Yacht Rock played The Ivy in Buckhead again last night.
It felt like we were playing in a train station. It was crowded and noisy, and the people could not have cared less about what we were doing. Too bad, too, because if they'd paid any attention they would have noticed Mark Cobb empty his head of all the drum stuff that was building up. We witnessed the open handed high hat, the Ringo hit hat thing, playing on the bell of the hi hats, the Purdie fill in various permutations, a few moments with the beat turned around and then back, some crazy fills incorporating the stuff on his left, and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember at the moment. He was even played one handed so he could pose for a picture.
Hopefully I can avoid getting sucked into watching Purdie videos for the rest of the day.
I played pretty well (except for the Little Jeanie, which I practiced and still screwed up). I had some keyboard trouble with my Fantom--it freaked out in a couple of spots. It dawned on me at the end of the first set that Cobb's "crash of doom" was smacking the bottom of the keyboard (that's how close we were on stage). I moved back a couple of inches and that fixed it.
We played Kiss You All Over for the first time in a long time--probably over a year. I know it's C, F, G, and A minor, but it's so fun to play. I hope we don't go a year before we see it again. I played the hell out of that one.
On the heels of the successful Yacht Rock tour, I dragged myself out of bed really early Sunday morning to make it to my church gigs.
Church gig number one was a bit odd. I received an email late in the week saying we were playing both services (double money!), but we had to be there a half hour early (boo!). I showed up with all my horns, only to find out that we were playing the entire service with the orchestra (a few strings added to a concert band). I ended up playing the oboe parts on soprano sax. Unfortunately, I was seated in the back next to the low brass, so the flutes and clarinets played the oboe cues on their parts; I assume they didn't hear me. No oboe, no problem.
This gig did offer me the opportunity to concentrate on tuning for my soprano--looking for the spot where the left hand can be in tune and I can lip down the right hand. Fun. At least that gave me something to do.
Just for the sake of bitching, let me also mention that we're still on the "all black" dress code, which I still don't get because the band leader doesn't follow this rule; the organist doesn't follow this rule; the vocalists don't follow this rule; the orchestra wears choir robes (as you can see in the picture). Uhh…so it's just four sleepy guys wearing all black. I think the goal was for us to look a little dressier, so why not say "no jeans?" I don't think you can make the argument that we were trying to look uniform.
I did talk to one of the members of the orchestra, who seemed surprised that I could read music (and that I was reading the oboe part up a whole step on the fly). I think there's the misconception that because I am an improvising musician, I must only play by ear. Ha! I have a classical performance degree in flute, clarinet, and saxophone.
Church gig number two was more of the same kind of stuff. The music didn't seem to need much in the way of solos or fills, so I focused on playing in tune. Cold churches are tough on wind instruments.
The Yacht Rock Revue returned from another successful northeastern tour Saturday night. Along the way, we played three successful shows in New York City and Washington DC, ate good food, and annoyed each other quite a bit.
We started out Tuesday morning, driving all day and into the night before finally stopping on the north side of Washington DC. We stopped to eat in Richmond.
Wednesday morning we drove from DC into New York City. Our first gig was at Dominion NYC, a really cool room on Lafayette. Great stage, great equipment, and a great sound man. They even helped us drag our gear in. Total pro situation.
After soundcheck, we ventured out in search of food. Gaia was closed, so we ate at Katz's Deli.
the table from When Harry Met Sally
This show was a Please Pleaserock Me (Beatles) show; we played all of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first set, and then a second set of more Beatles favorites. Big fun! Unfortunately, we had twenty people show up to witness our awesomeness. Too bad--we really played well. Some highlights were Peter's rendition of Getting Better and Greg Lee's version of Maybe I'm Amazed.
We hired a local trumpet player to fill out the horn section. Through blind luck, we ended up hiring Seneca Black, with whom I had played several Atlanta shows years ago. He played great, and was an extremely nice guy. Hopefully, we'll be able to do it again.
Post show, we stowed the van, checked into our hotel (Holiday Inn Soho), and wandered off into Chinatown in search of food and drink…at 2 AM. You'd think that something would be open, but we ended up at the Whiskey Tavern. No food and not much in the way of drinks, though our waitress was cute. We did a round of shots with pickle juice chasers. It seemed like a dare. It wasn't bad, but I like pickles.
I got up the next day and met my sister for lunch, and then went exploring.
I went and checked out the music stores on 48th like I usually do in NYC, but Manny's is gone, so now it's just a block of Sam Ash. Boo.
I went in Roberto's Woodwinds. It very cool (and very much just a sax shop). One time when I was there, they let me try a bunch of horns that I had no intention of buying. I brought my mouthpiece with me, but there was an awesome tenor player there practicing. I was too intimidated to do anything more than listen.
Onward!
looking down Broadway--this is the corner where the original Birdland was located
Rockefeller Center
Grand Central Station
guerilla marketing at the Apple Store in Grand Central!
the old Brecker Bros. club 7th Ave South
activate Mikhabrekah!
the new Freedom Tower in the middle of the picture
we met up for drinks at 5 PM and pizza from Lombardi's
After retrieving the van (and passing a doorstep with a giant shit on it), we loaded into our gig at the Canal Room. Easy load in right off West Broadway right onto the stage. This was a good size room, and we filled it with a good size crowd for a Yacht Rock show. The sound on stage was boomy and the power made our amps buzz, but the audio out front seems like it was pretty well balanced.
Unfortunately, I played a really poor show--I spared no song. I have no excuse; my brain just didn't show up for the gig. We recorded our performance, but I ruined it. Too bad, too, because Mark Dannells played great (one of his finest Peg solos ever) and Mark Cobb played great (terrific drum solo at the end of You Should be Dancing).
After spending the night in New Jersey, we got up Friday and headed down to Washington DC for a show at the State Theatre in Falls Church, VA. Another easy load in, and another good sized room.
This gig was a benefit for the National MS Society. We helped raise some money and played a great gig! Dannells was superb once again, particularly on Peg and Rosanna, and Cobb contributed another outstanding solo. I played better, too (I screwed up a lot less), but I was still kind of flat on my solos.
A few crowd videos…
We spent the night at a beautiful Marriott. Dannells wandered off into the night. Where he went we will probably never know, but we were genuinely worried about him until he returned.
Saturday was an all day drive back to Atlanta. We stopped for BBQ at Saucy's in Petersburg, Virginia. I had a half rack of ribs and then licked the aluminum foil clean.
We got back to Atlanta around 9:30 PM. Easily the coldest weather we'd seen all week!
I dragged myself out of bed this morning and played my church gig. No gig last night, but I still found enough stuff to keep me up past midnight.
Church gig number one was fairly straight forward. I ended up using every instrument I'd brought-flute, clarinet, soprano, and tenor. When we were excused for the sermon I was able to carry everything but the clarinet off stage, so I didn't spend ten minutes packing up afterwards.
We had some "road map" issues on one song. It's funny to me how differently some musicians hear music than others. In this case, a couple of guys had trouble figuring out how to get to the last page--lots of measure numbers going back and forth--when it seemed obvious to my ears that we were playing the chorus again, and then taking the outro.
The other thing that stuck out to me about the morning service was the way the drummer was playing. He's a college student who probably hasn't played a bunch of gigs at this point, I'd guess. On several songs, he was wandering back and forth between the hi hat and the ride every couple of measures, like he was trying out several different approaches within the song. It got me thinking again about how drummers are very responsible for shaping the arrangement of the song we are playing. I think some of the younger guys I have played with in the last couple of years don't realize that what they're doing and when they're doing it changes how the guys around them play. This guy would open up the groove to the ride and then come back down to the hi hat, and then we'd go into the chorus and he would realize it needed to be bigger again and he'd go back, and probably didn't think about how that was forcing the intensity of the music up and down. It's a lot like a driver who stomps on the gas and then takes his foot off, then floors again, then coasts again. We're moving along, but you're making me sick!
My second gig began a half hour after the Super Bowl began. At that point, it was 9-0 Giants. Not too many people there! I'd bet there were fewer than a hundred in the congregation.
My newly overhauled flute felt awesome--that thing is playing better than ever. My soprano felt good and sounded good, but I had all kinds of trouble playing in tune. My left hand and my right hand were very far apart. Not too fun. I didn't do anything really noteworthy. We finished about fifteen minutes early.
Yacht Rock played the Taste of Dunwoody last night (Friday). We did it last year; I bet we'll play it again next year. It sold out, and I think we have a lot to do with it. A good number of our fans turn up, and I know they're not there for the food!
The weird thing about this gig is that it was held in the W Hotel, or whatever it's now called--it's the hotel on the north side of Perimeter Mall. The room is kind of small for a seven piece band, especially when it's lined with vendors trying to talk up their specialty foods. I'm curious as to why the event is not held at the Crown Plaza at Ravinia across the street, or even at Villa Christina, both of which have significantly larger spaces.
The gig itself was pretty good. Our stash of alcohol was inconveniently located in a room on the tenth floor, so I think everybody stayed pretty sober. Good thing, too, because the ballroom lighting options were either overhead florescent lights, or almost total darkness.
Another crappy feature of this venue was the thermostat, which evidently didn't care that there were several hundred people and several little cooking stations and a band dressed in plastic clothes. It was super hot--like outdoor hot. The EWI did not care for this; my solo on Hey Nineteen was a little slippery because the heat and humidity in the room caused it to react strangely (until I could adjust the sensors).
I screwed up part of my Dannells duet on Still the One. I'm finally off my chart, and I can play the thing perfectly at soundcheck, but I can't quite do it on the gig. I've got no good excuse.
We played Whatever Gets You Through the Night again--a fun song for me and one that goes over very well, but I'm worried it's going to disappear again because Nick hates it. I like it a lot. Figures.
The gig ended promptly at 10:30, which was so very nice. I was home by 12:30. It probably would've been earlier if the load out wasn't such a rat maze.
Yacht Rock played the 10 High last night (the usual guys except Ganesh in for Pete and Daniel on drums). Pretty good night! We did kind of a greatest hits set list because of the subs, but I was much more on it than last week when I couldn't remember anything.
We had a big crowd last night--I heard it was a bunch of lobbyists. They paid, we played. Some of them had nice chests.
Thursday:Yacht Rock was back at our regular gig, the 10 High, for the first time this year! It was just the way we left it--dark, stinky, and dirty. Too bad. We had everybody there except Mark Cobb, who is out on paternity leave. Daniel Morrison filled in for him. He was solid.
Mark Dannells played really well. I, on the other hand, just kind of spaced on a lot of stuff. For instance, we were playing What a Fool Believes for probably the five thousandth time, and I couldn't remember whether I pedal on an F or a Bb, so I guessed (correctly). I had lots of stuff like that--I felt confused.
I'd spent most of the day rebuilding my rack. UPS was a bit rough in getting it to Miami last week, and broke both rack rails loose. I took everything out, put new screws in the rails, and put it all back together. I also strapped my power supplies to the power strip in there, since UPS had helped them get out and bounce around. Big fun! I got it all back together, and then had to set up my entire Yacht Rock rig so I could test everything and make sure all my connections worked. Success on my first try.
Friday:Yacht Rock played our second gig at the Georgia Theatre in Athens. It's sooooooo cool in there. We sold it out again.
This time the on stage sound was much better. I could hear things very well. I played pretty well--fewer brain farts than the previous night. It took a while, but at some point I was able to forget that we were recording and just play. Dave Barbe brought his mobile recording unit over to capture our sounds. Hope we get something good! Short of that, I hope we can fix it!
Mark Bencuya played a couple of good solos. His spot on Peg had this cool start-stop thing that I liked, and he got off a really screaming synth thing on I Wanna be Your Lover. Really good stuff.
The second set featured a couple of our Dazed and Confused tunes, so I didn't really do much after the break.
Saturday: we rode up to Nashville to play the Mercy Lounge. Good news in Tennessee! Not only did we sell it out; the club got so many calls about tickets after we'd sold it out, they turned their phones off that afternoon to avoid it! The next time we go up there, we'll be in the Cannery Ballroom--much bigger.
This was a fun gig. Walter Egan sat in with us. In addition to Magnet and Steel, he played on Go Your Own Way (he and Dannells played the guitar solo in unison). He was very generous in hanging out with us, swapping stories and putting up with our silliness. He spent the entire second set sitting right behind me on the corner of the stage.
Ganesh Giri Jaya played drums with us. He was really great. It makes me wonder if he wouldn't be better off on a smaller kit like the one he used in Nashville--he was so relaxed and smooth. I really dug it. He looked like he was having a blast, too.
Sunday: we got up and drove home.
I played my church gig that night. I guess the only noteworthy thing was a vaguely latin sounding song that I played flute on. It was short form--just a verse and refrain. I came in the second time around playing vaguely latin flute, and there was never a good spot to get out of the way of the vocals, so I ended up kind of smothering the song. Oops. It wasn't on purpose…I just couldn't find a logical place in the arrangement--the intensity never changed, and if I'd stopped it would've sounded wrong.
I know what else happened…I was messing around with the band mix, and I couldn't get the piano to come through the mix, so I swept the mid EQ around and it suddenly jumped out! I think I laughed out loud. I ended up pulling the fader down quite a bit once I found that bump. It was kind of funny how that worked. I did the same thing to the acoustic guitar. Every week I get a little better at it.
This week is kind of slow. It'll be a good chance to catch up on some other things.
