Atlantic Station Tennis

Yacht Rock played for a tennis tour event at Atlantic Station last night.  Another tennis stadium?  We played one in DC for the Fourth of July a few years ago and almost died from the heat (and lack of enthusiasm).  This one wasn't nearly as bad.

We loaded in at 9:30, set up in a small tent perched in the corner of the stadium (kind of like a spot where ESPN would be set up to do their show in between matches).  A couple of hours to set up and soundcheck and then we were off until the evening.

The match ended around 8:15 PM, and we hopped up on stage to play.  Sort of like when we played the Hawks game, the crowd mostly didn't seem very enthusiastic about sitting there some more, so the stadium emptied out at a steady pace during our seventy-five minute set except for maybe a hundred and fifty people.  That'd be my guess.  Tough to say.

Not a bad, gig though.  Sounded fine (Kip on sound), help loading gear in and out, and one set.  Pretty good for a Wednesday.

We're headed out to the midwest this weekend.  See us in Chicago Friday night, Indianapolis Saturday night, and Louisville Sunday night!

2014 Revival

The 2014 Yacht Rock Revival was this past Saturday at Park Tavern on the edge of Piedmont Park.  If you weren't there, you missed the best one yet!  The weather was terrible earlier in the day, but cleared off enough to make it a very special evening.

This one was by far the easiest one for me.  Three contributing factors:  1.  We don't add much new material these days, so the band songs (without the original artists) were the same stuff we've been doing for a long time;  2.  we've played with most of the original artists before and most of their songs we repeats;  3.  the new songs that were added had no saxophone and almost no keyboard.

Pablo Cruise opened for us with a seventy-five minute set.  Good stuff and great playing, with plenty of chopsy stuff in between their big hits!   Pretty cool guys, too, though  I wonder if there was some sort of contest among the four of them to see how many times they could insert the word "fuckin'" into their banter between songs.  They said it so many times that they began to sound like little kids learning to cuss.

Our set was excellent.  Fun all the way through, and no disasters.  We even had fireworks during Maneater and Africa, courtesy of a party elsewhere in the park.  Everything ended right on the dot at 11 PM.  Perfection!

Congratulations to Nick, Pete, Kristen, Kip, Nackers, Rebecca, and the whole Pleaserock crew for another awesome event!  Also, thanks our outstanding guests Pablo Cruise, Walter Egan, Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss of Player, Robbie Dupree, Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special, and Gary Wright for performing with us!

with Walter Egan

with Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss

with Jeff Carlisi

Walter Egan watching from the wings

Videos:

















"GET A ROOM!"

My Sunday night church gig, by comparison, was not this exciting or entertaining.  Also, there were no fireworks.  Such is life.

Rehearsal

All of the special guests are in town for the big Yacht Rock Revival, and yesterday was our best opportunity to get together and play through everybody's songs.

First up was Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special:

Nice to see Monkeyboy's Les Paul, which doesn't make it out to very many gigs.

After Jeff, we had a visit from Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss of Player:

We've finally nailed down the arrangement of This Time I'm in it for Love.

After lunch (Antico pizza!!!), we got together with Walter Egan to check his songs:

Gary Wright arrived later in the afternoon, so we rehearsed his songs in the evening.  Bencuya got louder and louder throughout the day, and by the time we hit Gary's last song, I couldn't hear anything else.

It's going to be a great show!

Thursday

Yacht Rock played a run of the mill corporate event at Buckhead Theatre yesterday afternoon.  A couple of nice things about this one:

1.  Kip and Zach ran sound

2.  Another chance to rehearse some of the songs for this weekend's big Revival

3.  This was a two hour gig that ended at 6:30

The crowd was ambivalent (to say the least).  Someone came forward as we were beginning the second set and suggested that we were boring and that if we wanted to liven up the gig we should have a contest and the winner could come on stage and play tambourine with us.  Mark Dannells did not take kindly to that.

That said, they were very enthusiastic about having their pictures taken with us afterwards.

CBS

Yacht Rock was on local TV Tuesday morning, doing some press for the big Revival this weekend in Piedmont Park.  With us was Robbie Dupree, and we sang one of his songs titled All Night Long, a doo-wop memory of his Brooklyn youth.

CBS46 News

After that, it was off to rehearsal.  We're in pretty good shape. I don't have a lot to do on some of these.

See you Saturday!

Bumpin' the Mango

Ahh...a moment for which I'd been waiting quite some time--an opportunity to sub with Bumpin' the Mango, a horn band based in Atlanta.  Their covers of Tower of Power, in particular, sound so good that when I was asked to come play bari sax with them Monday night, it was easy to say yes.

There's more to it than Tower of Power, but that's kind of what I fixated on.  I saw ToP in the early 90s (my sax teacher took me) and then I saw them at the start of this year at The Canyon Club in California.  Both times--totally awesome.  The sound of those horns is in my DNA.  I think I did a good job of approximating Doc Kupka on this evening (except for the hat)!

This gig had many subs--more than regular band members!--but everybody came prepared.  Subbing along with me were Dan Baraszu (guitar), Jason Chapman (bass), Justin Powell (trumpet), Travis Cottle (trombone), and Umcolisi Terrell (tenor sax).

I shouldn't have been surprised at how well Dan played, though I'd never thought of him as being a funk or rock guy.  His rhythm has always been impeccable and his angular solos fit right in while still sounding just like Dan.  It got me thinking that I first time I ever met Dan was in the very same room (Cafe 290) in probably 1997.  He's just as impressive today as he was then.

Umcolisi stood next to me in the section.  His solos blew me away--I was stunned at his sound, his phrasing, his ideas, his technique.  Incredible!  I'd never heard him play before.  Wow!  Without a doubt, one of the best tenor players in Atlanta.  Thank god I didn't have any bari solos.  I would've looked really bad playing anything after him.  What a fantastic talent.

The other guy I really dug on this gig was Tony Giordano, who played organ and sang.  Terrific soul and excitement.  He was there for every note all night.

Thanks to Paul Garrett for having me out.  Beautiful charts in the book.  I'd love to do it again!

Beatles

Please Pleaserock Me (the Yacht Rock guys playing the Beatles) did a two night stand at Smith's Olde Bar this past Friday and Saturday, mowing down four sets of music for two very good crowds.

Smith's got a new menu and better food--yay!  On the flip side, the bathroom upstairs is still disgusting.  No soap at the sink either night, and no towels in the towel dispenser Saturday night.  How do all the employees wash their hands before returning to work?

Friday:  

A very easy night for me.  My only disaster of the evening was the little two measure sax solo at the end of Jet.  I couldn't see what I'd written on my chart.  Well, maybe that and Hide Your Love Away.  When the set list was emailed out, I misread it thinking that we'd played that song before, and since I didn't have a chart for it, I didn't even bother listening to it.  Turns out it WAS a new tune with a flute part at the end.  Oops.  Bencuya played the flute part on organ.  I played tambourine on two and four.

One of the best things about this gig is listening to Bencuya play like Billy Preston.  Totally awesome.

Paul Poovey reading down the tambourine part for Happiness is a Warm Gun

Saturday:

An even better crowd and even more fun!

Once again, a pretty easy evening.  We must've had more people in there this night because the air conditioner could not keep up.  Smith's brought in some electric fans to try and circulate the air during the second set.

Smith's was even cool enough to provide a couple of guys at the end of the night to carry gear down the stairs for us.  I didn't have anything for them to move, but the help with the bass cabinet, guitar cabinets, drums, and keyboards was very nice.

Big week coming up!  The Yacht Rock Revival is in Piedmont Park this weekend.