds good, though, and the load in is easy, and I found a spot to noodle without bothering anybody too much. 

I tried running here last year and didn't like it, but I discovered that there's a YMCA right across the parking lot from the venue (hell yeah!), so I ran on the treadmill there.

there's still snow in the corners of the parking lots

Indiana is always a good show, and since Nick and Pete are from right down the road in Columbus, there are lots of friendly faces.

February 1, 2025: Nashville, TN. We played the Ryan today. Hot damn! Big show!

I think it went ok. I was a little wobbly on the Africa solo but I think I got it right. All my other stuff seemed fine. I didn't have much feeling about any of it--I guess I'm just glad to get through the gig without being miserable from a bad performance. 

We had an after party at Robert's. It was very loud in the back (where we were), very loud in the front (where the band was), and not too bad in the middle.

It's a drag that Nashville doesn't have more places like this--most of the bars on Broadway have a famous name and a corporate vibe to them, like "Garth Brooks' Good Times Saloon" and they serve Applebee's food with stupid names like "The Friends in Low Places Salad." Maybe this place has corporate backing as well, but it doesn't feel like it. Hang in there against the rage of capitalism!

December 2024

Saturday, December 7, 2024: Naples, FL. This was some kind of corporate holiday party. No big deal--stakes are low! This was our first gig with Van handling the monitor desk (Zach is out for the foreseeable future on paternity leave), so it was slow going as he worked through all of his responsibilities for the day (also, I think there was some kind of gear issue with the rented gear that further complicated things).

The rented gear was not so great here--some worn out looking stuff and cheap microphone stands and mismatched pieces. They also had limited choices for sustain pedals, and none of their options seemed to communicate with the Nord keyboards that Bencuya and I both use. After fiddling with the pedals and the settings on the Nords, the backline guy offered to go to a nearby Guitar Center to buy a different brand of pedal that would work.

He soon texted us from the store, saying that the only sustain pedals at Guitar Center were the same brand that he had at the gig, so we were out of luck. Huh. Guitar Center has their own brand of gear--Proline (including sustain pedals), so this seemed weird, but maybe so.

After soundcheck and dinner, I went to the Guitar Center website, and according to it, the Naples store had a variety of sustain pedals in stock...soooooo, I called them and they confirmed that stock was up to date, sooooooo...I put two of them on hold, and the client drove one of our crew guys to pick them up! The Guitar Center employee remembered the backline guy--he said that he walked right by the Proline pedals.

That was weird! The Proline pedals worked perfectly on the gig, and we didn't see the backline guy ever again. Maybe he was hiding in his truck. We got to keep the sustain pedals as a bonus.

I started feeling woozy around two-thirds of the way through this gig, and by the time we'd made it to the hotel, whatever sickness I had developed into a raging fever. The hotel lobby didn't have any Tylenol in their sundry shop, so I took a shower and went to bed. It felt like I woke up every forty-five minutes, either freezing or sweating. Not good!

In the morning, I got up and had some coffee, but I still felt so bad that I considered not flying home. Monkeyboy came through with some Advil for me, and by the time we had cleared security at the airport, I felt remarkably normal! Huh! I went to my church gig feeling fine, but by the time it ended, I was falling apart again, so I took some more drugs and went to bed. The next four days repeated this--a raging hangover-like headache that I could beat for a couple of hours at a time. Maybe the backline guy got me!

Thursday, December 12, 2024: Marietta, GA. I mostly recovered from whatever mystery plague just in time to play a Christmas party with some friends at a local church. Pretty easy stuff--mostly flute, with a little bit of saxophone thrown in there. Hopefully it sounded good, too, because I couldn't hear much of anything from where I was sitting.

How many gigs have a whistle solo?  How many gigs need a whistle solo?

Friday, December 13, 2024: Columbia, SC. We played a holiday party/fundraiser for Camp Cole--our fourth year in a row doing it.

We stopped at our usual spot near Augusta for lunch. Here's what I picked up from the Sprouts Farmers Market.

A little warmup in the janitor's closet. That water heater absorbed a lot of notes without failing.

My top keyboard (the Fantom) developed some sort of crackling noise in the line (and sometimes loss of signal), so Van, Kip, and I tried to chase it down by swapping cables and channels on their end and mine. Eventually, we settled on it being a bad instrument cable. 

Other than that, it was a regular old gig. It felt like it probably went on a little too long.

Saturday, December 14, 2024: Atlanta, GA.  The Yacht Rock Christmas show at The Roxy was a lot of fun, and sounded great.

Tuesday, December 24, 2024: Atlanta, GA. Christmas is just a good hang with my family these days, so I took on a bunch of church gigs. Six, to be exact! 

First one was at St. Jude in Sandy Springs. This was an overflow mass in their gym, populated by those who couldn't squeeze into the main sanctuary. I really just took this one because my mom is a parishioner and I thought it'd be cool to play the service she attended, and the rest of my family came along, too. 

Musically, this was definitely the B Team, though it was mostly the fault of the director. Reports from out front say that it sounded fine, so I guess it was mostly just my own frustration.

Next up was my usual gig at the Cathedral. Nothing to report here. No problems parking or with the music. Interestingly, this was the lowest paying of all of my church gigs, in spite of being the most affluent of the three churches. I guess that's the way it goes.

My third and fourth services of the night were at the Catholic Church of St. Ann (where I just played their Christmas party). I've played here a lot over the years, and Ed (the music director) does a great job making the night easy. I played the 9 PM and midnight masses.

Wednesday, December 25, 2024: Marietta, GA. I played the 9 and 11 AM masses at St. Ann's with my friend Jan, who was subbing for Ed. Jan and I always have fun doing these.

Sunday, December 29, 2024: Atlanta to Las Vegas. The Yacht Rock Revue's NYE gig was in Las Vegas this year (opening for Journey!), so I opted to fly out the night before, mainly because I hate to get up really early and go to the airport. It worked out that I was able to play my afternoon church gig and then leave directly from there for the airport. 

We flew over my mom's hometown.

Our gig was at the Wynn in Vegas. Nice room!

Monday, December 30, 2024: Las Vegas. Today was setup and rehearsal day. Kip, Van, Nackers, Searcy, and I were in the room around 9-ish to begin putting the gear together.

Lunch was supposed to happen at 1 PM. Nackers and I wandered around looking for it, and eventually we were directed to some meeting room that had food, but in the middle of eating, Searcy found the food. He thought we were probably eating Journey's food. We finished eating their food, and then went up to eat some more. It was all equally lame.

After rehearsal, I went for a run.

A bunch of us were eating at the Mexican restaurant across the street from the Wynn, so I met up with them there.

Tuesday, December 31, 2024: Las Vegas. A lotta nothing...

Breakfast. This was $40.

I hung around, went for a run, ate lunch, hung around, took a shower, went for a walk, and finally got dressed and went down to set out my horns for the gig.

This was a fun gig! We had Vegas dancers on the apron around the stage for most of the songs in our seventy minute set.

Journey followed us about twenty minutes later. The audience seemed kind of indifferent to them (kind of like it was a big corporate party with a band playing, and only some of the room was paying attention) until just before midnight, and then the dance floor got pretty full.

After a spirited rendition of Auld Lang Sine, Journey played Don't Stop Believing and Any Way You Want It to finish out the night.

And that was that. Most of us flew home January 1. 

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Please check this out--I wrote and recorded this arrangement of I'll Be Home for Christmas, and it turned out great!