Mojo Dojo

Wednesday night was another installment of Scott Glazer's Mojo Dojo at Blind Willie's.  Scott's put together music (mostly blues, 60s soul, and some other offbeat stuff) for two horns and rhythm section.  David Ellington has been the keyboardist as of late, joined by Nick Johnson on guitar.  The drummer's chair seems to rotate between several players, and the horns (trumpet and tenor sax) are usually Mace Hibbard and either Melvin Jones or Russell Gunn.  This month, however, Justin Powell and I were the horns, and Jon Chalden on drums.

It's a fun gig and a great hang!  Tyrone Jackson sat in on organ for a few songs in each set and blew us away.  Actually, pretty much everybody blew me away--I lost the onstage battle of volume and chops.  They go hand in hand for me--if I have to begin my solo at 85% intensity because of the onstage volume, it severely narrows my range of musical ideas.  Still, it was fun to be on stage with all of these guys, doing something completely different.  I'd love to have another shot at it!

One More

One more little private party for the weekend...Yacht Rock played an afternoon birthday party (I think--it may have been some other kind of party) at a restaurant in Buckhead.  If you were around Atlanta ten or fifteen years ago, there used to be a cluster of bars right in this area, but developers bought all of the property and made it a high end, Rodeo Drive sort of thing.  Ferraris and Aston Martins were parked outside.

Anyway, this one was a major throw and go.  We had all of our gear piled up at the back door, and on Kip's signal, we rushed in and set up.  I don't even remember if we sound checked.  Kip used one speaker as the PA.

We had Ganesh filling on drums today.  Excellent job.  Also, Zach was off doing something else all weekend, so we had Alan Smith assisting Kip with the audio for this handful of gigs.  Also excellent.

The party turned out to be thankfully very painless, a two hour gig with probably twenty-five minutes of speeches in the middle.  The crowd was not especially impressed with the fact that we were there (most of them were around the corner at the bar), but we did attract a few dancers (and, of course, some lady who requested Brown Eyed Girl, which almost ruined Mark Dannells' afternoon).  It was a perfectly low key event, and Monkeyboy punctuated it by sitting down for a song.

We finished at 6 PM, when the party had to turn the space back over to the restaurant.  We frantically pushed all of our gear out the back door and boogied out of there.  I kind of liked heading for home while the sun was still up.

It would have been a relaxing evening, but our annual Purple Rain show is this coming weekend, so there was much learning and reviewing.  Unfortunately, that kept me up all night.  If we can make it to next Monday, everything will be alright.

AAC

Yacht Rock played the annual spring party at the Atlanta Athletic Club Saturday night.  Not as many aggressive housewives as in years past--they turned out to be a pretty well behaved bunch.  Easy gig with no problems, and I was home around 12:30 AM.  Not too shabby.

I did a better job on Young Americans tonight--I've pretty much solidified the intro and the solo (the only parts I'm concerned with playing accurately--the rest is improvised).  One more night and I think I'll have it comfortably committed to memory.

Not So Young

Yacht Rock played a surprise birthday party in Buckhead last night.  Maybe 50 people in attendance, almost all in costumes.  I'd guess that it was a 70s themed party, but some chose the 60s by accident--ironic because everyone in attendance was old enough to recall what the 70s looked like.  Regardless, there was plenty for the eye to see.  Special shout out to Princess Leia in the New Hope outfit with the big hair buns and everything.  I admire your effort.

We added David Bowie's Young Americans to the set this weekend.  I thought I'd be really excited to play this song since it's 70s David Sanborn soloing over the entire song (hell, the entire record!), but it felt really long.  Maybe it's because the solo vocabulary is pretty rigidly a major pentatonic scale (with the occasional flatted third and flatted seventh).  Anyway, here's my chart.  The intro is important enough that subsequent Bowie tours used what Sanborn played as their intro.  The solo before the bridge is the only other spot where he gets pushed up in the mix and you focus on what he's doing.  Everything is just major pentatonic whatever.

I had to keep reminding myself to leave less space and play over the vocals and not care.

This is also entertaining.  I guess the microphone distortion on the sax is no big deal, or part of the appeal?

Encore

We (Yacht Rock) gave an encore performance of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon last night at Venkman's.  After that, we played a couple of Beatles songs, a couple of Zeppelin songs, and a couple of The Who songs (I wasn't involved in either the Zepp or Who).  I only play on about half of Dark Side, so it made for a short night for me, which was just fine after an usually long soundcheck and an eternity sitting in traffic in between checking and the gig.  Home by 11:30 PM, and that's only because I had to wait for the show to end so that I could collect my keyboard from the stage.

Nashville + Indy

On the road again!  Yacht Rock made stops in Nashville and Indianapolis last weekend.  Dig it:

Thursday:  We hadn't made it far up I-75 before we stopped for gas.  When we did, we discovered that the cap on one of the trailer axles had come off, exposing the bearings to the world.  This has happened to us before, and it's not pretty.  All of the grease is spun out and the bearings burn up.  Very fortunately for us, we happened to be at an exit with a truck/trailer repair place, who sent us up to the next exit to another trailer repair place.  The new cap cost us $5.   Back to my nap.

We arrived at the City Winery in Nashville a little bit late (which caused us to miss our field trip to the RCA A Room, a legendary recording studio which would have been really cool to check out).  Too bad.  More importantly, we had to deal with the trailer of gear.  By this photo, I would say it was not my best packing job of the suitcases.

Pretty easy load in.  We were set up in a decent amount of time.  I also had enough time after soundcheck to thoroughly warm up.  Maybe it's a coincidence, but I had a much better time on saxes and flutes tonight.

I guess City Winery gives you commemorative bottles of wine when you play their room.  Nifty.

So...City Winery.  The load in is painless, the on stage sound is good, and the green room is nice, but the layout of the room is very weird.  The room fans out in an arc from the stage, and directly in front are tables that line up like spokes on a wheel.  Halfway back, they put up a barrier/fence, and behind that is standing room.  The seated people tend to be very reserved and the standing room people go nuts, so from the stage you can hear the roar of the crowd, but can't see where it's coming from.  The last time we played here, they didn't put up the fence halfway, and as the night progressed, standing room people made their way down between the tables.  Mayhem!  I understand that the table people are worth more money to the venue (they buy more food and drink), but I wish there was a way to give the standing room people access to the stage.

The setlist, with a little love for our Nashville friend Scott Sheriff.

Friday:  We stopped for gas somewhere in Kentucky, and a dude who may have just been a dude, or may have been the local distributor, gave us a two six packs of local ale.  All based off of his conversation with a few of us while waiting to pee.

We crossed into Indiana right around noon.

Lunch was Mexican food at some hole in the wall place.  Very good!  My only complaint would be their posters advertising dessert.  There's no desert in southern Indiana.

Controversy of the day:  we left at 10 AM instead of the original 9 AM, opting to sleep more and show up less early.  We made it to the back door of the The Vogue in Indianapolis a half hour late.  Oops.  By the time we'd dragged our gear in and set everything up, we were right up against the time to open the doors to the public.

Friday (today) was at one point a gig in either Cincinnati or Louisville, but we couldn't find a suitable venue, so then it was going to be a day off in Nashville or Indy.  Two weeks ago, we settled on playing a night of Beatles in Indy at The Vogue.   Sweet.

I did my big warm up again before the gig.

Pre-gig, The Great Bencuya and I walked around the corner to the Cuban place for sandwiches.  Though I'd eaten a ton of food at lunch, I was concerned that by midnight, I'd be falling apart with no good options available.  This hit the spot.

Kip joined us, demonstrating how to eat without wasting any energy holding the sandwich.

This show was not particularly well attended (less than two hundred), but I was relieved to be playing tonight instead of sitting in a hotel room or running around wasting money somewhere trying to pass the time.  The Beatles show is almost as much fun to play as Yacht Rock.    Plus, no loading in gear tomorrow (or loading out tonight!).

The Indiana guys (Nick, Pete, and Cobb) all spent the night with their parents, so the rest of us headed to the hotel after the show.  I'm glad that I ate the Cuban sandwich so that the vending machine wouldn't be responsible for providing dinner.

Saturday:  We slept late and killed time until our 3:30 PM lobby call.  The Weinermobile was parked at the hotel next to ours.

On our way to The Vogue we passed a Yat's (a chain of New Orleans style restaurants in Indiana that I love, even though the one in Columbus uses instant rice, which is gross and shameful), and the Jazz Kitchen, one of Indy's jazz clubs.  When I was in college, a carload of us drove up from Bloomington to see Chris Potter right as he was starting to become famous.  I remember he was playing on #4 or #5 reeds (he said it hurt for weeks before he got used to it), and we cornered him after the show to ask him music school student questions.

Another nifty tidbit that I hadn't noticed at the time:  Mark Buselli was playing that night--his name is on the poster right above the SUV windshield.  Mark was a grad student when I was an underclassman.  My college roommate could do a hysterical impression of him, and the thought of it still makes me smile twenty years later.

More alcohol with our names on it?  Reports from the more experienced beer drinkers said that this was pretty bitter.  I think Zach (our excellent monitor guy) ended up drinking most of it.

The Vogue is great, but if they could figure out how to make the dressing room big enough to accommodate more than one person, it'd really help.  Fortunately, the weather was nice enough that we could hang out by the stage door before the show.  We have the same conversation every time we're here--"How does [whatever famous band] handle this shitty green room?"  We're guessing they use their touring vehicle as the green room.  It's a bit like loading into Smith's Olde Bar in Atlanta.  Every time you drag your gear up those rickety back stairs, you wonder why the venue has never done anything to improve what is otherwise a great gig experience.

This show sold out--in fact, it sold out a while ago.  The first set was a private benefit, and then they opened the doors to the general public.

It was a very long night, but very cool to play for a thousand people crammed into the room.  Indy loves us, and vice versa.  We'll be back soon!

Sunday:  7 AM shuttle to the airport for our flight back to Atlanta.  Getting up that early wrecked me.  Better than spending the day riding home in the van, though.

Friday Night Lights

I got a call about subbing Friday night in the pit of a musical at a playhouse south of Atlanta.  Sure!   I thought when I began playing professionally that this would be the bulk of my work, since my degree was in multiple woodwind performance (flute, clarinet, saxophone).  This job was for flute and clarinet (and a tiny bit of piccolo in the opener), so...right up my alley!  I got the book late Wednesday night, hacked through it once before bed (approximately 100 pages), played through it one and a half times Thursday, hit the really tough stuff Friday, and then jumped into traffic and headed to the playhouse.

Fortunately, in checking out photos of the playhouse, I noticed that it was outdoors!  Yikes.  Friday night was in the low 50s, making acoustic instruments that much more challenging.   We were basically a little carnival set up in a pasture in the middle of nowhere south of Atlanta.  Kind of weird.

So, here's what I walked into:  the "pit" was in the tent in the photo below.  I showed up a few hours before the "curtain" and the music director took me through a crash course of the show.  The musicians were three strings (violin, cello, bass), three woodwinds (flute/clarinet/picc, oboe/english horn, bassoon), and two keyboardists (one also being the conductor/music director).  Not too bad for blitzing through the book, and I thought, "No sweat!  The tent will keep us warm."  I'd dressed in several layers, and I was fine.  Here's hoping I hadn't destroyed my face by practicing this stuff almost non-stop from Wednesday night until showtime.

 

Around ten minutes before showtime, the MD opened the flap between us and the stage.  Noooooooo!  Cold air came pouring in.  The strings kept tuning with their phones, and at first I wondered why, but in thinking about it, they were going to try and hold the pitch up to the electronic keyboards.  Hmm.  I would be going long-ish stretches of playing either flute or clarinet, and then picking up the other (which would be cold and flat).  I was doomed!  I pushed my flute and picc headjoints all the way in, put on my shortest clarinet barrel, and hoped for the best.

The first set began at what felt like a frantic pace--it always takes some time for me to get used to the pacing of playing a show, and trying to read the music, follow the conductor, watch for instrument switches, and follow the penciled in notes and cuts was difficult.  Plus, the violin, oboe, and I were about a mile apart in terms of pitch.  I was hanging on for dear life, and then around three or four songs into the first act, my stand light faded out over about three seconds.  Just like that, the whole pit had lost power!  No stand lights, and more importantly, no keyboards filling out the music!  HOLY SHIT!

The actors on stage were unaware (the power outage seemed to only affect us) so they kept glaring at us like WHAT THE HELL ARE Y'ALL DOING!  The MD kept frantically texting the tech people across the stage, and eventually settled into conducting.  I just about had my nose pressed to the music--only the violinist had a battery powered stand light.  In between songs, the cellist ran to her car and returned with a battery powered stand light as well.  That gave the tent a little bit of light.  I could kind of see the left pages of the music in my binder, but the right page was in the left side's shadow.    I tried to figure out a way to angle my phone at the page, but in my lap it would only point up.

The show continued unabated.  At one point I was completely lost, hoping to see enough notes to figure out where we were.  Got it!  I know where we are!  Unfortunately, I had the wrong instrument in hand.  Thank god the rest of the people in the tent had already played a dozen shows and knew what was supposed to be happening.  I was in and out, trying to read the music, hacking up parts, looking over at the conductor, losing my place, back in the music, trying to line up the tuning in the cold, nailing something, guessing.  I was all over the place.

We sat there in the dark, trying to give any musical support six freezing acoustic instruments could provide to the cast.  During dialogue, we could hear a motor trying over and over to start.  Over and over, but it wouldn't catch.  Another skeleton of a song, and then silence, and then the motor would chug-chug-chug, but it wouldn't kick in.  I found out later that the center of this entire nightmare was a generator that had run out of gas.  Once they'd refilled the tank, the engine was cold and didn't want to go back to work.

After probably forty-five minutes, we were limping through the Act 1 finale when all of the sudden...wirrrr...my stand light came back to life!  HOORAY!  Silent cheers from the pit.  The keyboards came back and we finished with renewed enthusiasm.

Everybody seemed a little shellshocked on the break.  Because it's me (and it wasn't my fault), deep down inside I thought this was all really funny, of course.  I mean, I know I needed to be focused on doing my job--subbing on a gig like this is really difficult!--but this was a fantastic disaster.  If we'd all laughed about it, we'd probably have felt better.

On the outside, I ate my apple in silence and hoped that I wouldn't freeze to death.

In the middle of the intermission, the power went out again, so they decided to plug us into a different generator powering the other side of the stage.  Back in business!

Act 2 was much better.  The pitch settled down, the MD settled down, and I felt much more in sync with the ensemble.  Also, I could see my part.  Also, the parts were easier in Act 2.  Whatever--I was better!  However, my feet went numb from the cold, my fingers got slower and slower, and my legs were shaking.  In between songs, I sat on my hands to try and keep them warm enough to move.

Random thought:  oboists are the squirrels of a pit orchestra.  Every time I looked back there, she was working on a reed with her knife, pulling a swab through her instrument, adjusting a screw on her instrument, blowing spit out of a tone hole, texting somebody.  The whole night, she used every spare second to do something other than pay attention to the action on stage.  I kind of expected to look back and see her cooking something, or dissecting the bassonist's frozen body.

At the end of Act 2, the lights started to droop again for a second, in they went out again in the last eight measures of exit music.  We made it, though.  The music ended, and the eight of us packed up quietly and left, like walking away from the casket at a funeral internment.

I hopped in my truck (which started!) and turned the thermostat over to heat to warm my feet.  The knob broke off, plastic pieces falling into the darkness on the floorboard.  Time to go home.