I returned relatively unscathed from the Zac Brown Sailing Southern Ground cruise. We left Tampa Thursday afternoon in a wash of free booze and loud country music bound for Grand Cayman, and floated back Monday morning, tired and ready to go home!
A recap of what I can remember:
Thursday: we flew from Atlanta to Tampa, caught a cab to the port, and got on the boat.
Mark Cobb in flight.
From there it was mostly hanging out and drinking.
As we pulled away from the dock, the Zac Brown Band played on the Lido Deck, while the artist VIP area was full of musicians sucking up the free alcohol. Actually, they shut the bar down because we were going through it too fast! It was cool to hang with friends old and new.
Here's Brandon Still (previous Yacht Rock keyboardist, now with
Blackberry Smoke) and his girlfriend Tiffany Cosgrove.
Anyway...I drank. I don't remember anything else happening. I woke up in my clothes.
Friday: we (
Yacht Rock Revue) were supposed to perform at 1 PM on the Lido Deck, but it was moved so Zac Brown could give a cooking demonstration. Our new time was 1 AM in the Candlelight Lounge. I got a little fidgety waiting all day, so I went and rescued my saxophones from the gear pile, took them to my room and practiced for a couple of hours (even found some good alto reeds!). It was nice to have some normalcy in a weird situation. Getting the horns in my face really helped get my head focused. I played through scales and patterns on alto, tenor, and flute, and checked my EWI stuff to make sure everything was cool. Everything was.
I heard the
Wood Brothers play a set of amazing organic music. If there was one thing I would download from all the bands on the cruise, it would be some of their stuff. Amazing. It sounded like jazz/blues guys playing a rootsy set--lots of interplay and listening. You HAVE to check it out.
I heard
Shawn Mullins play a set. He's got some cool stuff, but the spoken verse, sung chorus formula has GOT TO GO! He uses it too often. Greg said, "but that's his thing!" All the more reason to get away from it, I would say.
We hit the ballroom and did the fire drill half hour changeover. When we finally got started, there was a huge wash of collective adrenaline from the entire band. We're finally playing! The crowd was there and we were there. Perfect! In our previous cruises this year (all on the same boat), we've never had a good set in this room, so we were pretty psyched to be playing well. Everything was cool.
Mark Cobb was playing really hard--these high profile gigs always bring out the animal in him. He was proving himself to anybody who would listen.
The soundman told me afterwards that my signal to the mixing board was super hot. It turns out that in trying to reach back in the dark and turn up the volume on an unfamiliar amplifier, I'd instead been cranking the line out volume. Oops.
Once we'd finished our set, we moved down the hallway to the Promenade stage and played a few tunes, including
this new one. Once that was over, I went to bed.
Saturday: I woke up around noon and got off the boat in
Grand Cayman along with 3Markable (Mark Dannells, Mark Cobb, and Mark Bencuya). We had lunch on Seven Mile Beach and a quick swim in the ocean.
Mark Cobb!
Mark Bencuya!
Mark Dannells and Mark Bencuya.
I saw the
Wood Brothers again. Still killin' it.
Saturday night was our second set, once again in the Candlelight Lounge (11:30 PM). We played well again. Mentally, it took a while for me to get there, but we had no problems. The gig went well. Mark Cobb: en fuego.
Afterwards, Brandon was extremely complimentary about what I have done as a keyboardist, which meant the world to me. His opinion, along with Mark Bencuya's, are by far the most important on the subject. I can't say enough about how awesome it was to hear what he had to say.
Sunday: Sunday afternoon we played the Lido Deck at 2:30 PM. This is the prime afternoon gig spot on the boat--the deck is full if the weather is nice. We played well and everything was groovy. At one point my laptop did crash, but what's a gig without an EWI disaster! When we started
Caribbean Queen, the sound was gurgly. I hit the spacebar to clear up what I assumed was the processor getting maxed out by something. The next time I looked at the computer, I noticed that Mainstage had closed/crashed! Yikes! I rebooted the computer and pulled up Mainstage again. Fortunately, the set list was such that I didn't use the EWI for several songs in a row and I could get it set back up. It was a scary couple of minutes, though.
I can't say that I wasn't relieved to get off stage. That kind of fried my nerves. Other than that, though, I played well, got off some good solos, and didn't screw up my keyboard parts very much.
When we finished, I packed my stuff up and they put my horns, keyboard, and magic suitcase (full of sax stands, effects pedal, cables, keyboard pedals) in the hold. I watched Blackberry Smoke play their set and ate. Later on that night I watched
Clay Cook play some really terrific solo stuff on the Serenity Deck. People were hanging on every note; they always do when it's Clay.
While watching, my one wish was this: many people, particularly Clay, were huge fans of
Y.O.U. and
Nick Niespodziani, and Nick's stuff is just as good if not better than anybody else on the boat. It would be cool if someone like Clay would be more of a champion of Nick's music. He deserves to be heard just as much as these more celebrated singer/songwriters.
While I was listening to Clay and dreaming of Nick's success, someone reached around from behind me with a camera, showing me multiple pictures of people posing with my very relaxed body that first night of the cruise. Oops.
We hung out the rest of the night. I think I went to bed around 4:30 AM, and got up at 8:30 AM at the port of Tampa. Hooray! Home again!
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