The Long Sunday

Sunday was a long day, with a Yacht Rock gig sandwiched by two church gigs.

AM church gig:  not too bad.  When we'd gone over one of the two big songs for the day, the main vocalist hadn't been in the room, so I played the melody as a place keeper.  During the actual service, it dawned on me (right around the time nobody was singing and the bandleader whipped his head around to see why I wasn't playing) that there would also be no vocalist!  Yikes.  So, I was in.  No problem.  Four bars into the verse, I tried to turn the page, but six or seven pages turned instead.  Uh oh.  I tried again, but no luck.  I ended up playing the entire thing from memory, which definitely got the adrenaline going.

I checked with the rest of the band afterwards, and nobody knew it was going to be an instrumental, which means I didn't miss anything at rehearsal.  Sometimes I don't pay attention...

After my gig, I had around forty minutes to get home, change, and load my truck up with Yacht Rock gear.  We played a benefit for Live Thrive, which is an organization dedicated to cleaning up and preserving the local community through recycling.  What other band better represents recycling?

We played two sets for a friendly, good looking crowd, opening with Band on the Run (sounds like that one's going to be a keeper!).  It was a very relaxed show.

We finished around 5:30.  I was packed and out the door just after 6, headed up to my PM church gig.  There was a guy riding a horse bare back on Howell Mill at I-75.  Wait…what the hell?

 My family met me at the church, where we swapped cars.  My gear went home, and I stayed to play.

The evening church gig was decent.  I felt better after the nap I took during the homily.

Upcoming Yacht Rock gigs for August:

August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)

It's sad to hear the Cedar Walton is dead.  I've been on a big late-70s Bob Berg kick, right around the time the two were playing together.  Here's one of my favorites, from Berg's New Birth (1979), with Cedar Walton on rhodes.

Beatles at Smith's Olde Bar

Please Pleaserock Me (Yacht Rock plays the Beatles) had a two night stand at Smith's Olde Bar.  Great gigs!  Also considering how much gear we have on stage for this show, it was nice to leave it all set up overnight (I did not leave my horns there, however).  The Friday crowd was decent;  Saturday's crowd was pretty full.

Friday:

Canadian Tuxedo night (head to toe denim).

When I'm 64 went well, and I appreciated the reaction from the crowd, especially the guy who yelled "Goddamnit Dave!"  In spite of barely playing any clarinet these days, my sound and pitch felt good.

Lady Madonna is, I think, the only Beatles song with a sax solo (played by London's own Ronnie Scott).  It's funny to me that the main groove is the Fats Domino boogie, and the sax solo is phrased in half time swing.

Everything else was fine.  My solo on Jealous Guy held promise, but I couldn't deliver.  My solo on Will it Go Round in Circles (written and performed by the fifth Beatle, Billy Preston) was also pretty bland.  Two songs with piccolo--Penny Lane and Live and Let Die!  My picc felt great.

We ended just before midnight, and I was home before 12:30 AM.  Love that!

Saturday:

Mark Cobb's birthday!

I think I have the songs we added in on the fly correct;  there may be something I forgot.  Anyway, another enjoyable night of music with friends.  We took another shot at Lady Madonna--a better solo, I believe, tonight.  We played Happy Birthday for Cobb, and then he did an excellent job singing and playing It Don't Come Easy.  Following that, we had our first public attempt at Band on the Run, which sounded great.  The horns only play in the transition between the second and third sections, but I did my best to help on the vocals, too.  The second set had plenty of horn stuff for us (the handclaps in Eight Days a Week on down).  My solo on Whatever Gets You Through the Night was pretty good.

Mostly, it felt like I was hanging out while my friends played a gig, taking annoying pictures and stuff.  Still fun, though, and once again I slipped out the back door and got home long before the rest of them had begun packing up.  Ahh, to be just a horn player again!

Don't forget to come see us Friday, August 23 at Park Tavern!

Georgia Theatre!

Yacht Rock was at the Georgia Theatre in Athens Thursday night.  The seven regular guys haven't played together since July 27 in Hilton Head.  Reunited!  I could definitely feel the vibe of the seven of us back together again.  Coupled with the Theatre and a good crowd, we were in for a good night!

Wednesday afternoon, I developed (out of the blue) severe vertigo, so bad that I could barely get home.  I still had it Thursday morning, which made loading my gear down a flight of stairs and into my truck pretty treacherous, but Advil helped me get through it.  I made it to Athens and got loaded in and set up without issue.

Our soundcheck was more of a rehearsal for our Beatles show at Smith's, so I didn't do much more than nearly freeze to death under the Theatre's air conditioner.  When we finished, I took a walk around Athens to try and possibly locate a drug store with a clinic, but no luck.  I did almost fall down, though, in the middle of the sidewalk on College Ave.  Time for more Advil!

The show went really well.  I was careful about doing anything that might upset my inner ear--no major backbends during solos, no sudden movements.  I felt fine!  We had a great time playing together, and I actually played really well, with some different solo ideas than normal.  I think my preoccupation with not falling down kept me from overblowing and having saxophone diarrhea.

We got loaded out and made it home without any issues.  I wish whatever is wrong with me would leave me alone.

Sunday

Ouch.  On three hours of sleep, I wandered into my morning church gig.  Fortunately, it was pretty easy--all tenor (with a little bit of clarinet at the end), and the tunes had enough space for me to play a little bit.  My excitement of the morning happened in the introduction of the biggest song we did--the recording (I am told) began with a big trumpet fanfare.  The best I could do was to play it all up at the top of my altissimo range, beginning on a high C.  As we came up to this song in the service, my mind went blank, and I had no idea how to finger that note;  then I thought I remembered it, but there was no way to check if I was hearing the correct pitch.  It all worked out.

Having a late gig like the previous night with an early gig like this morning really messes me up.  I came home from my AM church gig and went back to bed for four or five hours.

My evening church gig was pretty good.  I think I've finally found a good spot on my soprano neck for intonation--things are coming together.  We also got another singer back from the summer break, which helped significantly with the vocal blend.

Upcoming gigs:

August 15, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Please Pleaserock Me show
August 18, Monday Night Brewing Company (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)
September 26, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Sazerac show
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 10, State Theatre (Falls Church, VA)
October 11, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
October 12, Rams Head On Stage (Annapolis, MD)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)
October 31, Georgia Theater (Athens, GA)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)
November 17, House of Blues (San Diego, CA)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)

After Party

Yacht Rock played an after party last night--not the party itself, but the AFTER party.  Wait…isn't the after party usually the drunkest of the drunk standing around the hotel bar?  Ugh.  On the plus side, this 10:15 PM-1:40 AM shindig didn't have four or five hours of down time between soundcheck and the gig.

Before we even got set up, there was an adventure:  I followed Monkey (presumably to go park after dumping our gear at the hotel loading dock), and we somehow ended up going into the underground parking for the office building next door.  There was a garage door at street level and a gate at the bottom of the ramp.  Security would not let us through the gate (no parking there), but the garage door was shut, and we had quite a time (after we made Austin Powers-esque ten point turns in this small space) trying to convey to an unseen security guard where exactly we were stuck.  "Please open the garage door at street level!"  was our version of "R2!  Shut down all the garbage compactors on the detention level!"  Finally the guard opened the garage door and I got out, but it closed before Monkey could get out.  R2!

Another small stage--it'll be good to head to the Georgia Theatre this week and not be crammed in a corner.

The gig was unremarkable.  I'd guess there were about a hundred people in the room.  One thing that was cool (due to Greg subbing for Nick on the front line, Rob Henson subbing for Greg, and Ganesh subbing for Cobb) was that we played a few different tunes--Moonlight Feels Right, My Love is Alive (soundcheck only, but still fun), Lowdown, Kodachrome, and  Hot Child in the City.

During our second break, the security guard for the building came around and started locking up--he said that they were shutting down the bar and killing the party at 1 AM.  Uhh, ok…Pete met up with someone from the client, and they agreed that we would cut the break short and play another half hour (ending around 1:15 AM).  Cool.

As we were changing back into street clothes (ten or fifteen minutes after the end of the gig), one of the other people from the party came in and wanted to know when we were going back on.  Say what?  Some kind of communication problem--he expected the party to go on until 1:40.  After another huddle between Pete and the clients, we agreed to come back out and play one more song.

I ended up in bed at 3:30 AM.  Up at 7 to begin Sunday!

Foxy

Yacht Rock had a private gig last night at the Egyptian Ballroom (Fox Theatre)--some kind of big entertainment industry party.  We played two long sets.

The load in is notoriously difficult, mainly because there is one freight elevator to service the ballroom (for production, catering, and the band), and it is not quite the size of a twin bed, so there's always a bottleneck of stuff going in at the beginning of the day, or stuff coming out at the end of the night.  To alleviate this, much of our gear was back lined.  I brought everything just in case…I guess if I'd checked in ahead of time, I could have planned a little better.  I ended up going half and half--I used their keyboards, keyboard stands, pedals, throne, and monitor, and supplied my rack so I could still have my EWI rig, and my sax wireless.  Along with that, I needed sax stands, tambourine…a little bit of stuff out of one of my boxes.

After getting the gear all sussed out, we endured a pretty difficult soundcheck.  Two big problems we encountered:

1.  The sound guys made guesses about what we would want in our mixes, so we had to go through every mix, clear everything, and start over.

2.  The monitors were being mixed from front of house, and the front of house guy was up in the balcony, so communication was difficult.

It's safe to say that each of us ended up with monitor mixes that were "good enough to get through the gig."  Mine wasn't great, but it was so difficult to fine tune things, I just let it go.

Following soundcheck, we had several hours of downtime, so I took the chance and ran my extra gear (2 keyboards, amp, and keyboard stand) home so I wouldn't have to deal with it at the end of the night. What else was there to do for four hours?

I made it back in plenty of time.  It turned out that the Dan Baraszu Trio was playing in the lobby.  Nice!  The band was Dan, David Ellington on organ, and Chris Burroughs on drums, all old friends of mine.  Awesome group.  We hung out for their soundcheck.

They had sound problems of their own--the guy who manned their PA laid out two monitors (the band laughed at that--for what?  two amplified interments and a drummer on a stage the size of a parking space!).  Once their set began, I went out front to listen, and the guy had the kick and snare louder than anything else in the band (if you know Chris, you know how powerful he is to begin with).  No organ in the mix!  I sent Chris a text encouraging him to unplug the microphones aimed at his kit.  They were plenty loud enough--there was no reason to have a PA in that space.  It would've sounded much better with just the natural stage sound.

Our sets turned out fine.  Mike Bielenberg filled in for Bencuya.  He was reading charts all night.

I brought two EWIs to the gig and checked to make sure everything was working correctly a couple of times.  Of course, I had no problems at all.  It was back to normal, but I still don't trust it yet.

The crowd was very cool.  It didn't take them long to really get into it, and they requested an encore at the end, which is always appreciated.  Hopefully we will get some really sweet gigs out of this!

I loaded out in one trip, and was home forty-five minutes after the last note.  Possibly a personal record.

Cajoning It In

Busy day!

1.  My AM church gig--we had all of July off.  That worked out just fine for me because I was out of town almost every Sunday morning.  August, I'm back.  Time to make the money!

This gig was pretty low key.  I played four horns (tenor, flute, soprano, clarinet).  No choir, no extra players--easy stuff.

2.  My PM church gig was also easy.  I forgot my headphones, but I think the mix that I had was pretty good.  I mostly played soprano on this one, as I continue to get more comfortable on my new horn.  It feels like I've finally found the right spot on the neck for my mouthpiece to play in tune.

3.  I left straight from my PM gig and went straight to Ventanas for a House Live gig.  We haven't played this venue in a long time--good to be back!  It's a beautiful view.

This one was an hour and a half (with a five minute break for speeches).  Unlike some previous gigs, this one was a lot of fun.  I felt engaged in what we were playing the whole time.  Good, creative stuff between the four of us--Guy Strauss and Nico Gutierrez on percussion, Huda Hudia DJ'ing, and myself.  The balance between the live instruments and the DJ stuff was perfect.  Ordinarily, I'd say two cajons is a red flag, but these guys were both very good.

Even better was the fact that we were quiet enough that I didn't use a microphone, even for the flute stuff, so at the end of the night, I put my horns away and I was gone!