The first week of the 2020 Yacht Rock tour is in the books!
The weekend began in Lexington, Kentucky at the Manchester Music Hall. We played here once before, a few years ago--I remember it as the first gig with new equipment (after some of our gear was stolen in Louisville).
It's pretty decent for a Thursday night. The room looked to be a comfortably full--a good showing for our second time here in two and a half years.
Friday was night one at the Egyptian Room in Indianapolis. We've played here several times, and I like it, mainly for it's large stage and multiple dressing rooms. Also, we pack this place out, hence the two shows.
Here's my solo on the end of Biggest Part of Me. Thursday's version had gotten a bit harmonically abusive, so I tried to stay more on the bluesy side of things.
Saturday, I slept late, had coffee, ran on the treadmill, ate at the Indian buffet, practiced, and walked to the gig early (and got all my flute warmups done).
Night two in the Egyptian had even more people stuffed in there. After playing well on Friday, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to match the energy on this show, but we gradually relaxed into the evening, and everybody played equally well.
Biggest Part of Me was on the setlist again this evening, and I was pretty sure that I liked what I'd played the night before, and I thought there was a good chance that I would try again, but that I'd overblow and get uptight and all that, and the solo would turn into a bunch of rambling bullshit. HOWEVER! This night's attempt held together well, and I especially like the opening few melodic ideas I had before it got down to playing some fast crap. So...dig it!
Sunday morning, it was time to head back to Atlanta. Our hotel in downtown Indy used to be a bank--you don't see a lot of hotel lobbies like this!
End of the year gig, beginning of the year gig--here we go.
Yacht Rock played two gigs around New Year's, both connected to the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville.
New Year's Eve was some sort of VIP thing in a hotel ballroom. There was a screen showing highlights from previous years on repeat. It went around five times. Interesting that Jimbo Fisher was featured as an FSU assistant coach, FSU head coach, and Texas A&M head coach. And that was the gist of the gig for me.
Mark Bencuya would want me to point out that over the years, our NYE gigs have ended earlier and earlier, and I would agree that this is overall a good thing. This night ended at 11:45 PM, when the guests were all sent outside to watch fireworks over the river.
New Year's Day was a day off. I slept late, ate overpriced french toast (and four bananas), went for a run, and worked on the Sonny Stitt transcription that I posted a couple of days ago.
After my run, I walked to a burrito place for dinner, which included (via Google maps) the directions to basically walk along what looked like an I-95 entrance ramp! I was cold and tired, so I did it.
January 2 was another gig day, this time at a pep rally before the game. Jacksonville has an amphitheater built right next to the stadium, and we set up there for a ninety minute concert for fans. I imagine that it was pretty boomy with all that concrete, but it was new and very comfortable, and...I didn't care.
Before we played, both marching bands came through and worked their constituents into a frenzy. I like the new band uniforms, IU.
And then we played...the weather was great, we played for an hour and a half, and my stuff was packed and stacked by 7:15 PM.
Time for one more run in Jacksonville! This place is DEAD at night. Also, flat. Easy running. Ate two more burritos.
I was at a jam session about a month and a half ago and got called up to back a singer on I Can't Give You Anything But Love, a tune I did not know, so I did my best to "ear" my way through it. Most of it is pretty obvious--it's one, two five, two five to the four chord, major two, that kind of thing. I think the only really weird thing is the second measure, which I think is often played as some kind of diminished three (in this case, Eb diminished for the alto), but Stitt is pretty clearly outlining E minor to A7(b9) in his solos.
The leader of the session reminded me of this classic recording of Sonny Stitt with the Oscar Peterson trio (with Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums), and I thought it a good idea to write out Stitt's solo and see what he's doing. It's a beautiful example of the bebop vocabulary. Enjoy!
I've finished out the year with two more church services--Christmas Eve and yesterday's regular Sunday mass, both on flute. It was great to end it playing well on a gig that I enjoy, with just enough space for me to be creative within the written music, and plenty of challenges to my musical abilities (thinking of dynamics and intonation here!). So I'll keep at it as much as my Yacht Rock calendar allows, stretching to become a more expressive flutist and a more empathetic musician overall. See y'all in 2020!
Friday, Yacht Rock played a corporate holiday party, bracketed by bad catering and awful DJ music. We finished around 10 PM and were able to load out before the end of the party, so I guess that's good.
Saturday was the big Yacht Rock Holiday Special at The Roxy. I love playing this room.
this is a giant captain's hat cake, 20 inches in diameter, given to us because we almost sold out
Anyway, good gig. I felt pretty well prepared, and there were no disasters caused by my incompetence.
The guys in Yacht Rock Revue headed up to NYC last Wednesday for a private/corporate gig, and we managed to secure an opportunity to perform on SiriusXM that morning. The performance was at 9:20 AM, but it felt like 5 AM--our hotel was over by LaGuardia, and we had a 6:30 AM lobby call to ensure that we made it on time. Therefore, at 9:20, all the benefits of the the coffee I'd consumed had worn off, and I was falling apart.
Sirius has a cool set up with a nice sound-isolated performance room right in the lobby, and they mostly knew what instruments we were bringing, so things were mostly setup, and they had an engineer (and assistant) who knew what he was doing.
Anyway, we played three songs--What a Fool Believes, or original Step, and Last Christmas. Right off the bat, I crashed and burned in my attempt to cover the What a Fool synth part on flute--I had it together at home, but I just got a little off, completely fell apart, HAD TO FUCKING STOP PLAYING, and then recovered, and then I was mad at myself until basically yesterday, and that pretty much sucked any fun that I was going to have out of the experience. To top it off, I played glockenspiel on Step, and even though I was playing the correct notes, the bars bounced around and hit wrong notes, so I got sabotaged by this stupid thing, and so who knows what I played on the sax solo because my head was splitting open at that point, and so Last Christmas was probably fine, but I desperately wanted out of the building at that point.
I've searched the internet and not found any recordings of it, so just take my word for it. Hopefully the engineer has my microphone tucked into the mix enough that maybe it just sounds like I wandered off or something. Also, hopefully I never hear it.
(Update: I found it. It's here if you scroll down. The flute isn't really sticking out in the mix, so there's only a couple of spots where I can hear myself crash and burn, but it doesn't sound as godawful as I thought. I guess I got away with it, sort of. The end of Step has a bum saxophone note, though. I still hate myself.)
So, back to the hotel for a run (yep), a nap (nope), an aborted lunch delivery (for some reason, my phone tried to have my food delivered to Irving Plaza in Manhattan instead of out in Queens), a second lunch delivery that I cancelled ten minutes BEFORE the guy handed it to me, and then a ride back into Manhattan to set up for the corporate gig.
Tonight's adventure was in the basement of a Texas BBQ place in NYC. Right. Got it.
Excited isn't the right word for a corporate gig, but I was...keen on playing a regular gig in our regular format with the regular gear and the in-ear mix and all that, just to kind of wash the bad stuff out of my mind. There wasn't anything particularly great about this gig, but it felt normal, and that was a relief.
sittin' in the back of the bus with this dude all night
We flew home Thursday morning.
Friday, we played a show at Iron City in Birmingham, Alabama. The debut of our new lighting rig with the video board behind us. Nifty.
I was all set to walk in the rain to an Indian restaurant, but Iron City fed us, and the food was great! Roasted cauliflower, green beans, roasted potatoes, salad. Hell yeah. This really hit the spot.
They also got us a cake--"Congrats on 'sailing' out." Nicely done! This cake was really good, and probably really bad for me, but it was really good.
On to the gig, which went pretty well, even though we were a little rusty from not having played a regular ol' Yacht Rock gig in quite some time. I like the room, and I would rather play here than out in the Alabama heat during the summer...but I think we're back outside in the summer...
Saturday, we played a corporate holiday party in Dalton, Georgia. Not the most exciting gig we do, but they are very nice and very well funded, shall we say! Just like my gig last Saturday, the lights went out in the middle of a song, but the local crew guys got it back up and running pretty quickly.
The usual Roadhouse reference:
Sunday was my church gig, and my flute face was good--I got some time on the instrument Saturday before the gig, and also Sunday afternoon.
Also, I want to be sure and mention that I did get paid for last week's jazz gig--I didn't mean to imply that the guy wasn't trustworthy--I was trying to show how this random quintet came together, played a gig, and went our separate ways, and each of us just assumed that 1. we could pull it off without any kind of preparation; 2. we would be compensated for it down the line. No contracts, just good faith!
One more busy week of gigs this year (capped off with the Yacht Rock Holiday Show at The Roxy on Saturday).
Sooooo...I'm a little late delivering the blog. Things have been busy! It's the two week crush at the beginning of December, and though I didn't gig a lot, there's been a lot going on at home (interior and exterior renovation stuff). Anyway, here we go...
I almost had ZERO gigs for the week, but over Thanksgiving, I got a phone call from a bass player in New Jersey who needed me for a jazz gig at some house north of Atlanta--someone else passed on the gig and gave him my name. Five hour gig, jazz quintet (quartet plus vocals) with people I don't know, some house in Milton, GA--I'm in! It turned out that I'd played at a jam session with the drummer Jonathan Mills a few years ago, and played with the pianist Mason Margut at a jam session a few months ago, so it wasn't a completely random grouping, but the bass player drove down for the gig, and I'd never met the vocalist even though she is local to the Atlanta area. Here we go!
please step away from my car
The setup was in a tent between the house and the garage, and because of the chilly temperatures, they were running heaters (in addition to the lights and the power for the band and the Christmas tree across from us, etc). Unfortunately, the heaters were a bit strong, and the power went out repeatedly, which was kind of funny,since it wasn't my problem.
Jonathan by iPhone light
But, they got it back on...
Jonathan in a tent so bright!
...and later on, it went out again. It kind of broke up the evening in a nice way. At one point, we were playing some tune (I can't remember which song), but we'd gotten off on a waaaaaay tooooooo faaaast tempo, and during the solo, the vocalist looked at me like, "I don't know how I'm going to sing the last part at this speed," and I said, "Maybe the power will go out again!" and it did, and we were saved. Christmas miracle. Boom.
Eventually, the power thing was resolved well enough that we could keep the amps on and keep playing, and that was it. Fun gig, though! I had a good time trying to hear my way through all of these vocal tunes that I didn't know. The band was swingin', and I felt like a jazz player again!
Side note: sweet puppy dog in his kennel in the break room. Come home with me!
And now, five days later...will I get paid? We'll see. The bass player went back to New Jersey, and I'm hoping to see some action in my PayPal account maybe Saturday, maybe Sunday, maybe Monday. I sent my PayPal address to him via email and got no response, so...hmmm. Let's stay optimistic! (update Dec 15: got paid! no problems)
Sunday was a church gig day, and my face performed about a thousand percent better than the previous week. I wonder why I fall apart so drastically if my daily practice sags? Dunno, but it's a good reminder that I haven't had the flute on my face very much this week, which could spell disaster on Sunday. Watch this space for self loathing next week.
