Dave and Dave

David Ellington and I played a duo gig at JCT Kitchen on the west side of Atlanta tonight.  I think we've done about six or seven of these sax/organ gigs now.

Good gig, though it was really hot for a while.  We were in the shade behind the fake silo, and then I was in the sun and Dave was in the shade (and my horn got really sharp).  Finally, the sun slipped behind the lofts across the parking lot, and then we were in the dark.

Check out our sounds:



JCT gig number four.  Next time I intend to order something other than the cheeseburger.

Wednesday

Yacht Rock played a run of the mill corporate party last night.  The optimistic plan was that after the dinner and awards, everybody would stick around to party and dance the Wednesday night away.  Worst case scenario, the awards end and everybody leaves the room.  For the most part, that's what we got.  It didn't help that the bar station was out in the pre function area.  We played to around twenty-five people (fifteen of which were seated around two tables in the back of the room).  Our handler was super cool about everything, though.

Other random things...I packed my stage clothes except for shirts, so halfway to the gig I had to turn around and go home;  I was forty-five minutes late to load in, but still set up in time for soundcheck...the load in at the Intercon in Buckhead is terrible...we did the ice bucket challenge, and it got me, though my hat took the brunt of it (you can watch it here:  https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10154573597075096)...Ganesh subbed for Cobb on drums...I made the twitter feed!

Bump City

Monday night, I had another opportunity to sub on bari sax with Bumpin' the Mango at Cafe 290.  In case you don't know, BtM is a funk/soul band in the style of Tower of Power--five horns, rhythm section, and a vocalist.  It's awesome fun!  I love the music and the band.  Rarely do I get to hang out with a bunch of other horn players these days.

It was a great night!  I got to stand next to John Sandfort all night--one of my favorite sax players in town.  Fantastic stuff.

Can't wait to do this one again!

Park Tavern

Yacht Rock was back at the Park Tavern a month after our triumphant Revival (July 19).   Pretty huge crowd!  Presales were just about a thousand people, so I think we came close to the maximum.  They were really into it, too, which made for a really fun show.  I was kind of lukewarm about playing this gig, but the energy from everybody made it pretty exciting.

 It was really hot, particularly for the first set.  Even with my fan, I was soaked by the time we took a break;  so sweaty that it made playing flute on Lowdown especially difficult, as a I couldn't keep the flute in one spot on my face.  The second set was better.  Maybe the heat of the day had finally dissipated enough.

My performance was mixed.  I played well in the first set until the end, when a few weird notes began to creep into some chords on Go Your Own Way.  Basically I kept hitting E instead of F, which made my Bb triad a #4 and my F major triads major 7th chords, neither of which is accurate or appropriate for Fleetwood Mac.  All apologies to Lindsay...

In the second set, I was doing just fine until Lido.  In the the synth stacking buildup thing before the last chorus, the voicings keep inverting.  One hand failed to invert on the third time;  when I tried to address this situation, the other hand fell apart.  Not impressive.  It sounded like I was playing with mittens on.  Some of this flailing carried over into Rosanna, which also had a few ragged moments.  Fortunately, the gig ended with that.

Oh yeah, one more thing.  Either everybody's vocals were really pitchy, or it was me.  I'm pretty sure it was me. I think I sang like shit all night long.  Like crazy all-over-the-place, quarter-tones-all-night.  Sucked real bad.

After setting everything up and running sound all night, Kip was still cool enough to help load out (he helped me load in, too), which got me out of there in good time.  Thank you!

I heard the Atlantic All Stars version of Pick Up the Pieces with the terrific Michael Brecker solo on the way home.  It reminded me of all the things I don't do on solos--take your time, play clear ideas, don't overflow.  On Biggest Part of Me, I think I made it through about eight measures before everything went to hell.

Enjoy.  It's worth a couple of listens.  The arrangement is super duper too.




Gigs this week!

Monday:  subbing on bari sax with Bumpin' the Mango (Tower of Power style horn band) at Cafe 290,  8:30 PM.

Wednesday:  private gig with Yacht Rock.

Thursday:  the Dave and Dave Organ Duo (with David Ellington) at JCT Kitchen, 6-9 PM.

Saturday:  Georgia Theatre in Athens with Yacht Rock, 9 PM.

Sunday:  Pre Race Party at Atlanta Motor Speedway with Yacht Rock, 5:30 PM.

Weekend Roundup

Uhhhh...Saturday evening, Yacht Rock played a wedding at the History Center.  I would rank this among my least favorite load ins--you either run everything up through the door off the courtyard (into the elevator), or you compete with the catering truck to get stuff through the loading dock.  Either way is a drag, with a cranky elevator in either situation.  I forget about it because we don't play here very often.  It's a beautiful room, but getting up there is a pain.

We got upstairs only to find out that the stage was the incorrect size (I believe 16x16 instead of 16x24), so we were a bit snug, but it didn't really matter.  We were able to get everything on stage in our usual configuration.

The gig was pretty good.  The bride and groom are big fans, and so everybody knew what they were getting into--captain's hats were distributed and away we went.  A lovely crowd, hats or no hats.

The first dance shredded my throat--Sam Cooke's You Send Me.  The backing vocals are really high (up to a screechy E!), at the top edge of my falsetto.  I made it through, but I couldn't have done it again.

Sunday...I haven't been writing about my church gig recently, though I'm still playing it.  There hasn't been anything to say.  This Sunday I was asked to sub at the mass before my usual one, which was a nice change of pace--reading charts and playing with different people.  I wouldn't mind doing this one again.  Strictly flute on this one.

My regular mass was...regular.  On the first tune, the microphone inside the piano got loose and landed on the strings--an interesting noise, I guess.  Other than that, it was business as usual.  I played flute and soprano sax on this one.  Evidently I did something cool on soprano during one of the communion songs, but I have no recollection.

In other news, here are video playlists from from two gigs this month.  First up is my duo with David Ellington at The Optimist.



The other is a trio gig with Dave and Henry Conerway III on drums that we played this past Wednesday.  Check 'em out!



One more thing!  Yacht Rock is back at the Park Tavern this Friday evening.  Come see what we're up to!

Beatles OTP

The Yacht Rock guys (plus Paul Poovey on trumpet) brought our Beatles tribute out to 37 Main in Johns Creek last night--our first time at this venue and one of the only times we've ever played the Fab Four beyond Smith's Olde Bar.

Pretty good show overall.  The whole room felt acoustically controlled--the PA was loud, but there weren't a lot of reflective surfaces to bounce sound.  It felt like we were playing pretty hard, but the stage sound never got very loud.  It was fine with me--I could everything on stage without it getting washy.

This is a new 37 Main (the other is on Main Street in Duluth).  Nice place!  Good size room, good food/hospitality, good staff, easy load in.  I'll take it!  The only weirdness I can think of is the air conditioning vent that was directly above the horn section, causing some tuning anomalies and a constant fight to keep our charts on the music stand.  The other peculiarity was that the hazer (for the lights) was inside the drum riser, and the haze came out of a hole right in front of me.  Occasionally I would disappear in a cloud of smoke.  Magic!

Lots of cool lights on the back wall.

Trio

Henry Conerway III, David Ellington, and I played a superb gig last night.  I brought a PA, but we didn't turn it on until the gig was over (I played music off my phone while we packed up).  We thought it would be a polite gig (dessert music), but the eight hundred people standing in front of us were loud, and they didn't care how hard we played, so we went for it.

Check out the tunes!  This gig was only an hour long (seven songs).  Not too shabby for a Wednesday night!