Birmingham

Yacht Rock travelled to Birmingham, Alabama for the first time to play a show at Saturn, a really nice room in a gentrified neighborhood on the east side of town.

This is a great place to play!  Easy load in, big stage, good size room.

To add to the great performance space, there is a large apartment upstairs that serves as the green room, complete with pool table, kitchen, two and a half baths, couches, a record player, and lots of beds.  For a hundred bucks, the band can spend the night there.  Wow!

I remember this thing from my childhood, but I don't remember what it did.  Now it's a lamp.

We ate around the corner at a restaurant called Wasabi Juan, which was (as you might guess) a sushi and Mexican restaurant.  Total stoner food.  I had some kind of Thai-spring roll-burrito thing, with a chips and salsa as a side.  It was different, but good.

The was an entertaining gig.  My only really bad moment was on (ironically) Couldn't Get it Right, where I had a major brain fart and couldn't recall what I was supposed to play during the verse.  Everything else was pretty solid.

We spent the night upstairs, which was really convenient--Kip decided that it would be best to leave the gear in the building instead of loading it into the trailer, so no load out and no driving after the show.

The bed I chose, was unfortunately dirty--when I pulled the sheet back to climb in, there was...uh...plenty of someone else's body hair on the sheets.  Hmm...not sure how worked up I should be about that.  I decided it was too late to go searching for a different place, so I slept on top of the sheet, under the blanket and a sleeping bag.

We woke up early on Sunday morning with the intention of fueling up at the coffee shop downstairs before our return to Atlanta, but it didn't open until 10  AM.  What?  What kind of coffee shop isn't open Sunday morning?  Where's the brunch crowd?  Ugh.  We had to drive a few miles to find caffeine.  Not cool.  Plus, I left the green room bananas on the counter, so we had none to eat on the way home.  Booooo.

Dud

A dud of a gig last night for a bunch of doctors.  A couple of sets of us playing while they stood around in the back of the room and talked.

nobody on the dance floor for "Power of Love"

Highlights:

1.  Easy load in

2.  Monkeyboy's new amp logo (designed by Kip)

3.  Easy load out

Georgia Music Day

Yacht Rock was recruited to close out the ceremonies at Georgia Music Day at the state capital building Wednesday.  I really don't know exactly what the specifics of the day were--as usual, I showed up and did what I was told.

photo cred:  Peter Olson

We played Brandy acoustically (acoustic guitars, bas, shaker, saxophone, and a single keyboard), most of us planted in a line on wooden stools.  As we launched into the song, I noticed that everyone except Nick had a microphone.  He strode directly to the podium and performed the entire song like he was delivering a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was amazing.  In a room full of big time music people, Nick laid claim to being the baddest motherfucker in the room.

500 Songs

Yacht Rock ended the weekend with a nice afternoon gig at Park Tavern, part of a food and music festival for 500 Songs for Kids.  It was a really comfortable show, playing for a crowd sprinkled with friends and familiar faces.  On top of that, there were twenty-something restaurants present, and I did my best to eat all the tacos and gumbo available.

It was really weird to load out of the Park Tavern when the sun was still up, though.

Duo at Oglethorpe

David Ellington and I played an afternoon duo gig at Oglethorpe University Saturday afternoon.  I'm not sure what the occasion was.  We were background music for some type of reception in the student center (which is beautiful, by the way).

Special thanks to the student who, with a mouth full of food, leaned across the organ to tell Ellington we needed to stop at 4:30 so her boss could do something.  He spent the break wiping that off.

Also thank you to Mr. Enthusiasm, whose dragging claps on two and four almost brought one tune to a halt.  Later on when he yelled for Mr. Magic from across the room, I knew we were in trouble, and soon after that when he sat down in front of us a sang Oye Como Va at full volume while I was soloing, I almost screamed.  I bet your teenage son was really proud of you.

Anyway...most of this is really good.  Check it out.

Madness in Athens

Yacht Rock was back in Athens Friday night, this time for a private party at a country club.  We were there plenty early to set everything up, soundcheck, and eat (we headed out to an excellent Mexican restaurant).  By the time we returned, the audience was pretty drunk and disorderly--lots of really bitchy demands for the hand percussion, people falling onto the stage, people trying to get on stage, one girl swinging a guitar cable like a jump rope while the guitar was being played, and a woman who repeatedly slapped Pete in the leg with a party favor while he was trying to play.  When we're the sane ones who are scolding people over their behavior, that's saying something!  

There's a special sort of attitude that comes around when alcohol meets affluence, the kind of thing that makes you wonder how they'd like it if we came to their jobs during the week, sat on their desks, spilled a beer, yelled at them when they were on the phone, and insisted on using their computer to look at porn.  It's all in good fun until it's no longer fun.

Anyway, all's well that ends well;  ninety-eight percent of those people were harmless.  We finished up at 1 AM (a rare three set night!), packed the trailer, and headed back to Atlanta.  Home at 4:05 AM.

More Keyboard Stand Crap

The keyboard stand thing continues to frustrate Mark Bencuya and me.  In Houston last week, my eyebolt solution took a hit when one of the bolts failed--the threads had once again flattened out in one spot, and thus would not tighten properly.  We swapped it for a fresh eyebolt and played the gig.

However, I'm still wondering: why?  I brought Bencuya's stand home, retapped the threads in the stand, cleaned up the threads on the eyebolts, and reinstalled everything.  I could already see, though, that the threads were beginning to flatten out in one spot just from one gig, so it is only a matter of time before it needs more repair.

In checking my own keyboard stand, my eyebolts began to hop off the threads right then.  It made me wonder:  if the threads in the stand are good and the threads on the bolt are good (and their sizes match), what is causing the bolt to deform when they are tightened?

I now believe that the root of the problem is a strong spring that fits in the joint of the keyboard stand.  When the bolt is tightened, the spring is putting too much force on the threads, causing them to flatten and eventually fail.

No springs for me, and even after tightening and loosing these bolts several times, the threads still look good.  Maybe this is the solution?  I'm less sure of this than ever.