The VH1 Best Cruise I've Been on This Year

The Yacht Rock Revue played our first cruise ship gig of the year this past weekend:  The VH1 Best Cruise Ever.  The name implies that this was something special, and yet our personal experiences proved that it was pretty much like every other one of the boat rides we have taken around the Caribbean.  I assure you, had it been the "best cruise ever," I probably would have seen Colbie Caillat naked, up close and for several minutes in good light.  Instead, I played my stuff and drank a lot.  I got lost in rural Mexico again.  It was the VH1 Same Cruise Ever.  I expect the Future Mark Dannells to call the Present Mark Dannells and report that next year's cruise was about like this one.

Monday:  took my saxophones, top keyboard (the Roland Fantom with my hours of programming), and my magic suitcase full of stuff like saxophone stands to the equipment truck.  Reggie came with me.  Reggie pissed on a planter in the office.  A premonition?

Thursday:  I picked up Nick and his sister Gina (our videographer for the trip).  We made our way to the airport, me dressed in a new pale green polyester suit, lugging my laptop and EWI.  Should I have put the EWI on the truck?  I don't know.  I keep it in a Protec soprano case that seems sturdy;  if thing got crushed, though, that would really wreck the setlist.  The trip was no big deal.  Everybody in the airport laughed at our outfits.  It doesn't really faze us anymore.  I have perfected the art of staring right back, albeit from behind sunglasses.

I found out that I don't like bloody marys

Nick and me

We got on the boat, ate, and started drinking.  Since we were slotted to play Thursday night, I didn't do my usual 'drink like an idiot and wind up passed out somewhere' routine.  I wanted to be fairly sharp, even though at this point I'm really comfortable with all the material.

Bencuya

cafeteria

Dannells

We had plenty of time to set up--an hour after the band in front of us finished, and a crew to do most of the heavy lifting.  One problem I noticed in the set up was that the crew tends to drop a keyboard stand in the right place and immediately stack the keyboards on.  A better course of action would be to set the keyboard bench/stool to the right height and then bring the stand and the instruments out.  This first set had me too high up.  It's almost as bad as being too low.

The name of the game for this set was pedal problems…the sustain pedal they gave me for my Fantom was doing the reversed polarity thing where it sustained everything until you stomped on it again.  Not good, though it was kind of fun to try and negotiate for a song until I could stop and fix it.  Unfortunately, flipping the switch on the bottom of the pedal did not solve the problem.  It might as well have not been plugged in.  I tried flipping the switch a couple of times, tried unplugging it and plugging it back in--nothing.  I asked for a new one, and almost instantly had a crew guy up there mid-song hooking me up.  Like I was famous…Famous Second Keyboardist Freeman, He of the Generic String Pad…seriously, there was a guy up there like it was an action movie, crawling around through all the cables while my monitor screamed away.  He got me hooked up with a functional pedal, and then crouched behind my laptop until I could confirm that it worked.

Later on in the set, Bencuya had to deal with a crappy volume pedal, but I think he just stopped using it. No swarm of techs.

The set went well other than the pedal problems and a bobbled audible (part of the band began Hey Nineteen and part of the band began Peg, which was immediately followed by forty-five seconds of yelling by Cobb).  Nick was pretty miserable by the end--the combo of motion sickness and a mediocre night (he claimed) of singing sent him to bed pretty quickly.  I was fine--had a good night.  The room seemed about half full.

I was given a Nord Stage to use for my bottom keyboard.  Quite an upgrade from the 61 key Nord Electro 2 I use at home!  Weighted keys, more keys (76 I think, but it could have been 88).  The layout was a little different, and I felt good about myself for adapting to it as well as I did.

Friday:  We played on the Lido Deck in the mid afternoon.  Again, same sort of stuff--a crew there at your beck and call.  A guy with a ton of gear (like me) could get used to this!  Again--a good show.  Again, the bench to keyboard height was not quite right, but I could deal.  We had a good crowd out there, and they dug us.  Lots of drunk dancing to watch.

I forgot to mention that we did not use keyboard amps on this trip--each of us (my man Mark Bencuya and myself) had a monitor mix, and so that was an added twist of trying to match the levels on my four inputs (sax, EWI, keyboard, keyboard).

For this stage, I got a 76 key Nord Electro 2.  A little closer to normal for me--it didn't have all the crazy stuff that the Stage had the night before.

I played well again.  Gina was up on stage filming us, and I kind of bit it on the solo to Africa right as she stuck the camera in my face.  Nothing horrible--I just flinched and left a couple of notes out.  The sax stuff seemed to go over well, and since I went barefooted when we were setting up, audience members called me "Shoeless Joe Saxman" for the remainder of the trip (which along the way would sometimes get shortened to "Joe" in conversations and make me think that the person was talking to someone else).

Coming off stage, I was asked to sit in with the next bandy.  I played on Dancing in the Dark (in F!  normally in B!).  Super easy.  For tenor, it was this:

The band acted like I'd played something incredible.  The guitarist nearest me kissed me when it was over.  Not on the lips.

Mat Kearney was the guy--he has a song on the radio that I've heard.  I thought it was Counting Crows.  It's him--a song called Nothing Left to Lose.  They played it right before Dancing in the Dark, and I thought it was a really accurate cover.

To tell the truth, I played with them, put my horn away, and asked Bencuya who those guys were.  I didn't find out the guy's name until it was over.  Oops.

Saturday:  the day in Cozumel.  I can't lie--this is a good job that I have.  Famous Second Keyboardist Freeman, He of the Generic String Pad…doin' all right!  We (Pete, Greg, Dannells, Bencuya, and myself) went to the same restaurant where we had eaten seventeen months prior--La Choza.  Good stuff.  I had my first Mexican Coke (made with sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup)--I couldn't tell the difference.  I had shrimp kebabs.  Very good.  I probably should have had a gallon of water if I'd known what was coming up.

So…Dannells and I rented scooters and went zooming off across the island, only to eventually end up on a dirt road, which eventually became a dirt alley in the middle of nowhere.  Miraculously, we made it back to paved Earth;  we even paid a visit to the Mayan ruins.  At the entrance to the ruins, I hit a telephone pole.  It was quite painful.  My big toe is swollen, and I have some scrapes on my legs.  Mentally, the damage was much worse.  It genuinely scared me.  The scooter sustained what appeared to be considerable damage.  Somehow I got the parking lot attendant at the Mayan ruins to work on it--he buffed it out or something--used some Mayan magic.  Or iguana urine.  Who cares!  The scooter looked good as new when we came out.

I assure, I looked at least as stupid

iguana (middle of the picture)

Dannells then proceeded to run off the road precisely at the same spot where I'd crashed.  The two of us dragged his scooter out of the brush and kept going.  It was fine.

We rode for HOURS--all the way around the island.  My sunburn was impeccable.

Saturday at midnight we played the U2 stuff.  An entire set.  I won't take any credit for that performance.  I played fine, but there's so little to do--it's all on Nick, Dannells (and Greg on second guitar), and Cobb for providing the energy.  My man Bencuya and I just coasted through that one.  The crowd (especially the other bands on the boat) were especially giddy about this set.  I felt kind of awkward accepting any praise.  Mostly shaker and tambourine!  Give me a break!  Go tell Nick!

Sunday:  I woke up super hung over.  It hurt really bad.  We participated in some sort of trivia game.  It didn't go well.  I didn't care.  I went back to my room and more or less slept the rest of the afternoon.  We gathered that night and wandered around the boat, waiting for the blowout final night party that never happened.  I went to bed around 2 AM, fairly early by boat standards.

Monday:  flew home, taught a couple of lessons, hung out with my family.  Back to real life!

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