Duo Duos

The Dave and Dave Duo was scheduled to play brunch and evening performances at Venkman's this past Sunday, but Ellington realized after I'd already confirmed the date that he would be out of town.  No big deal.

Matt Kaminski covered the brunch gig.  Dave and I have been playing this batch of tunes for a couple of years now, so it was pretty cool to hear another organist's approach to tunes with which I was very familiar.  Pretty cool--Matt's got his own thing, his own vocabulary, sounds, and approach.  I dug it!  Sometimes I wanted to stop playing and just watch to see how he was doing things I'd never heard before.

photo cred:  Matt

I recorded both sets.  You can check them out here:




In between brunch and the evening, there was just enough time to kill that I considered going home.  To do what?  I guess I could've gone and sat on the couch for an hour, but I stayed and broke in some new reeds and got ready for my next partner.  This may or may not have been my best move--my embouchure was pretty tired by the time we stepped on stage.

Matt had a evening gig with his group at Churchill Grounds (and I don't know of another jazz organist in Atlanta), so I reached out to my old friend Tyrone Jackson to come and play.  He doesn't own an organ (yet!), but he brought his 88 key custom Fender rhodes out.  Sweet.  It sounds as good as it looks.

I joked with him that this is his "beater" rhodes because he has a restored 73 suitcase at his house as well!

Tyrone is an incredible player, and it took all the brain power and ears I could muster just to keep up with him.  I chose songs that we'd played quite a bit when we used to do a lot of trio gigs--some of mine, some that I thought would work well as duets.

It was also wonderful to catch up with an old friend with whom I've been sharing the stage off and on for probably fifteen years.  I hope we can do it again soon!

Here's the two sets we played:

Makin' Bacon

Ahh--the bacon gig!  Yacht Rock has a standing yearly gig over by Druid Hills Country Club in Atlanta, and this was probably our sixth year in a row doing it.  In the early years, the gig was in early December (same night as the SEC Championship), but it comes earlier on the calendar these days--good for me, because we were so cold in the tent that first year, my EWI froze up and stopped working.

best costume prizes

The highlight of this gig (other than the outstanding costumes and the extremely cool hosts) is the candied bacon.  My bacon consumption was at an all time low this year (4 pieces!), probably down because of my guilt about how much Halloween candy I've eaten.  Greg thought that maybe the bacon wasn't as good this year.  I say "Who Cares!  It's bacon!  Eat it!"  He may have been joking.  Hard to tell from this picture.

Anyway, the gig was cool.  I do like an easy night of work.

Our illustrious sound crew of Zach and Kip.  Not sure what's happening in this picture.  Kip is either snorting a daisy or offering it up to a console.  Whatever it takes to make the gig sound great.

The Noog

Chattanooga, of course!  Yacht Rock played our first club gig (our only other appearance being at the Riverbend Festival earlier in the year) at the Revelry Room, and sold it out!  Looks like we might be making it up to Tennessee a little more often.

Things didn't begin well, however.  The Revelry Room has only been open for four weeks, and by the looks of it, they're still trying to sort things out.  For example, we loaded in off a muddy street (with no ramp option so everything had to be carried up some stairs).  The stage was dirty, covered in glitter and dust.  A few of the guys found a broom and a shop vac and cleaned that up before we started setting up.  Not very rock and roll.

 The green room stuff on our rider also took a while to materialize, and when it did, the bananas we just a little too green.  In five or six days when these are ready, I'll be happy.  I'm guessing that whomever did the shopping for our requests isn't the fruit pro that I am.  Frickin' green bananas!  What the hell?  Maybe we should submit a paint chip with the correct color of yellow.

The room itself was very live--a medium sized concrete floor box.  Soundcheck sounded ok;  we knew it would change a lot when the people showed up.

Greg, Bencuya, Monkeyboy, and I ate at a place called Blue Orleans around the corner from the club. Excellent, excellent, excellent New Orleans food.  Also, the hostess was cute.

The gig...was pretty fantastic!  Five hundred people is more than I thought we'd see on a rainy night, but it was packed, and the crowd had great energy.  Super fun!  I met a couple of cool people who'd seen us at different places around the southeast.  The word is out.

I hope we play Chattanooga again, maybe at the sister club to this place, Track 29?  That looks like a much better room (just checking out photos on the internet).  Also, I want to eat at Blue Orleans again as soon as possible.

Trio

David Ellington, Kevin Smith, and I played a trio gig last night at the World Congress Center.  Weren't we just here a couple of weeks ago?

Some funny stuff (to me):

1.  The gig was for Roland, but Dave brought his Nord and a QSC powered speaker.

2.  The Roland people checked Dave's keyboard out to see if it was made by them, which is funny because a bright red Nord keyboard is one of the most easily identifiable instruments out there.  We guessed that maybe these people weren't from the music division.

3.  I was asked to bring a PA.  We got in the room, which was small enough that we probably didn't need a PA, only to find a production team of three in the back of the room and their PA (with small line arrays and a sub on either side of the stage) fanned out to cover the room.  I wonder why we wouldn't have just plugged into their system?

4.  We were given thirty minutes to set up while they flipped the room, but the client opened the doors twenty-five minutes early.  We started fifteen minutes earlier than the contract and played two hours straight (ugh).  At the end of our two hour contract, I went back and let the production guys know to kick on their music.  As I returned to the stage, the client said that we were supposed to play another fifteen minutes.  When I let her know that we'd started fifteen minutes early, she had no idea (but was cool with it, and turned out to be very appreciative of the music).

5.  We were set up on one wing of a wide stage, and one of the Roland dudes climbed onto the back of the stage and pushed me out of the way so that he could photobomb an official photo in front of center stage.  He thought he was really funny.

So...after all that...nice gig!   We played well, though I messed up a few times.

Thrillered

Yacht Rock finished our two night stand at Venkman's with an encore performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller.  Third time's the charm?  I think the few things that we might have sacrificed in terms of accuracy (I'm pretty sure I reverted back to older background vocal parts in a few spots) were made up by the relaxed feel of the set.  We may have been more precise at the Variety Playhouse show, but we had more fun at this one.

The second set was comprised of 80s tunes from our set list.  No big surprises.

For I Wish, Pete comes to my position and plays my keyboard, and I go up to his spot and play EWI.  As I moved up front, I checked my EWI and it worked fine.  However, once the song started, I had no sound in my in ears!  I went back to check my laptop, which registered that it was getting MIDI signal, but there was nothing in my ears, so after fiddling with it for a little bit, I switched to saxophone and finished out the song.

Upon returning to my keyboards for I Can't Go for That, I found that I also had no sound from my keyboards.  During the first verse, they finally came back on.  I guessed (and our monitor guy, Zach, confirmed) that Zach had muted my keyboard line when I came out front--something he does on Silly Love Songs when Nick is playing piano at my position--and forgotten that the EWI signal was coming down the same line.  Which means that my attempt to troubleshoot the EWI was coming through loud and clear to everybody else, including the audience.  Oops!  I think it might be better if I played sax on that one from now on.

Original Recipe

Yacht Rock celebrated our eighth year of existence by recreating our original set list.  Some of these we haven't played in eight years.  Preparing for this was a pretty hard grind--there were only a few that needed my attention, but at this point in the year, I'm so fried on trying to learn anything new that I am easily frustrated.

It'd be great if we kept all of these new old ones, not only because of the work it took to learn them, but also because they sound waaaaaaaaaay better than they did eight years ago.

Noteworthy:

Things We Do for Love is a new old one.  Difficult vocal harmonies, easy keyboard part.  Forgot multiple times to clap during the "Like walking in the rain" part.

Lonely Boy.  I wanted to sing this one.  Nick sang it instead.  He crashed and burned at the last verse.

Magic (Pilot).  Easy vocal part (for me), tricky keyboard part.

Heart Hotels.  I love the way this song builds and grooves, and it's got an EWI solo (Tom Scott on a Lyricon on the original, and-at least once live-Fogelberg activated some Michael Brecker!)



Damn.  That's some good shit (the solos).  We were trying to get on a Fogelberg tribute album a few years ago so we performed it with saxophone--closer to this version.  It's fun either way.

This is It.  Challenging vocally and instrumentally.  I like it, though, and if we could ever convince Kenny Loggins to hang out with us, I'd rather play this than the firkin' Danger Zone.

Sundown.  An easy one for me (tambourine), and a chance for Mark Cobb to come out front.  Nick on drums.

Kiss You All Over was played often during the first year of the band.  This song got a shout out on our Facebook page, but that probably won't be enough to keep it in the setlist.

Love is Alive.  Must be really hard to sing because we play the shit out of it and it always seems to go over well, but it never stays in the set list rotation.

We even brought back the wigs for this gig.  I remember now how hot and scratchy they are.

In other news, I replaced my purple sax effects pedal (the Digitech Vocal 300) with a Line 6 M9.  First gig with it sounded good!  It'll probably take several more gigs to dial it in, but I'm about 80% there just from playing with it at home.

Plus, it's got a looper...you know, a caddie, a looper...a jock...

More Weirdness and a Wedding in the Woods

I failed to mention the biggest weirdness of Friday night's gig downtown:  I got home, pulled my truck into the garage, and as I walked around the back to go in the house, I noticed a cell phone.  Umm...now what?

A couple of thoughts:

1.  I tried responding to a recent text (I can swipe the message notification and reply without unlocking my phone), but that was not an option.  Same with returning a missed call.  The phone wouldn't let me do it.

2.  I noticed that this was a Verizon phone, so I wondered if I could turn it in to a Verizon store and let them track down the owner.

I mulled the whole phone thing over for a while, and then the "FIND MY IPHONE" alert went off.  I wanted to answer that one, too, to say, "I'm here!  Come get it!  I don't want your phone!" but that is also not an option.

Finally, the owner called and wanted to know who I was and how I got her phone, and of course, how she could get it back.  I told her I was in Marietta, and she said, "Me too!"

"Great, I'll come meet you somewhere.  Where are you?"

"Midtown.  Where are you?"

"Marietta.  I'll be in midtown in the morning, and I can meet you and give you your phone."

"I'm at the Ramada Inn by the Tabernacle."

"Got it."

So, Saturday morning, I drove down to the Tabernacle and did a search for the nearest Ramada Inn, which happens to be on Armour Drive (up by Smith's Olde Bar, which is not near the Tabernacle or near where my truck was parked last night).  The girl had given me her passcode, so I tried calling the number she'd called me on the night before.  No answer.  I drove around the block and tried calling again.  No answer.

Since I was not in the mood to deal with this anymore, I went to the Holiday Inn (which is a couple of blocks from the Tabernacle).  I texted the number "The missing phone is at the front desk of the Holiday Inn on Andrew Young International Blvd," hit send, and handed it over to the front desk.  The end.

From there, I drove to meet the van and trailer, and we headed to North Carolina for a wedding reception.  I slept most of the way.  The reception was at a golf course/group of cabins in the woods.  We were in a tent by the driving range.

After set up, we had a few hours to kill, which we did watching college football and farting profusely.  The meals we were provided were really bad.

We had to learn Queen's You're My Best Friend as a first dance--just ninety seconds of it.  The background vocals are very involved, and we did a pretty half-assed job with them.  Fortunately, the happy couple didn't seem to notice.  Everything else was pretty much our standard set list.  No big deal on anything.

The gig ended at 10 PM, and we were packed and headed to the hotel at 11.  Zach (one of our sound engineers) was driving, and he volunteered to take us home instead, to which we readily agreed.  I'd much rather do that than get up at 7:30 AM and book it back to Atlanta.  Anyway, I slept the whole way, which I guess I would have done even if we'd spent the night.  Woke up in midtown at 2:30 AM, wondering if that girl ever found her phone.