Lucky XIII

Yacht Rock is back in Atlanta tonight after a week spent on the high seas, trolling the Bahamas aboard the Rock Boat XIII.  I dare say we are getting good at this!

Sunday:  I met up (after my AM church gig) with the rest of the band at the airport, and we flew straight to Miami.  By the time we made it to the port, just about everybody else was already on board, so we walked on with no delays.  We'd even timed it so we missed the muster station b.s.  Aha!

I was slated to room with Mark Dannells.  One nice bonus of this cruise was rooms with balconies!  Cool!

Our first show of the trip was in the main theatre.  Very cool!  This is the room where the headliner plays--we've never had a slot on the big stage before.  It was pretty neat.  The sound was good.  I think I played pretty well.

Peter Beckett from Player and Elliot Lurie from Looking Glass were our special guests, so we featured them each on a couple of their songs (Baby Come Back, Brandy, and others).  No problems--we'd rehearsed their "B sides" earlier in the month.  I think they're getting used to us.

Afterwards, I tried to eat all the fruit on the boat.

Monday:  Monkey and I woke up late (our first sleep-off was a tie!).  The rest of the boat was on Great Stirrup Cay, so we wandered the boat.  We hung out on the balcony with Greg Lee and Pete.

A shark appeared.

In the evening, we all got dressed and participated in a meet and greet.  We signed lots of posters, guitars (where in the hell did those come from?), scraps of paper.  I'm not sure why anyone would want my autograph.  It might be pity.

That's about it for that day!  We saw Ponderosa play in the big theatre.  They sounded great.  Didn't understand a single word, though.  Methinks skinny jeans make them sing funny.

I didn't question how it worked out, but we were able to spread out to individual cabins.  Sweet!

Tuesday:  Monkey and I went to Great Stirrup Cay, which is Norwegian Cruise Lines' private island in the Bahamas.  Waaaaaaay nicer than the last time we came through.

Peter Beckett and I peed in the ocean together while listening to Sister Hazel.

Tuesday night, we played our U2 set on the Pool stage.  It went over very well--lots of favorable comparisons to the real thing.  The wind made reading charts impossible.  I shook a lot of tambourine.  Everybody else on stage was awesome.

The new Yacht Rock Revue CD came out Tuesday, containing our originals and a cover of Africa.  Get it!

Wednesday:  faithful readers may recall that we ate at the Japanese steakhouse on the Kiss Kruise II.  We ate there again.  The food was great.  We were somewhat loud and obnoxious.  We caught food in our mouths.

Wednesday night, we participated in the Woodstock recreation.  Each band did one or two songs.  We were given Sly and the Family Stone.  It went OK.  No big disasters.  The form on I Want to Take You Higher is kind of random.

Thursday:  we hosted the flip cup tournament bright and early at 2 PM, dressed in really unfortunate tank tops.  Our outfits inspired us to lose horribly.  Like, we lost because the whole opposing team finished flipping their cups before we could get one.  Ouch.  At least I didn't have to drink any of their shitty beer.

Thursday night was our final set, this time in the atrium.  One of our boat friends stole a plate of fruit for me.  I ate most of it on stage.  Fantastic!

A Saxman is fueled by fruit. instagr.am/p/WUfqLKrFZh/
— PleaseRock (@pleaserock) March 1, 2013

The band flew through this set.  Peter and Elliot joined us again.  Very good!  The crowd was really enthusiastic.

That was it!  Home on Friday!

Thanks to Sixthman for inviting us and hosting this really cool week.  Special thanks to the crews at each stage we played--great sound and professionalism.  I was a rock star all week!  I wish we had a crew like that to take care of us at every gig.  Amazing!

We're at Park Tavern tomorrow (Saturday), playing U2 and Yacht Rock.  Come see us!

Upcoming dates:

March 2, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
March 14, Wonder Bar (Asbury Park, NJ)
March 15, Theatre of the Living Arts (Philadelphia, PA)
March 16, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
March 17, The Hamilton (Washington, DC)
April 19, Summerour (Atlanta, GA)
April 20, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
April 26, (Atlanta, GA)
May 3, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
May 4, (Nashville, TN)
May 24, Radio Radio (Indianapolis, IN)
June 8, (Woodstock, GA)
June 28, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
July 8, Cape May Convention Center (Cape May, NJ)
July 11, Mohegan Sun (Montville, CT)
July 12, (Baltimore, MD)
July 13, (Philadelphia, PA)
July 20 (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 19 (Atlanta, GA)

More Musical Olympics

What a crazy weekend!

Yacht Rock played a private gig at the Children's Museum Saturday night.  Easy stuff…we've played this same event once or twice before.  Before that, though, I played a quick House Live gig one block away at the Aquarium.

The House Live gig was 5:30-7.  Piece of cake!  They bussed in a thousand or so people to eat in the Atrium and tour the exhibits.  We were amazingly loud.  The SPL app on my phone maxed out.  It was brutal.  My left ear is ruined.

Wayne and Nico on percussion.  Two cajons, two shakers, four congas.

At 7, I ran out the door and down the street to the Children's Museum, changed clothes, and walked on stage (I preset my gear earlier in the afternoon) and started playing at 7:25.  Whew!

This gig was also fun and easy.  Nick and Mark Cobb were out, so Greg moved from bass to lead vocal.  Rob Henson subbed on bass and Ganesh Giri Jaya subbed on drums.  I was trying to explain to the sound guy who was subbing.  He's running sound for us next weekend at the Park Tavern, and I tried to explain that it'll be the same band except for the subs, except for part of the night Greg will play guitar and Pete will play bass.  Then his head exploded.

Here's my solo on Lowdown.

On the way out I sat in some sort of hellacious traffic jam at midnight.

I'm doing my church gig in the morning, and then we are headed to Miami for the Rock Boat XIII.  I'll be needing a nap at that point.

When in Rome...

Yacht Rock played a gig at the Brewhouse Music and Grill in Rome, GA last night.  Easy gig, and a good review of a couple of things we are playing on the Rock Boat next week.

The Brewhouse has good sound and an easy load in.  I think we had a hundred and fifty people there, but they were really into it--somebody drove in from Alabama just to hear sound check!

Here's my solo from Good Thing last night.



Our CD (with this song on it) is officially on sale next week!

In other news, Battle Cases has added me to their artists page.  I use their big saxophone case (BCS 200) when we travel.  Expensive, but well worth it.  Mine is in a truck on the way to Miami right now!

Trio in Piedmont Park

Kevin Smith, Kenny Banks Jr, and I played a nice little trio gig last night at Magnolia Hall in Piedmont Park.  It's a really beautiful venue, and now that the parking deck has been constructed nearby, it's a really sweet spot for an event.

Crazy easy gig.  The people were brought in (via two buses) for dinner;  they were a half hour late, and left fifty minutes early.  Our three hour gig lasted an hour and forty minutes.  Yes!

Here's the audio.  I didn't play nearly as poorly as I thought I had.

To Nashville and Back!

Yacht Rock was on the road this past weekend, heading up to Nashville for a Saturday night gig at the Cannery Ballroom, then back to Atlanta first thing the next morning to play the Sweetwater Brewery's Sixteenth Birthday party.  I was even able to squeeze my PM church gig in there before I finally ran out of gas.

So…we rolled up I-75 in the early afternoon to Nashville.  It was actually snowing at the top of Monteagle!  Wow!  Fortunately, we had one of Wisconsin's finest (Jason Nackers) at the wheel and none of it was sticking anyway.  Once we made it to the other side, we were safe.

We were back in the Cannery Ballroom instead of the Mercy Lounge this time.  More people--the room holds about a thousand people.  The final count on the door was 890.  Pretty close!  Make Me Smile, Nashville's authentic tribute to vintage Chicago, opened for us.  It sounded great--the band leader, Scott Sheriff, did a terrific job organizing the band and writing the charts.  Their horn section of Scott Kinney (trumpet), Jim Hoke (saxophone), and Chris Dunn (trombone) even sat in with us at the end of our set on a handful of tunes.  Do some investigating of these guys…badasses!

Our part of the show went well--catastrophe free!.  I made it through all my stuff just fine--I finally nailed a string run in She's Gone that I'd been practicing for a couple of weeks.  During the Maneater solo (if I'm remembering correctly), a couple of women got through the barrier in front of the stage and grabbed my leg.  That was kind of weird.  We stuck Rosanna in as a request (we get requests via Twitter these days, and occasionally we will honor them).  I was kind of ragged on my parts.  I played piccolo on You Can Call Me Al for the penny whistle solo--big hit with the audience.  Oh yeah, and my solo on Biggest Part of Me was a big stack of pentatonic bullshit.  Booooooooo.

We got to the hotel around 1:30 AM.  Lobby call was 7 AM.  We got back to Atlanta just after noon and began loading our gear onto the little outdoor stage at Sweetwater.  They had a tent that covered three sides of the patio and wrapped around the bandstand.  Not too bad, except the gap where the tent had to come up and over the fence--it let every frigid breeze get me!

We did two sets.  It was packed.  It was really really cold.  My fingertips and toes hurt, but the crowd was pretty slammin'.  The owner of Sweetwater was out-of-his-mind-happy about everything.  He gave some sort of a speech, then stayed on stage and danced for You Can Call Me Al.

We finished at 5:30.  I packed and stacked my gear, and then met up with my ride to my church gig.  Unfortunately, my church clothes and instruments didn't make it, so I grabbed my beater flute from my Yacht Rock gear and played my gig in the same clothes I wore Saturday night.  Lots of staring people down.  Yes, I'm wearing this.

Next week we're on the Rock Boat XIII, so some of my gear is leaving mid week to get down there.  I also have a couple of gigs at the end of this week.  Yacht Rock is in Rome, GA Friday night, so come see us if you can!

February 22, The Brewhouse (Rome, GA)
February 24-March 1, Rock Boat XIII (the ocean)
March 2, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
March 14, Wonder Bar (Asbury Park, NJ)
March 15, Theatre of the Living Arts (Philadelphia, PA)
March 16, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
March 17, The Hamilton (Washington, DC)
April 20, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
April 26, (Atlanta, GA)
June 28, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
July 11, Mohegan Sun (Montville, CT)
July 20 (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 19 (Atlanta, GA)