100 Pictures of the Caribbean, Airplane Wings, and a Barn

Crazy week of gigs! Tuesday was a travel day, Wednesday was a corporate gig in Nevis (waaaay down in the Caribbean), Thursday was a travel day, Friday was Thriller, and Saturday was a wedding in Bogart, GA. Here we go:

Tuesday: A painful day spent in planes, taxis, and boats, all the while fighting some sort of achy sickness--not quite a cold, but some sort of fever and discomfort. Definitely not a great day to get up at 4:30 AM and head to the airport.

We flew Atlanta to Miami, then changed airlines/gates/terminals and flew Miami to St. Kitts, which is almost all the way to Venezuela. Quite a long ride in a small seat.

After customs and baggage claim, we piled into a couple of taxi vans for the ride down to meet the water taxi.

not the water taxi

After a 20 minute ride, we docked at the Four Seasons Nevis and were taken to our individual rooms. I made the perfunctory call home and then crashed for several hours. I awoke around 10 PM, approximately an hour after everybody else had called it a night.

clever

My late night wake up meant that I'd missed any chance of food (other than buffalo wings or a hamburger through room service), so I made a meal out of things in the kitchenette/coffee station thing in my room.

I went back to sleep around midnight and tried to shake whatever was ailing me.

Wednesday: Up around 9:30 AM and feeling a bit better, I attempted to run up the shoulder of Nevis' main mountain. It didn't go very well; a combination of sick, not eating well for lunch or dinner on Tuesday, not eating breakfast Wednesday morning, the incline, and the heat crushed me.

Monkeys on the 10th fairway!

there were also goats

the view

the tunnel under the main island road

Soooooo...I had my own room at the Four Seasons Nevis. Obviously, it's one of the nicest hotel rooms I've ever been in.

the view off my balcony

A few more pictures of the resort, you ask?

Oh yeah! So, at some point we DID have to go to work. We played a corporate party (revival style with the yacht rock "originals"--Robbie Dupree, Elliott Lurie, Matthew Wilder, and Peter Beckett) in the cultural center of the main town on the island. This was a pretty snazzy little set up that made me slightly less angry about the local crew setting up the backline almost completely wrong for me--it would've been faster for them to open the cases and just step aside.

Anyway, we got it all worked out, and the gear wasn't too rough and everything worked, so all is forgiven.

This was kind of amazing to me: the backline came from Puerto Rico and it worked. I thought the whole island was closed for business until further notice, but the gear worked just fine.

The green room hang:

Monkeyboy's new guitar pedalboard

The gig was pretty good--it's always a good time playing with the old guys, and our set without them was equally strong. Happy client, and we ended pretty early (10:30, maybe?), so I could quickly return to my bed.

 Thursday: Our travel day in reverse! But first, one more attempt to run up the mountain! I was marginally better than Wednesday morning. The monkeys were out again, but I didn't get any good pictures.

steeeeeeeeeeeep

We had a noon lobby call, and by 12:45 we were down at the dock, boarding the water taxi back to St. Kitts.

not the water taxi

in the taxi van

the St. Kitts International Airport

refrigerator magnet

back over Florida

over the Everglades

over Miami

deplaning

We had time to eat dinner in Miami at a really terrible Mexican place, and then it was time to run on board the flight back to Atlanta.

crazy condensation on the plane

leaving Miami

 Home by 1 AM.

Friday: Our annual performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller at the Variety Playhouse! Success! The gig sold out, we had Keisha and Kourtney on background vocals plus a horn section, and I got almost all of my keyboard parts right.

Here's video in case you couldn't make it:

Saturday: Ouch. We had a long wedding in Bogart, GA (south of Athens). The venue was a real live Playskool barn with super cool neon signs with an easy load in/load out, and the catering (Bold American) was superb. Painless gig. Ganesh Giri Jaya did a good job filling in for Mark Cobb.

Check back in a week to find out how trip to Greece(!) was.

Locals

The Yacht Rock Revue doesn't play very often in Atlanta these days, but we managed to string together three gigs last weekend in town--a rare feat!

Thursday: Norcross, GA. We played at a business party behind a building in an industrial park. They were more of a listening crowd than a dancing crowd, so it was a bit odd when they wanted us to play overtime. A pretty painless night, with the only hiccup being midway through the first set when the power went out. The audience didn't seem to notice, though. I think we got away with it!

Friday: Our second attempt at covering the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. All in all, better than the first time. My feeling was we were much more relaxed about it and played the songs instead of our individual parts. It's always fun to do something different. Keisha and Kourtney on background vocals, and Jason Nackers on drums.

We're going to hit this show again early next year at the Variety Playhouse (it's sold out twice at Venkman's), so I think it's probably time for me to stop borrowing gear and actually purchase a good synth for this gig. That being said, I was able to load out in record time.

Saturday: We played at a charity concert in Johns Creek. It was a rather excited crowd, if I do say so myself. Everybody we dealt with was cool to us and greatly appreciated our participation, and the crowd was pretty bananas by the end of the night, which helped to offset some of the fatigue of "third night in a row." Also, nice venue! (except for the giant roach that kept showing up on stage).

Johns Creek School of Rock opened the show with a very impressive set of classic rock. They also had a meet-and-greet in our dressing room while I was taking a nap. Word is that I slept through two-thirds of it.

As an extra treat (and extra rehearsal for next weekend), we had Keisha and Kourtney on background vocals for the night. They are awesome.

Next Friday: Thriller at the Variety Playhouse!

New: Jersey, York

Weren't we just here? Back to the northeast for a two more gigs.

Friday: Montclair, New Jersey. We flew into LaGuardia, hopped in the van, and headed to west.

The Wellmont Theater: never been here before. It's a humungous cavern of a room, originally constructed in the 1920s as a movie house.

Overall, a pretty decent show. We had four or five hundred people show up, which is always encouraging in a new market. The sound was a little weird because of the reflections of the room. No major musical disasters, though.

Saturday: Off to the Hamptons. The drive from New Jersey to eastern Long Island took much, much longer than you'd think--even on a Saturday.

lunch stop

Our gig for the evening was a wedding reception in Sag Harbor, situated in an open tent in the backyard of a multi-million dollar house.

The gig was easy. Early in the gig, we were asked to stop playing because everyone was already on the dance floor and no one was eating!

Our performance in the second set was particularly energetic, fueled by one of the guest's claim that he Jimmy Fallon (huge yacht rock fan) was "just down the street" and might come by. I'm not sure how true that was, but it definitely made us play with more energy.

We drove away from the venue at 1 AM, headed all the way back across the island to our hotel rooms in Queens. Ouch. In bed at 4 AM...

Sunday: ...and up at 8 AM to make our flight home. I slept like a dead guy on the plane.