Hartsfield Jackson's Favorite Band

Damnit! I once again failed to keep the blog up to date. My musical life jumped into hyperspeed, and I've just been trying to keep up. Here's a recap:

Thursday, April 21: Night one of a two night stand at Venkman's. This one was pretty good for me. We added Whenever I Call You Friend (as seen in the picture below), and it went pretty well. It's a relief that the sax solo was pretty easy to get into my head (unlike Cool Change, which I can never quite nail at the gig); the string part is pretty simple, too, but it's fun to play. I guess it doesn't take much brain power for me to make it happen, so it's almost like having a song off in the middle of the gig.

Friday, April 22: Night two at Venkman's. Cody Madlock subbed on guitar for Monkeyboy and did a good job. It's fun to have subs on this gig--they hear the music differently than the main guy does, so you hear some little cool part that you usually don't get. Other times, it's just that they phrase something differently, or they find some little thing that they think is important, so they kind of lean into that a little more. 

Venkman's is a fun gig.

 

Saturday, April 23: We played an anniversary party for a real estate company in the middle of Buckhead. It was a nice, easy gig, good weather, not far from home. All the stuff.

It was possibly tacos from this very food truck that upset Nick's delicate tummy, and he threatened to barf on everything, but was able to pull himself together for the show.

Load out was kind of like M*A*S*H--drive up on a busy road, turn your hazards on, throw your gear in the car as quickly as possible, and get the hell out of there. 

Friday, April 29: Just after lunch, we loaded up the vans and headed over to Birmingham, Alabama to play the Avondale Brewery. This place used to be just kind of ok; the stage was kind of small, there was too much direct sunlight during summer load-ins, the green room was far away (you had to walk through the crowd to get on and off the stage). It just wasn't particularly great. Well guess what...they improved everything!

As far as I'm concerned, this gig was fantastic. The crowd was over 2,000 strong, the weather was good, the stage is waaaaaaaaay bigger and better and permanent and blocks the sun, the green room is behind the stage, and whatever else I said. It's just way better in every way. Also, I played well--playing ebbs and flows for me, and this was a good spot for my chops.

In other news, Pretty Woman was on the TV in the green room, playing on repeat. It's even more stupid than I remember. Avoid it if you can.

Also, Nick had an upset stomach again, and made it through the gig before barfing in the green room. He did not make it back for the encore.

Saturday, April 30: We traveled to Memphis without Nick, who we left in a hotel room in Jasper, Alabama. The vans and trailer picked him up the following day on the way back to Atlanta.

This was a crazy, big money birthday party. I am told that we played the birthday girl's daughter's wedding. Seems plausible. Pretty crazy set up. We were one of two bands, plus an a cappella group from the University of Memphis.

Memphis! My home town! Other famous Memphis natives (besides me): Morgan Freeman (no relation), Justin Timberlake, Lisa Marie Presley, Kathy Bates, Issac Hayes, Aretha Franklin, Tim McCarver, everybody from Stax Records (Duck Dunn, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Booker T), and Cybil Sheppard.

Somehow, I managed to slip into and out of town without anyone noticing me.

Here's another shot of the place where we played. It fits the bill of "old southern country club," doesn't it?

It started a little slow for us (also, we had terrible trouble ordering food for dinner, and ended up with some crappy pizza), but this gig was pretty OK. We didn't have Nick, so we had to shuffle the set list and it took some time for the crowd to finally find up, but all in all, not too bad.

We flew home the next morning. Nobody at the airport recognized me.

Monday, May 2--Wednesday, May 4: Yacht Rock set aside some time to actually rehearse! Usually, we cram things in at soundcheck, but this was an opportunity to try stuff, talk about stuff, and take our time figuring some things out. We added Ventura Highway, Don't Bring Me Down, and Under Pressure, and changed the way we end She's Gone. 

In the evenings, I wrote my last three Christmas arrangements for the John Hopkins Christmas record and handed them in to the arranger (and if that sounds weird--that I wrote arrangements and sent them off to another arranger so that he could arrange them some more--it is weird). Anyway, my part's done! I wrote some good stuff that'll maybe make it onto the record, and at some point, I guess I'll get called in to help record the arrangements that the other guy wrote based on the arrangements that I wrote. Right?

Anyway, here a couple of highlights:

Thursday, May 5: I played a concert in Lawrenceville, GA with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra. Getting to Lawrenceville by 5 PM from my house was difficult. It took an hour and a half. Traffic was awful.

The gig was fun, though! I enjoyed hanging with other horn players and playing some different music.

Friday, May 6: Yacht Rock flew to Ft. Lauderdale to play a birthday party--our agent must be working really hard to make this our new niche!

We played at a club called Revolution, a venue we've hit a few times for public gigs. The rented gear was pretty decent.

This room is naturally pretty dark, and early on in the gig , the lighting guy hit some button and turned off all the stage lights, and then it took maybe two minutes before he could fix that, and we just kept chugging along through Somebody's Baby. 

The rest of the gig was standard fare. Nothing more to report.

They had pyrotechnics for the end of our set, and nobody told us. Monkeyboy was freaked out about it.

Saturday, May 7: We got up and flew back to Atlanta to play a wedding reception in town.

Again, no big deal. The usual stuff. Good crowd for this one--they were enthusiastic without being obnoxious (though one lady gave us the finger and refused to dance to a Steely Dan song).

Notable moments: Nick played bass at soundcheck (including a blues jam) because Greg was late doing family stuff; we played September by Earth, Wind, and Fire, punching yet another number on our cover-band-bingo-cards.

P.S. Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire is from Memphis. 

Sunday, May 8: We got up and flew back to Florida! Of course! This time, we landed in Orlando to play the House of Blues there.

Orlando, another home town of sorts. Here I am, prodigal son of Central Florida, and just like Memphis, nobody recognized me. My ego is bruised. Other Orlando people? N Sync; the Backstreet Boys; Zora Neale Hurston; Mandy Moore (same middle school as me); Shaq (for a while); Wayne Brady. Not as impressive a list.

Fun gig! I gave it my all, just in case any of my old friends were out there in the crowd judging me. 

This gig featured an impromptu version of Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' after we got a little carried away by a blues jam while Nick was telling a story.

Monday, May 9: Off to Miami we go. It looks to be lovebug season.

Ahh, Miami, another former residence of mine as a youngster, though for a shorter time than Orlando or Memphis. How about famous people who went to the same high school (Miami Palmetto Senior High) that I attended? Jeff Bezos; Ketanji Brown Jackson; Tim Hardaway Jr.; a bunch of other people you've never heard of. Needless to say, I will not be in the Miami Palmetto Hall of Fame...probably because I'm not a graduate. No fond memories of this place.

Anyway, this gig was in Miami Beach, not Miami. I was thinking after The Beach Boys Cruise that when people think of Miami, in their minds they picture Miami Beach (Art Deco, pastels, the beach), whereas Miami really looks more like strip shopping centers, canals, and lots of beat up one story cinderblock houses with overgrown landscaping.

The gig was at the Fountainbleu (one fancy place), and then our hotel rooms were next door at another fancy place. Check out the view from my room!

The beach.

This gig was for an insurance company. Easy stuff, great weather, no big deal. I enjoyed it.

And then we flew home on Tuesday...but we fly back to Florida on Thursday...stay tuned!

Last, but not least, here's a new video demonstrating some of my Eb clarinet playing. Enjoy!

Cruisin', Corporate Gigs, and the Carolinas

Greetings, readers! It's been almost a month since I updated the blog--my apologies! My world has rapidly accelerated back to pre-COVID speed, and I've been hanging on for dear life. Anyway, here we go!

Friday, March 25: We set sail on The Beach Boys Cruise out of Miami on the Norwegian Pearl, a boat we know very well (I think somebody said this was our sixteenth music cruise, and almost all of them have been on here). Norwegian used their downtime to update the cabins. I approve! It's mostly just a less orange color scheme, but the bathroom has been updated as well. 

The sail away show featured The Temptations. There is still one original guy and he's eighty-something years old.  The other fourteen guys are younger guys, replacements through the years. Are they still The Temptations at this point, or a cover band?

I noticed when when we were trying to get on board that there were a TON of horn players--an oddly disproportionate number of sax cases and trumpet bags--compared to usual. It was because The Temptations brought a ten piece horn section (five saxes, three trumpets, two trombones). Yay for horns!, even though these guys were of the chunky-black-Skechers-as-dress-shoes variety of dudes. Sounded pretty good, though, from what I could hear side stage. Out front, the vocals were so loud that they drowned everything else out. 

Our first show in the theater, late on the first night. 

It was easy (75 minutes), and we played to a very small audience.

Saturday, we hosted bingo in the same theater. Pete won the first round. It made the crowed immediately suspicious of us.

My usual routine for these cruises: sleep as much as possible, run on the treadmill, practice as much as I can without driving anybody crazy, play the gigs, eat the Indian food. All of these tasks were accomplished. Maybe I should also add "get sunburned," because I fell asleep in a deck chair on Sunday and got pretty red.

Anyway, I practiced flute on my balcony. Maybe it bugged Kip? Maybe he was just being grumpy. 

Our deck show was similar to the theater show in length (75 minutes) and attendance. Nick is still out with a ruptured achilles tendon, so Pete's wife Alyssa sang a handful of songs with us to help fill out the setlist. You can see most of both shows at this YouTube account: https://www.youtube.com/user/icetraders

We always have a band dinner at the teppanyaki restaurant, so we did it Saturday night.

Sunday, we awoke in Nassau, Bahamas. I've been here enough to not be bothered with getting off the boat. It looks like the port is expanding, or they got a great deal on concrete.

Nothing else to do (after my sunburn and run), so I practiced on my balcony, and the Carnival people kept telling me how much they enjoyed listening to me play. Kip was less enthusiastic about it.

Around 4 PM, all the boats started heading out. 

We went next.

For a few cruises, they showed some good movies that I'd never seen, but the TV viewing was pretty crappy on this boat. Whenever The Departed came on, though, I was hooked for at least forty-five minutes.

I caught The Beach Boys on the last night. There are two original guys left, and the rest are hired guns. It was a very polished show, coordinated with the video and the tracks. The sax player was good--he played a lot of bari and hand percussion, and of course, the sax solo on the dreaded Kokomo. 

Monday, we returned to Miami. Our flight wasn't until the afternoon, so we drank coffee, looked at our phones, ate lunch, looked at our phones, and finally boarded. I watched Julia (a bio about Julia Child) on the flight. Pretty interesting stuff!

Wednesday, March 30, Yacht Rock reassembled (with Nick on the front line on a stool) for a corporate event in Atlanta. Hello pollen! I have no idea for whom we were playing. Easy gig, though. The hardest part was trying to figure out where we loading in our gear.

Thursday, I played at Venkman's, sitting in on Nick's solo show. It was fun! Even though it was mostly the same stuff we always play, I only had saxophones, so I was free to improvise a bit more. 

Surprisingly, this show was not particularly well attended. I guess I thought people would have packed the place out, but no. It was also streamed on the internet, so maybe there was an audience there.

Beginning April 4th through the 10th, I was at the Stillwell Theater on the campus of Kennesaw State University, playing saxophone, flute, and clarinet in their production of The SpongeBob Musical. Why me instead of a college kid, you ask? I too, ask, but there is no answer. I'm guessing there wasn't anybody capable/comfortable/interested in doing it. Their loss is my gain, because I love playing shows, and most of the Yacht Rock guys were away on Spring Break. 

The pit was closed except for the conductor, so this was my view for the week. 

As you can see, my big ol' iPad was nice and bright in the dark. For this show, I finally invested in one of the big iPad Pros instead of using the provided book, and I'm never going back! Wow. Being able to clearly see the music! Being able to read my written notes! Reliable page turns! The ability to share my notated music with my subs without having to scan the entire book! I would recommend this setup to anybody doing a gig like this. 

Here are some solo highlights from my book:

On Sunday morning, I played a Palm Sunday service on clarinet and flute at a Methodist church, and it was the easiest check I'd earned in quite some time--basically playing out of the hymnal along with the choir and an organist who couldn't have cared less whether or not we (myself, a flutist, and a cellist) could be heard!

Wednesday, April 13, Yacht Rock played a corporate gig at the Intercontinental in Buckhead. Piece of cake gig, with loaders doing the godawful push down one of the longest hallways in Atlanta. Other than that, whatever. We were mostly paying attention.

Thursday, April 14, we embarked on a short run to North Carolina, beginning at The Fillmore in Charlotte. Good crowd, fun gig!

Friday, we left Charlotte at noon and headed to Raleigh, with a lunch stop in some random small town. The lady who made my sandwich was very considerate in my request for a special vegetarian order.

The Ritz in Raleigh is a place we've played once before--you can read about the ol' tube-socks-in-the-saxophone-bell incident here. It's a pretty good room--nice stage and an easy load in.

Gee wiz the stage was cold, though. They crank the air conditioner at load in, and the vents were blowing right on me. I'd brought a space heater for the following night in Asheville (an outdoor gig), but it was chilly enough here that I pulled it out of the backseat and turned it on for the first half of the night.

This gig was pretty good. I had a couple of moments where my brain started to brown out, but I mostly held it together. 

Post show hotel hallway: I think if you need this many tampons and pads, you probably need to go to the emergency room. Maybe this was some kind of insane girls' weekend or something. 

Saturday: I wasn't really looking forward to our gig in Asheville for two reasons: 1. it was going to be outdoors and kind of cold (in the 60s during the day and falling as the sun went down), 2. the last time we played here, this place looked like a junkyard with a stage. My memory is also tainted by the fact that the last time we played here was the day after we'd killed it at Chastain in Atlanta, and nobody felt like playing shitty gig in a junkyard on a small stage.

However! This place has massively upgraded, and the stage is huge and the production is way better and the green rooms are nicer. I can dig it now.

I had some problems with this one. Our fourth gig in a row was kind of wearing on me, and I was cold (even with my heater, the breeze in our faces made it tough). The pollen was also fairly strong and the breeze helped to cover everything with it, and that was annoying. When I see my gear again next week, I'll have to wipe everything down, so yay for that. And then there were bugs--lots of bugs--all over my keyboards, on the screen, in between the keys, walking around, coming and going. I got preoccupied with them. At one point, I managed to mute the organ sounds on my Nord, and I so then I had to troubleshoot that while playing a gig in a dark cloud of fog.

I couldn't get in the groove on this one--didn't play anything particularly inspiring. I didn't feel real great, and I was annoyed with all the strobes and blackouts that were happening with the lights--plus the hazer for the lights completely wiped me out a couple of times. The whole thing was frustrating. I was glad to get out of here. Maybe next time. Maybe we'll get back into The Orange Peel.

Sunday, April 17, we jumped in the van at 8 AM, and Hans delivered us back to Atlanta, leaving me just enough time to zoom home, eat lunch, grab a different set of gear, and head up to Kennesaw State to play the last SpongeBob show before the musical closed. Success!

We're in Atlanta all this weekend, with two nights at Venkman's and then a private thing on Saturday. Plus, I'll be back on my Sunday afternoon church gig. See you around town.