David Ellington and I hadn't done a gig in a month. I was a little worried--my saxophone playing as of late has been pretty abysmal, and there would be nowhere to hide on a duo gig. What if I provided two hours of uncoordinated eighth notes, a dozen tunes of bumbling bullshit? It seemed like a real possibility.
Fortunately, none of that came true. I asked Ellington about it after the gig, and he claimed it was his own superb performance that brought my own level up! Maybe so...but I seriously do wonder why everything flowed so easily on this gig, but not on others, or not at home. This turned out to be some of my best playing of the year. I could've played another set and not felt like I was playing in circles.
Afterwards, we had brunch. Great gig! We're back Friday night, 7-9 PM.
Yacht Rock played our first Athens gig in several months last Friday. It's good to be back! As best as I can tell, our previous evening here was at the end of August 2014. We were supposed to play more recently, but we were bumped from the calendar in favor of the Alabama Shakes.
The Georgia Theatre is a pretty awesome place to play. Looks good, sounds good. We had Kip on front of house and Zach on monitors for this one.
Mark Cobb got this slick new drum head. Way cool.
We ended up skipping Baker Street in the first set and My Life in the second set. I was kind of bummed about both; the time when I really enjoy Baker Street is at the big theater shows, and My Life is fun to play any time.
It appears that Let's Dance is the only keeper from this year's Reagan Rock prom stuff.
Any Way You Want It has been a nice addition, and Nick really nails the vocal every time.
Another slow week here on the blog, but I did want to post a recording of Maxwell's Silver Hammer from last weekend's glorious Please Pleaserock Me/Yacht Rock Revue performance of the Beatles' Abbey Road. This arrangement features Richard Sherrington (trombone), Rob Opitz (trumpet), Greg Lee (alto sax) and me (tenor sax).
I had a fantastic time playing with the Drive By Big Band yesterday! I was mildly terrified when I got the call; I hadn't played in a big band since the late 90s, and I hadn't played lead alto since high school. I really didn't know what to expect, and my most recent gig where I had to sightread everything (Jorge Alvarez) was a disaster. What if I failed miserably song after song in front of fifteen of my peers?
Fortunately, none of that happened. The charts were cool (and readable), everybody in the band was friendly, and it turned out to be a ton of fun and a great hang. I can't wait to do it again!
The day after our hugely awesome gig at the Variety Playhouse, Yacht Rock was back at it again, this time on a big private party in Johns Creek. This, I believe, is our fourth year playing this party, and it's always pretty easy--two sets for an enthusiastic (and very good looking) audience on indoor tennis courts.
Someone in our band may have damaged the building's plumbing.
We're at the Georgia Theatre in Athens this Friday (May 1!). More info here: http://www.georgiatheatre.com/calendar1.html
Wow! GREAT gig last night at Variety Playhouse--Yacht Rock's alter ego Please Pleaserock Me play all of the Beatles' album Abbey Road, plus a second set of more Beatles stuff. For me, that was twenty songs with horn arrangements (most of which were already written, but I had to figure out how to incorporate another voice--trombone--into them without disturbing the trumpet or alto sax parts). We had Rob Opitz on trumpet and Richard Sherrington on trombone. It was a pretty badass sounding section!
Our Beatles shows are always a music store's worth of gear, and this one proved to be no exception. I brought:
1. Keyboard (for strings)
2. Bari sax
3. Tenor Sax
4. Flute
5. Piccolo
6. Clarinet
7. Hand percussion
This was also our first time using iPads for charts on the Please Pleaserock Me show. More success!
The only non-success for the evening was my tenor reed, which began soundcheck in mid-gig form, and was soft and blah by the time I needed to really lean on it for solos. Oops. There will be no altissimo this evening. Terribly sorry.
Our next scheduled performance will be at Turner Field on August 28, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Fab Four's performance at Fulton County Stadium.
An unusual week last week: two gigs on opposite corners of the country. Wednesday night Yacht Rock played a gig in San Diego, and Friday night we played a gig in Niagara Falls. Lots of time on airplanes in between.
Tuesday: up super early to fly west. We met up at 6:30 AM. We were in San Diego by mid morning--cool because we had over twenty-four hours of down time before the gig, but...why the hell were we here so early?
10 AM in San Diego was lunch time for us, so we walked to a restaurant from our hotel.
Past the Top Gun/Great Balls of Fire restaurant
Refresher:
To a restaurant down by the water:
I guess San Diego's old jail was in the same complex? We checked it out and took some pictures.
From there, I went to check out the USS Midway, which has been converted into a really cool naval museum. Super cool! I love this stuff.
I take this to mean they fished the astronauts from multiple Apollo missions out of the ocean?
Veterans who were sailors and airmen aboard the Midway give tours and talks. Two great things I heard:
1. The guy explaining how he launched airplanes on the catapults throughout the 70s showed us a 25 lb. tool that he used to lock the planes into the shuttle that would throw planes into the air. "I used to pick this thing up all day, every day (launching approximately 105 airplanes a day). You won't see me do it again today...twice is all I can do." His precise explanation of every man's job in the launch process and every hand signal was pretty incredible, especially when he said that it was happening every forty-five seconds until all the planes were airborne.
2. From the back seat guy (RIO) in an F-4, talking about landing on the Midway: "The first time we landed, I thought we'd crashed. When I looked out and realized we were fine, I thought 'So that's the way it's going to be.'"
Bob Hope statue.
Wednesday:
I went for a run around the city. The weather was 70 degrees and just about perfect.
My favorite part of was the (maybe) homeless woman who saw me in the park and shouted at me, "PLEASE COME HOME!" When I got closer, she said, "Oh...I thought you were my ex-boyfriend."
On to the gig. Good crew, but the gear was less than perfect.
1. They missed the updated gear list that specified that we needed a bass guitar. We can't play a gig without it. That was a little worrisome.
2. Five microphone stands for a band of seven where everybody sings sometimes. Their solution was to tape microphones to extra cymbal stands. I guess it worked, but what the hell? What if one of the five had broken?
3. The Nord (bottom, red keyboard) was not our usual Electro, but the Nord Stage. They're really nice, but a different animal from what we normally use. On this one, I had several problems to sort out:
a. The keyboard had not been put back to factory specs, so I had to find in the menu the place where somebody had altered the tuning. The Nord was almost twenty cents sharper than everything else on stage.
b. The sustain pedal was not in agreement with the keyboard--also resolved by fishing through the menu to find a solution.
c. The volume pedal would not change the volume when playing organ. This one was the most difficult, as nothing in the system menu would resolve the issue. Finally I went around to the back of the keyboard. Someone had used black tape (over the black part of the keyboard) to cover up the proper jack for the pedal. Ah ha! The solution.
This keyboard is cool, but it still did some weird stuff that I didn't understand during the gig--mostly of the variety of accidentally pushing a button then not being able to un-push it.
The gig was a mindless corporate event for a couple of hundred sales people. Nothing of significance to report. Easy stuff.
Thursday: all day flying. First we flew back to Atlanta from San Diego. There we had a two hour layover. Lots of time to look at our phones.
Our flight to Buffalo (closest airport to Niagara Falls) left around 9 PM.
Overhead space is more and more difficult to obtain. Everybody's bringing their bags on board, presumably to avoid paying $25 to check it. I wonder what's going in the cargo hold if all the suitcases are in the overhead bins?
The flights to and from San Diego made me nervous that there would be no room for my saxophones, and checking them is not an option. After calling for first class, they called for silver medallion members, then sky priority members, and then everybody else they could think of, and then finally zone one.
My solution was to ask to pre-board with the elderly and the stroller-pushers. Before I could even finish my question, the gate agent said yes. Perfect! Plenty of space. I'll be using this strategy from now on.
We got to Niagara Falls around midnight. Up to our rooms and off to bed.
Friday: with plenty of time to kill, we all headed a couple of blocks over to see Niagara Falls and Canada.
Beautiful! We had great weather, too.
One of the most interesting things about the falls: when we got within one hundred yards of the river/falls, the temperature dropped ten to fifteen degrees. Enough that one street corner was "no jacket" and the opposite side of the street was "jacket."
Still plenty of ice making its way downstream.
The American falls.
The Canadian falls.
American...
Canadian...
The Border agents were pretty stern. Their first line of defense was to charge us fifty cents to come back in to the U.S. Exact change deters those pesky terrorists!
Canada is right over there.
The gig itself was very kind of cool. Unlike other casino gigs that we have done, this one was not a stage out in the middle of the slot machines. Instead, it was a room off from the gambling floor, with pretty good acoustics and very snug seating. In a room that held five hundred, we were probably two-thirds full.
The crowd never got rowdy, but instead listened intently. They even clapped for solos and instrumental interludes--very different from our normal crowds, but in a good way!
Robbie Dupree came over from Woodstock (N.Y.) to join us for a few songs and hang out.
More adventures with the Nord. The keyboard itself was fine--worked well, felt great, had good sounds in it. However, about a quarter of the way through the show, the sustain pedal died. I spent the next couple of songs trying to simultaneously manage the gig and diagnose the problem. I couldn't see anyone from the crew to flag down for help, so I eventually gave up and resorted to sharing the one good sustain pedal between the two keyboard decks, unplugging it from one and plugging it into the other depending on the next song. Fun!? Extra brain power was diverted away from the gig in order to keep it straight. I did ok with it.
Saturday: we flew home (at a reasonable hour) from Buffalo. I asked if I could pre-board on this flight, and the counter agent said, "For your cello, yes." I'm not sure which saxophone looks like a cello.
I was home long enough to unpack and regroup before heading out to a jazz gig with two of my oldest musical friends in Atlanta--Dan Baraszu (guitar), and Joseph Patrick Moore (bass).
Originally, we were set to play outside, but passing rain moved us inside. As soon as we began playing inside, the client came running over and told us to move outside. Naturally, she picked a spot on the lawn with no electricity--"Can't you play without it?"
JPM and I played duo for twenty minutes while the staff ran two hundred feet of extension cord out to Dan's guitar amp. Eventually he joined us. Mostly we just laughed about the whole thing.
From there, I went to catch up with my old college friend Ryan Brown, now drumming with Zappa Plays Zappa. Incredible playing! It's really cool to see him doing so well. Go Big Ry!
The night ended with an I.U. reunion of sorts...me, Kevin Leahy, Ryan Brown, Mark Cobb, and Chris Yearian.
