Sunday Night

No Saturday night gig!  Bummer.  I spent the day at the pool;  Saturday night, I stopped by Bryan Lopes' house (also not working Saturday night!) and picked up my new soprano (the 62), which he fixed up for me.  Nice.  Always a great hang.  Lopes was breaking in a reed for his morning church gig.  Funny how a two minute exchange ("here's your horn/here's your money") becomes forty minutes of laughing.

The soprano plays great.  I did mess around with the position of the G key.  The left hand upper octave stuff on this horn is a little different--for one thing, the octave key closes a small tone hole above the usual C.  It brings the upper C# more in tune.  I thought that maybe I wasn't pressing the octave key down all the way sometimes, allowing the C# to go waaaaaaaaaaaaay sharp--like most of the way to D.  In fiddling with the horn and a tuner and paying attention to what my left hand was doing, I realized that touching the G key was allowing the secondary octave key to open a little bit (there's already a little movement when you push the octave key--gotta get Lopes to check that).  Opening the G octave pip sends the C# waaaaaaaaaaaaay sharp.  The solution is to maybe not rest my finger on that key at all (easier said than done), but I also bent the G key down closer to the body a little more so it's not right in the natural curve of my hand.

So…there may be some secondary horn work coming up after all the pads settle and I can get back over there to Lopes' house.  We'll see.  I played it some more Sunday night, and after getting a couple of good reeds happening, the horn is feeling really good.

Anyway…

I got shut out of my Sunday AM church gig.  I guess we all did--it was just a kid's choir with piano accompaniment.  Boo.

Sunday night, I was back on the job at my PM church gig.  Good to be back!  I did a lot of warming up on flute, so I felt good on both horns.  I might actually have a couple of days to play my horns before I have to learn something special for an upcoming Yacht Rock gig!

Purple Rain

Last night, Yacht Rock performed the album Purple Rain as part of our summer concert series.  This show was in a huge tent at the Promenade, up in the northern part of the park behind the Botanical Gardens.  I'd never been up there before;  I'd venture to guess that most park goers had no idea of its existence.  To get there, we had to enter at 10th Street and weave through all the curvy paths and past the power washer guy who was waving us the wrong way.

Anyway…the gig went fine, and it was packed.  The last I heard, there were 1,300 tickets pre sold.  I'm impressed that that many people found the tent.

Do you remember how it felt to take a really huge exam in college?  How ever you'd describe that feeling when you finish--relief?  satisfaction?--that's what finishing Purple Rain felt like.  I don't have much of a feeling for how I played.  I think I did fine, but there was almost no emotion attached to it.  At this point, I have pretty much no recollection of what I did.

The second set was regular Yacht Rock, and we cut loose a bit.

This was the debut of Cartoon Butterfly, another of our originals from our EP.  It's a really harmonically hip tune by Mark Bencuya.  I'm wondering if it's ever been publicly performed before.  With this tune and Lowdown, I ended up playing more flute than alto.

This is what it sounds like When Doves Cry.




Upcoming dates (with Yacht Rock unless otherwise noted):

June 8, Woodstock Summer Concert Series (Woodstock, GA)
June 13, Lincoln Theatre (Raleigh, NC)
June 14, NC Music Factory (Charlotte, NC)
June 15, Ziggy's (Winston-Salem, NC)
June 24, Sounds from the Underground--David Freeman Quartet (Atlanta, GA)
June 28, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
June 29, Strand Theatre-Schooner Steely Dan show (Marietta, GA)
July 8 Cape May Convention Hall (Cape May, NJ)
July 10 Brooklyn Bowl (New York City)
July 11 Mohegan Sun (Connecticut)
July 12, Power Plant Live! (Baltimore, MD)
July 13, XFinity Live!  Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA)
July 14, The Hamilton (Washington DC)
July 20, Yacht Rock Revival at Chastain! (Atlanta)
July 26, Orange Peel (Asheville, NC)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar--Please Pleaserock Me (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta)
October 19, Thriller at Variety Playhouse (Atlanta)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)

Midwest Tour

Yacht Rock just returned last night from a triumphant tour of the Midwest!  Ok, really it was just a couple of public shows and a corporate event, but we played to a full room in Chicago--good enough for me!

taste the rainbow in Kentucky

Wednesday:  much driving.  Las Chalupas (Elizabethtown, KY) is not good.  Avoid it, lest your face look like this.

We got as far as the north side of Indianapolis.  On this trip, we were able to stay with the Cobb and Olson families around Indy, so we saved a ton of money on hotel rooms.  I snagged a very nice couch.

Thursday:  we slept late, and after a painfully long lunch, headed north.  In spite of the fact that it's almost June, northern Indiana was cold, overcast, and windy.  My wardrobe of shorts, t shirts, and sandals was…a poor choice.  Oops.

wind farm, northern Indiana

Gary, IN

Gary, IN

Anyway…Chicago!

I need a Kamera

Marina City--the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot buildings

Our first gig was the House of Blues.  Totally awesome experience.  There was a whole crew who took our gear from the underground tunnel up to the stage (and back again at the end of the night).  We got in a good soundcheck (we've added Daft Punk's Get Lucky to the setlist--it sounded great at rehearsal).

The show was really fun and the crowd loved us.  There were seven or eight hundred people there!  Wow!  The combined Chicago friends, friends from The Rock Boat, family, and the free ticket give aways made for a full house.  Super cool.

The band really rose to the occasion.  Great gig all the way around.  I wanna go back and keep playing there.  Even the after party was cool (though I was blinded by tequila).  We spent the night at the hotel across the street--the appropriately named Hotel Sax.  The lobby, the Yankee Hotel Foxtrot buildings, and the House of Blues all share the same space on the Chicago River.  Totally awesome.

Friday:  I got up and walked across the river to State Street in the clothes I'd worn on stage the night before.  It was the warmest thing I had.  After coffee, I bought a pair of jeans and a long sleeve thermal.

I am trying to break your heart

Back to Indy!  Our second gig was at Radio Radio, located in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis.  A much smaller room with many more friends and family, this one sold out before we got into town (three hundred people).  Still, very cool to be so warmly received.  The food across the street at Revolucion was fantastic.  So was Mark Cobb.

After the show, I had a chance to meet one of my heroes from college, Josh Silbert.  Josh was an upperclassman when I began at I.U.  In addition to holding down the bari chair in the top jazz band, Josh played in Johnny Socko, a very popular funk/horn band.  So cool.  What a treat to finally speak to him after all these years!  I think I talked his ear off about gear.  Oops.

Saturday:  we played a private event for Firestone at the Marriott in Indianapolis.  Due to the scheduling of the event, we had a ton of down time.  We walked around the city, eventually landing at the zoo.  Very nice.

Cartoon Butterfly

yep

The event was the usual corporate gig.  Those who stayed loved us.

Sunday:  more coolness!  We attended the Indy 500 as guests of Firestone.  How cool is that?  Very cool.  It's a pretty amazing experience--the sound is indescribable (especially in the tunnels under the track when the cars are overhead).  The people watching was also something to behold.  Quite a slice of America.

fried chicken and a vodka soda for breakfast

nice pants

We ended the trip with a cookout at the Cobb compound.

Monday:  we drove back from Indy.  A long day of nothing.  Here's Louisville.

Special thanks to Mark Cobb for the retro picture inspiration.


Come see us this Friday in Piedmont Park at the Legacy Fountain, performing all of Purple Rain (plus a set of Yacht Rock).  Tickets are going quickly!  Get yours here:  https://www.xorbia.com/e/yachtrock/purple-rain

Sazerac Session, Day 1

I had a great time recording horns tonight at Madison Studios, adding horns to a New Orleans inspired project called Sazerac.  Led by Greg Lee, the rest of the band is Mark Cobb (drums), Mark Dannells (guitar), and Mark Bencuya (keyboards).  Great stuff!

A few of the tunes had horns on the original recordings, but mostly these are my horn arrangements.

For this session, I played alto, tenor, and baritone sax, and a little bit of clarinet.  Everything sounded and felt good horn-wise (clarinet felt ok--does it ever feel really good?).  Good reeds are everything.

Four tunes in four hours is pretty good.  In a couple of weeks we'll go back in and record the four other, plus any solo stuff.

I was working up my arrangements last week at home.  Here's a little practice solo:

Sundazed

The Marriott Marquis atrium

After the late night at the Marriott Marquis and then Smith's Olde Bar, I went to bed around 3 AM.  Four and a half hours later, I was headed out the door again, this time off to my AM church gig.  Ugh.

The gig turned out to be pretty good.  For one thing, they've scrapped the V-drums and returned to an acoustic kit.  I don't think anyone was on in ears, either.  Whatever the sum of all those little things was resulted in the band digging in a little more and playing more cohesively, and the results were much more satisfying.  I played saxophone on two songs (both with some solo room) and one on unamplified/inaudible flute (not Matt's fault).  I also played clarinet on the closer.

We did two services…extra money!  though it did delay my nap.

Sunday night, I was back at the Marriott Marquis in the same room in the same spot (probably on the same stage) for a House Live gig.  The one on Monday was pretty fun, but this one was rough.  The main problem was that there was no monitor, so I heard nothing that was going through the PA except for the reflection off the wall across from us, and that was pretty quiet.  Mostly it was me noodling against two drummer/percussionists who were also noodling.  Boring as hell.  Paid well, though.

Strange to be on a four man (DJ, 2 percussionists, me) with TWO lighting guys.  The funny thing was that the client vetoed any light changes or movement, so both those guys set their lights and then sat there for three hours.