A Casual Gig in Alpharetta

No Yacht Rock gigs this past weekend, but Mark Bencuya put together a gig for most of us at a friend's house--a birthday party and graduation party rolled into one.

Greg organized the tunes, and all of his picks looked great until we each realized we'd be learning somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty songs for the gig.  Ouch!  I'm guessing that Greg probably knew a lot of them, though, and Bencuya probably knew most of them.  Monkeyboy, Cobb, and I had a lot of charts to write!

I supplied the PA, so I got there kind of early.

Soundcheck:

It turned out to be a very casual evening, and we played very well considering that there was no rehearsal or communication about any of the songs (except for a little bit of "Which keyboard part do you want?").  We laughed a lot.  It was fun.

This was a party with local musicians in attendance, so several people sat in.  Heaven Davis sang a few with us (including the evening's finale, where we played a Pat Metheny-ish version of The Star Spangled Banner while fireworks were shot off in the cul-de-sac.

I always get a kick out of seeing Heaven Davis because even though I played on her album Steamy, she has absolutely NO IDEA who I am.  I even played her CD release party at 800 East, where I was first introduced to Mark Cobb by Clay Cook.

So...we finished shortly after 10 PM;  I was on the road by 11 PM.  Not a bad night!

We're doing it again (different backyard) next Friday, so stay tuned.

Searcy, Indy Jones, and Greg Lee

I played at Eddie's Attic last night on a few tunes with Greg Lee.

The opener was Peter Searcy (with Greg Lee).  Pretty cool, as Greg has told many, many Searcy stories, and I'd never heard him.  He and Greg have a great vocal blend, and Searcy's stuff has a lot of passion to it.

Next up was Indianapolis Jones, Nick and Mark Cobb's original project with Tim Smith (of Noel Gallagher's Highflying Birds) and Jason Nackers.  Outstanding!  Probably the best band in Atlanta right now, playing some of the best songs of this century.  They never fail to impress.

The Greg Lee Show rounded out the evening.  An excellent performance by everybody on stage (mostly Yacht Rock, plus Ben Holst on bass), though I really sucked bad on the piano part to Bencuya's Cartoon Butterfly, and played a gruesome wrong note in the first chorus of One Kind of Love.  I want to jump off a bridge;  then again, that's how I feel about pretty much everything right now.

Purple People

Saturday night was the annual Purple Rain show at the Legacy Fountain in Piedmont Park.  This year we added two partners in crime (from the Vegas Home Depot gig earlier this year):  Keisha Jackson and Slick Barnes.  They nailed it!  Their backing vocals added a lot to our efforts.

I think this was one of our best Purple Rain performances.  I felt really solid on everything (except for the beginning of Baby I'm a Star, where I'd managed to accidentally shift the keyboard up and octave and turn on the tremolo--I played half the verse staring at my keyboard---"What the hell is happening?").  Our only trouble was at the end of Baby I'm a Star.  I finished on time, but there were a couple of random notes sprinkled in among the rest of my bandmates!

The second set was all yacht rock stuff.  Really mediocre saxophone solos on this gig.  Booooo.

Other big news on this gig...in ear monitors!  I used my new IEMs for the first time on this gig (Mark Cobb used his as well).  They're really nice and comfortable and sound fantastic!  I think, though, that I need to start from scratch on my mix--Zach (our monitor guy) gave me a mix as a starting place, but I tweaked it until everything sounded weird (the vocals were nothing but reverb), and my keyboards hit the limiter repeatedly (the limiter keeps the volume from spiking and blowing my eardrums, but if your instrument keeps hitting it, you have no dynamics).  I remember now from my previous experience of using in ears that I should set my stuff up so it can be plenty loud without maxing out, and then build the other instruments around it.  It's going to take some time, but I'm really looking forward to it.  I can already see that once we get the mixes dialed in, it will be hard to play without them.

One other thing...boxed water!  Someone brought us a box of boxed water, under the guise of a birthday present for Pete.  Sneaky.

Much less plastic.  I can dig that.

Hall of Architects

Yacht Rock played a Friday night gig at the College Football Hall of Fame downtown for a bunch of architects.  Nice place!

The crowd wasn't that into us in the first set, but the second set was a different story.  Alcohol, perhaps?  Whatever it was, it made for a pretty good gig.  The only highlight I can think of was Nick's super long harmonica solo on Heart of Rock and Roll.  Excellent.

Zoom Zoom

David Ellington and I played another event for Porsche last night--a repeat of Monday night's drinks and dinner gig.  Different crowd, same basic result, though we got several compliments and a few guys checking us out, so maybe they were listening after all.  This one ended about twenty minutes early, which felt about right.  Nice little gig!

Public Diahhrea

So...I did my first House Live gig in a long time.  In case you, loyal reader, don't remember, that's where there's a DJ playing "house" music, and a percussionist and yours truly play over the top of it.  We used to do a lot of this variety of gigs, and then the popularity faded and I got busy with other stuff.  It's a nice paycheck, but musically, it's bullshit.  I spend my time practicing over deep four on the floor beats, and watching the clock.

Wayne Viar was the percussionist on this gig (equally bored with the concept).  I worked on playing rhythm changes on alto, jazz articulation (lightly tonguing the offbeats) on flute, and generally trying to play fast lines on both instruments.  I also photobombed a couple of shots, but if you're going to pose in front of the band like you're at the zoo, I'm gonna be the animal.

Later in the evening, I think I recognized a local musician (well...jazz vocalist), and it made me regret everything I'd played for the previous ninety minutes.  I tried to a few Charlie Parker tunes and stay in the same key as the DJ.

The best part of the night was watching the aerialists dangle high above the marble floor.  I bet the bartenders were really excited about the possibility of being killed by a falling body.  How do they do that?

There Is No Substitute

How has this not been Porsche's entire advertising campaign for the last ten years?  I can't believe that this nugget of 80s nostalgia hasn't been mined.



David Ellington and I brought our duo to the Porsche headquarters down by the airport.  It's a beautiful place;  it looks (not surprisingly) like a modern European office building dropped on the southside of Atlanta.  We played a dinner/reception for a bunch of high end customers.  They talked a lot.  They listened not at all.  We were strictly background noise.  Easy gig, though.  Dave and I were both pretty fried from stuff earlier in the day--he from recording and me from a rehearsal.