We got home Monday afternoon, and Thursday, January 20, we were back in the van, this time headed to Columbia, South Carolina. Remember the gig we played here a month ago? (it's in here) This is the followup to that gig. Here's the show poster.
This place we played didn't seem like much from the outside, and it held the generic name of "township auditorium," but wow! What a room!
Our gear was still making its way home from the Pacific Northwest, so we used backline (rented) gear for this one (and I brought my spare saxophones, flutes, etc).
When I first tried to install my settings on the Fantom (top keyboard), the drive didn't work, so I tried to do it using a USB cable from my laptop. Still no luck, and then it looked like ALL the sounds on the keyboard were gone. HOLY SHIT! MASSIVE PANIC! I was freaking out. The backline guy was like, "I can make it happen!"...whatever. I tried the USB cable upload one more time, and the keyboard burped and came to life! Disaster averted! I guess that it had been sitting in storage for a few years and it needed to reset before it was ready for action.
Anyway, it took me ten minutes or so to calm down. Jeez.
This place had lots of places downstairs to hide, so I got in a good warmup, and the show was a piece of cake. As you might imagine, we did not fill the place up, but the floor had a good amount of people and the vibes were excellent, and the gear was just fine (and my "fly date" wireless microphone stuff was, as usual, flawless!).
We arrived right around lunch, so after checking into our hotel, I headed off in search of food, eventually landing at a Mexican place. It was awful (loud Pitbull-ish music, annoying South Florida people), but the food was ok. It's surprising to me that with so many superficial people in the neighborhood, there are very few vegetarian/vegan options. The veggie fajitas option was not on the menu--I had to ask as a special order.
On the other hand, our hotel was really cool, and only two blocks from the gig, so it was a quick walk back and forth. I'm guessing that at some point, these were Art Deco studio apartments, and now it's a boutique hotel? I dig it.
This gear was also backlined, this time from SIR in Miami. Everything worked fine--no crazy Fantom shit. Small stage, though, which was a drag, and I've probably got a good amount of the beach in my computer and saxophone mechanisms.
Pre gig dinner was catered. Gnocchi!
The first show was underwhelming, to say the least. My in ear monitors kept dropping out, we didn't have much of an audience, and it felt like we were just something else in this little circus that they'd built on the edge of the beach. We also don't have much notoriety in the area, so we were just "some band playing 70s music."
As is often the case in Florida, we finished about fifteen minutes before a rainstorm was going to clobber the stage, so I had to sprint to get everything of mine packed up and headed back to the hotel, and the SIR guys were panicked to get their tarps on everything.
The following day's show didn't begin until 1:30 PM, so after sleeping late, drinking a gallon of coffee, and going for a run, we sound checked, ate lunch (the same gnocchi as the night before!) and hit it again, this time to a much more energetic crowd. Plenty of strange stuff happening in front of the stage, but whatever.
At 3 PM, we finished, and by 4 PM, we were in the shuttle to the airport--home in time to see the end of the day's football games.
No Yacht Rock gigs for the following week, but I did sub for a friend on a local high school production of the musical All Shook Up, which uses a lot of Elvis songs, but doesn't directly have anything to do with Elvis. It borrows a few elements from the Elvis movie Roustabout, though (the outsider, the motorcycle, the conflicts with the locals, the forbidden love interest). It's pretty bad.
Anyway, as I'm learning, the orchestra was all local pro musicians, so it was a pretty good hang.
The storyline for this musical is pretty stupid, but I really enjoyed watching the high school kids give it their all! I played bari sax and bass clarinet on this one. It dawned on me at the end of my last day that I've been playing on the same bari reeds for almost two years. It might be time to switch them out.
January 7, 2022: And we're off! Yacht Rock met up at the airport for a morning flight to Boston, only to have the flight cancel within thirty minutes of taking off due to bad weather in the northeast. We were rescheduled on early afternoon flights, so...four hours of hanging around the airport started with lunch at TGI Fridays.
Our plane from Atlanta was further delayed--we sat on the runway for a half hour before taking off (which was fine, because I was already asleep), and then we had to do a few loops off the Massachusetts coast before the runway opened for us to land.
It looks there were no sharks close to Boston (in case we had to ditch and swim to shore). Three great whites and one mako.
We finally got in around 5 PM, collected most of our luggage (neither Mark Cobb's nor my suitcase made it!), and made our way to the Boston House of Blues for a very quick set up and soundcheck before they opened the doors.
The gig was kind of a blur. We were tired and stressed out about the travel and the frantic setup. I don't remember much about it. Kind of a smallish crowd, too--700 tickets sold, but there were lots of no-shows.
After the gig, I wandered around to several convenience stores before I finally found one that was open and could sell me a contacts case and a bottle of saline solution. It took about a half hour. I hugged someone's golden retriever who was out for a short walk at midnight, and it made me feel better about my situation.
Long, cold day.
January 8: Still no suitcase, but I felt a lot better after a good night's sleep. I headed over to the closest Indian restaurant, happy that it was open.
The hotel we stayed at, The Verb, was on the opposite side of Fenway Park from the House of Blues, and its rock and roll vibe was greatly appreciated!
The best thing about this room was the record player--you could swap records out in the lobby, but I never did. My room had Sgt. Pepper's, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (there was also a copy of Carlos Santana's greatest hits, but I passed on that). It was a really nice way to spend the afternoon, and also the wind down time after the gigs.
Knowing that I'd have lots of down time, I brought my clarinet and practiced some in the room as well.
Our missing suitcases showed up around 4:30 PM, so I was able to squeeze in a run before soundcheck.
Night two was waaaay easier, obviously, and we had a significantly larger crowd.
The next morning, we got cars to the airport and flew home, as the gear headed west to another corner of the country.
A New Year's Eve gig never materialized for the Yacht Rock Revue, but I ended up working anyway, subbing for my friend Bryan Lopes in the Rupert's Orchestra. They had a NYE wedding in Alabama that night, and Lopes tested positive for COVID earlier in the week and had to sit it out. The horns and rhythm section in the band have been the same for the last twenty-five years, so this was also a great opportunity to catch up with several colleagues with whom I hadn't played in five or six years.
Look at this feast! Obviously their rider is not on the same level as the YRR demands. I peeled the turkey off a few of those sandwiches and ate lettuce, bread, and tomato. I also had a bag of cheetos and two cookies. And a water. It was sad.
Kevin kept an eye the Georgia game from behind the stage on songs with no horns.
I've subbed in Rupert's since the mid-ninties, and at this point, I think I've seen every chart they play with any frequency. This Dancing Queen chart, I'm sure I've read it sixty times at this point. We also played several other Rupert's regulars (September, Get Down Tonight, Respect, Midnight Train to Georgia) as well as some newer stuff that I haven't encountered in the last ten years (the Taylor Swift stuff, the Maroon 5 stuff, the Bruno Mars stuff). All good! I really enjoyed getting back to my roots, so to speak, playing saxophone, reading charts in a horn section.
Anyway, it was fun, and I crushed it, if I do say so myself! At midnight, I FaceTimed my wife as we played Auld Lang Sine, the gig ended, and I was on the road back to Atlanta ten minutes later.
One last Christmas video I made is my arrangement of John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over). Check out the bari duet, but also, enjoy that organ playing! Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh.
Whoops! All of the sudden, a month's worth of gigs have gone by without a blog. Here's what you might have missed...and what I remember.
November 12: Huntington, New York. Back on Long Island at The Paramount, one of the nicest places we play. Our flight was pretty early in the day, so we parked at the venue and then dispersed for lunch. Indian food right around the corner! I had lentil soup and vegetable biryani at House of India. Very good.
This place is great, and the crew was mercifully less "New York Bro" than usual. We've come a long way here (the first time we played, they wouldn't even put our name on the marquee--they just wrote "70s Cover Band"--so people would know what to expect). Tonight was a sellout!
I had a good warmup before this one and played some really good stuff down at the loading dock, but I honestly remember nothing about playing this gig. Let's assume it was great. I'm sure it was fine.
When you sell out The Paramount, you get a brick! Here's ours! It's probably keeping the Schooner van from rolling down a hill right now.
This hotel room was really bad, mostly based on the fact that it had no hot water. I didn't feel like dealing with it after the gig, but the next morning when I tried to take a shower, it was NOT HAPPENING, so I showered across the hall in Kip's room.
I mentioned to the desk clerk at checkout that I had no hot water, and she said something to the effect that "when the building was built, the hot and cold got reversed in my room." It's labeled that way on the shower (with the hot on the right), but I waited a long time and the warm water never came, so fuck that shit. I told her "I don't want this room the next time I'm here!!!" and I hope that confused her enough to give me some sort of satisfaction.
November 13: Albany, New York. I'd never been to Albany. It wasn't too bad. It was cold and rainy by the time we'd finished soundcheck, so I did not walk the fifteen minutes to Indian food. Instead, I selected a Thai place around the corner. It was pretty average, but maybe better than trying to find a meatless hamburger at the bar up the street.
I remember that the venue was dark, and really cold here--the air conditioner next to the stage was set to 65 degrees--like they were expecting a thousand warm bodies to crowd in and offset it? I don't know. Maybe the people of Albany are just used to the cold. I am not.
I want to say we had somewhere around two hundred people in attendance. This gig was also probably fine (in other words, I remember nothing). I do recall that I found a warm place to play before the gig started, and got in an enjoyable forty-five minutes of saxophone.
November 14: We flew home. The Albany airport had no food. Lame.
November 20: Porterdale, Georgia. We played a wedding for some fans in Porterdale (which is a small mill town east of Atlanta on I-20). Hooray for local gigs where we can go home at the end of the night!
November 23: Atlanta, Georgia. Thus began a week of gigs at Venkman's, Nick and Pete's restaurant here in town. We loaded in and sound checked Monday night, and Tuesday, we came in and banged out a livestream for a corporate client (yay for more local gigs!).
This place got a pretty major reworking, with the stage moved to a different wall (it is now on a short wall in the rectangular room, where it was previously on one of the long side walls). It looks and sounds waaaaay better! Pretty exciting! I hope we are able to fit one or two gigs a month in here.
The other big change was to the menu. It's taco time here! There aren't a whole bunch of vegan/vegetarian options, but the mushroom and cauliflower tacos are now Dave's faves.
November 24. We played our annual Turkey Eve show at Venkman's, and it was great! Maybe it was just the lingering excitement of the new Venkman's, but this show was really fun. The only bummer was that Pete was out with COVID.
November 26. Since Turkey Eve sold out, we added and extra show for Black Friday (which I want to say also sold out). Pete was back. Also big fun. Yay for Venkman's!
November 27. Keisha and Kourtney Jackson have a side project called Ladies of Soul, and they did a gig at Venkman's on Saturday, using the rhythm section of Yacht Rock as their band (plus our YRR crew guy Mike Mulholland on percussion). I was also asked to participate, and I pulled in a few friends to make a horn section (Neil Newcomb on bari sax and flute, Rob Opitz on trumpet, and Richard Sherrington on trombone). Big fun! I hope we can do more gigs like this--I love making horn arrangements and playing them with my friends.
December 10: Washington, DC. Yacht Rock was on the road again, this time playing a couple of private functions in the nation's capital.
The pre-gig run was a mess! Just for fun, I was going to run to our hotel in Arlington and back, but my phone's GPS kept sending me to dead ends and reroutes to nowhere. I did grab these two shots, though.
The audience for tonight's show was really in the mood to party! Great crowd and an easy gig. They also dressed for the evening. Much appreciated!
December 11. We played a wedding in DC, so after sleeping for as long as I could I killed some time with another run to see some more monuments (I think I take the same pictures every time we're here).
M.L.K. August 28, 1963
After my run, I headed around the corner to Whole Foods, which had...Indian food! The bad news is that they measure it by weight, so a box of rice and chick peas cost me $24. Booooooooo.
Our gig for the evening was in The Willard Hotel, which is right across the street from The Hamilton (where we have played maybe twenty shows), and also a block over from The White House. Old school Washington DC! It was cool, but the because of its age and location, the load in was hellacious. From the loading dock, down one freight elevator, around the corner, into another freight elevator, and then diagonally across a kitchen. It doesn't sound bad, but it was AWFUL. I would've taken pictures, but we were so turned around from trying to figure out where everything was going that I never stopped long enough to think about it. At the end of the night, we had the added penalty of not being able to get into the loading dock, so we had to drag everything from the loading dock and pile it on the sidewalk while the trailer was loaded.
Anyway...the room was pretty!
And there was much time to waste hiding in the green room, as the ceremony was also on site.
I killed time practicing in a phone booth around the corner from our green room. It was fine (but warm) for a while.
Once the cocktail hour began, however, the little kids found me, and it was more difficult to pay attention to what I was doing.
Not too bad of a gig, though. They were an enthusiastic crowd. And we played Shout, which Nick had never sung before (I am unfortunately a wedding band veteran and have performed it countless times).
December 12. We flew home again.
December 13: Orlando, Florida. Hello airport! We flew to Central Florida for a corporate thing. I can't say that I remember anything about it, other than it was in the same convention center where we first encountered Eddie Money (you can read about all that here).
This day had a lot of hanging around--we were here before lunch and didn't play the gig until 9:30 PM. I had it in my head that we played at 8:30, and then nobody else in the band showed up. By 9:30, I'd lost the will to gig.
Pretty decent crowd for a corporate gig, though.
December 15: Dunwoody, Georgia. Ahh yes! The corporate jazz/holiday gig! This was super fun--seriously. We alternated playing standards and holiday tunes for an hour and a half. Lauren and Bill were a joy to play with, and such a funny coincidence that it was in the lobby of my Dad's old office!
Also, how does the Christmas Real Book not have lead sheets for The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) or Winter Wonderland? I guess I can't complain since I found it for free on the internet.
December 16: Atlanta, Georgia. Yacht Rock played a private gig in town for Covenant House, a charity that works with homeless youth. It was a pretty low key event. I was monumentally gassy. My wireless microphone gave me trouble. That's about it. Easy.
December 17: Columbia, South Carolina. Yacht Rock traveled to Columbia to play a party at The Senate, a room we have played once before. This one was a party for two sisters who were both cancer survivors (if I'm remembering correctly). Good stuff, and a good crowd. They had a screen up to hide us, and once the guests of honor arrived, they dropped it to surprise them.
Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums tonight
Good times here. I played pretty well.
I took a bow at the end of my solo on Step, and out of the bell of my horn fell another broken resonator--the same low C# that popped off in Denver a few months ago. I must be doing something wrong!
December 18: Atlanta, Georgia. We popped out of bed and drove back to Atlanta, which left us all enough time to go home and eat lunch before it was time to head to this evening's gig at The Roxy. Tonight was the Holiday Show--it's funny how this night used to need so much preparation and rehearsal, and now I go over for ten minutes the two or three songs that I can't remember, and we're good to go.
Mostly good stuff--I remembered and accurately performed pretty much everything. My only hiccup was on Sailing, when I inexplicably skipped a note in the intro.
It's supposed to be this:
But for some reason, I skipped the G#, and then I was sort of stuck--only one of my hands messed up, and I didn't know how to get them back together! Here's what I played, and I was like, uhhhhhhhhhh....now what?
So I ended up just kind of moving on to the last chord (thank you sustain pedal). It was such a "wait, what's happening?" kind of mistake that I had to wait a second and figure out what was wrong before I could correct it. Anyway, that was dumb. Temporary brownout of my brain power.
The rest of the night went fine.
And that concludes the Yacht Rock gigs for the year! I have a few Christmas Eve/Christmas Day church gigs that I am doing, but otherwise...see you in January!
EDIT/PLOT TWIST! I GOT COVID AND HAD TO STAY HOME, SO NO CHURCH GIGS! BOOOOOOOOOOO.
Anyway...
One more thing--here are a couple of social media videos that I've made recently. Enjoy! I did the arrangements and played all the parts (and did the video part, too).
Skating involves two flutes, four clarinets, one bass clarinet, and a shaker.
Winter Wonderland is written as a big band sax soli, so there are two alto saxes, two tenor saxes, and a bari sax. I've never written anything in this style (the close voiced five saxes thing), so it was cool to watch some videos and learn how to do it!
