The End of the Road

The "Summer of Smooth" tour ended last Friday for the Yacht Rock Revue with a show at The Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina.

Some travel difficulties caused us to be really late (we left Atlanta about two hours later than we had intended).  Renting a van and trailer took longer than we'd anticipated, and then we had to stop and grab our PA on the way out of town.  Ouch!  By the time we got up to Asheville (rerouting around a street festival), time was tight.  We set up really quickly and sound checked.  It left us an hour to eat, but fortunately the taco place up the street was pretty quick.

The show was great.  We had almost four hundred people show up--by far our best attendance at The Orange Peel.  From what we could tell, they loved it.  We played well, and the sound was loud but pretty good.  Another fun night!  We were all plenty relaxed after making it through the Chastain show.

The following day, we drove down to Hilton Head for a private gig.  It took all day.  The trip was supposed to be four and a half hours, but it was more like six and a half.  We hit lots of traffic and patches of rain.  Once again, we were squeezed for time, but lucked out that the first part of the night was not in the room in which we were setting up.  Saved!

I can't lie--it's a little bit of letdown after all the big shows we've done in the past thirty days.  A small stage in a hotel ballroom doesn't hold much vibe.  Nonetheless, the crowd for whom we played was really cool and into us from the first song.

I think of this gig is as one to help pay for our van's repair.

focus!

In the second set, the sustain pedal on my top keyboard stopped working--or should I say, wouldn't stop working!  It held the first chord I played in Somebody's Baby and wouldn't let go.  On the break, I took it apart, but I couldn't find anything wrong with it.  It was fine through the third set.  It is now a plastic time bomb.  When will it fail again?  So exciting.

FOCUS!!

I also came to the conclusion (affirmed by my leak light once we got back to Atlanta) that my tenor has lots and lots and lots of leaks.  Time for a visit to Lopes.  The giveaway for me on that a horn is when I can't play an altissimo A.  Once that problem arrises, I know it's time.  It made Whatever Gets You Through the Night (which begins on the A) really difficult!

The band had no trouble getting home Sunday afternoon.  I ended up with just enough time to put my gear away and head out the door to my PM church gig.  My new mic set up (with the clamp on the frame in the middle of the piano) is a big winner.

Upcoming dates!  There's some California time at the end of August, a northeast tour In October, and then another trip to California right before Thanksgiving.  Should be fun.

August 3, Barnsley Gardens (Adairsville, GA)
August 10, Loews Hotel (Atlanta, GA)
August 15, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Please Pleaserock Me show
August 18, Monday Night Brewing Company (Atlanta, GA)
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)
September 26, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Sazerac show
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 10, State Theatre (Falls Church, VA)
October 11, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
October 12, Rams Head On Stage (Annapolis, MD)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)
October 31, Georgia Theater (Athens, GA)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)
November 17, House of Blues (San Diego, CA)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)

Mic Check

No Sunday AM church gig for me this month--a blessing considering the previous night's occasion.  My PM church gig is still on, though.

While in New York, I bought a clamp to try and get a microphone more in the center of the piano.  It's already an improvement over the "58 in one of the sound holes" approach we've been using.  

Chastain!

Wow!  Yacht Rock held this year's revival at Chastain.  What a great place to play!  It really was an amazing night with a great crowd.  I can't wait to do it again.

Big thanks to Elliot Lurie, Robbie Dupree, Walter Egan, Jeff Carlisi, Bill Champlin, and Bobby Kimball for joining us.  They're all legendary musicians and pretty incredible people.  Thanks to the Schooner and Starbuck for opening things up.

Awesome job by Pleaserock--Nick, Pete, Esther, Kristen, and Nackers for putting it all together.

Great work by our crew of Kip, Zach, Hans, and Kerry, as well as the Chastain staff.

There's nowhere to go but down.

Just kidding.

noon load in

Hans blesses the rains

Good Thing

Carlisi

Bobby Kimball

The crowd estimate I heard from one of the Chastain people was 3,500.

Here's the rundown:  

What a Fool, fine…LA Lindsay, totally bullshitted my solo (blame it on adrenaline)…Dancing in the Moonlight and Brandy, no problems…Good Thing, solo started great but kind of died at the end, and vocally, I'm still wandering around…You Make My Dreams, fine…Hot Rod Hearts, the arpeggio thing I'd screwed up last week in New Jersey was solid…All Night Long, singing high like that makes my tongue and jaw hurt…Steal Away, good, but our attempt to change the ending from what we usually do once again caught me off guard (in other words, I totally screwed it up)…Magnet and Steel and Go Your Own Way, both good…Baker Street, fun…didn't play on the Carlisi stuff, Somebody's Baby and Get Lucky/Night Fever, both good…Turn Your Love Around was good, though my solo on the gig was mediocre--I was better at soundcheck…You're the Inspiration was vocally challenging, and I think I was better on effort than accuracy, though my string and horn parts were solid…Look Away was similarly challenging (Champlin's newer arrangement had Peter and me singing the 2nd resolving to the 3rd, which then becomes the 7th resolving to the root), and I missed it a couple of times…I began Rich Girl with my keyboard still pitched down a whole step, which did not sound good at all…My Old School was fine…we skipped Footloose…everybody likes my piccolo solo in Call Me Al …Rosanna was good…the solo on Africa was a DISASTER--I turned the transpose button off on the EWI somewhere before the solo, so the first phrase was HORRIBLE, in the second phrase I stopped playing (realizing what the problem was) and hit the button, and recovered in the time to play the last phrase correctly…outro solo was decent…Hold the Line was fun, and Lido was good.

Videos:

You Make My Dreams


Baker Street




So Caught Up in You


Turn Your Love Around


You're the Inspiration


Africa






Hold the Line


So…back to normal life!

Upcoming dates:

July 26, The Orange Peel (Asheville, NC)
August 15, Georgia Theatre (Athens, GA)
August 16-17, Smith's Olde Bar (Atlanta, GA)--Please Pleaserock Me show
August 23, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
August 30, House of Blues (Anaheim, CA)
August 31, House of Blues (Hollywood, CA)
September 27, Park Tavern (Atlanta, GA)
October 10, State Theatre (Falls Church, VA)
October 11, Gramercy Theatre (New York, NY)
October 12, Rams Head On Stage (Annapolis, MD)
October 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)
November 1, Music Farm (Charleston, SC)
December 14, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA)

Rehearsal, Day 2

Yacht Rock held one last rehearsal to check in with the guys on tomorrow's show with whom we hadn't yet played--those guys being Bill Champlin (formerly of Chicago) and Jeff Carlisi (formerly of .38 Special).

I had nothing to prepare for the .38 Special stuff--there's no saxophone, and barely enough keyboard (if at all) for one guy.  It's probably a good thing--the Champlin stuff was kind of a butt kicker.

Right off the bat, we worked on Turn Your Love Around (a tune he cowrote with Jay Graydon and Steve Lukather) down a whole step from the original A minor.  I played that for hours yesterday, so I was ready for the album version.  Bill threw in some of his own arrangement, including a gospel walk up that scared me to death.  He came around to each instrumentalist and showed us really quickly, and I kind of freaked out.  You can't tell from this picture, but I am scared to death.

Reaching out to my keyboard, he played it quickly a couple of times and then was like, "Ya got it?"  Uhh…no!  I was trying to watch his hands, but I could only focus on one at a time, and he played  through it and I didn't follow anything after the first chord.  On top of that, I was trying to figure out why he was starting with a Eb triad (he then reached down and added a C, so it was Cmin7, which still didn't help) in the key of A minor.  After the whole band had played it (after I'd screwed it up with the band), it clicked that he was playing it in G minor--I have my keyboard tuned down a whole step for this song.  So then it was a walk up from the four chord.  Ah ha!  It made much more sense when I could sit down at a piano and think it through.  Putting me on the spot completely shut down my brain and ears.

Noticing later the sax strap (for my EWI) around my neck, he asked about taking a sax solo on Turn Your Love Around.  Yeah, sure!  It also gave me a chance to kind of halfheartedly apologize for not being a good keyboardist.

The other two tunes were not as frightening.  You're the Inspiration is mostly strings, and Look Away is mostly pads.  No big deal.  Hopefully I can contribute something vocally, too.

Following rehearsal, I had just enough time to go home, dump gear, eat lunch, and drive back downtown for another one of those things like I did Wednesday night.  Wish I could tell you about it, but I can't.

Rehearsal

I got up at 8:30 (that gave me around 4 hours of sleep) and played through my Bill Champlin/80s Chicago tunes for a Yacht Rock rehearsal.  By 10 AM, I was in midtown setting up my gear.

Some of my playing was up to speed, but the majority of it still needs work at home.  Fortunately (I guess), we spent a large chunk of rehearsal sorting out the vocal harmonies, the highest and most dense of which are in You're The Inspiration, which saved me some embarrassment with regards to the state of my instrumental parts.  Vocally, I think I was getting it at rehearsal;  good on the way home;  no good at home.  I can't remember where I was.  It's probably better that I concern myself with playing the right notes.

After rehearsal, I came home, set up my keyboard, and spent almost all of the afternoon and evening bringing my parts up to speed.  Things should be much better at tomorrow's run through.  I also have tomorrow night to hit it once more before the big day.

Much too Early

Yacht Rock played CBS Better Mornings Wednesday to promote our big revival this coming Saturday at Chastain.  Normally, it wouldn't be too bad to be there at 7:30 AM, but after coming home at midnight on Monday and then a Tuesday of laundry and getting back to normal, it was pretty tough.  We played fine, but I had a lot trouble paying attention to what we were doing.

Hopefully, this link still works.

CBS Atlanta 46

From there, it was home to practice, teach, and then go to a thing that I can't tell you about.  After that, it was back home to do some more practicing for rehearsal.  I finally gave up at 4 AM.  Ouch.

Summer of Smooth Tour

Yacht Rock just finished our longest tour to date, with a stretch of eight shows over ten days.  The final show happens this coming weekend in our hometown of Atlanta at the big Yacht Rock Revival at Chastain.  For most of this particular stretch of gigs, we brought with us several of the famous guys:  Robbie Dupree, Walter Egan, Elliot Lurie, and Bobby Kimball.  Traveling with these guys has been an experience like no other!

This was also our first tour with a crew--Kip Conner and Hans Furman as our sound guys.  It made a HUGE difference.  The sound was consistent from night to night (allowing for different acoustic situations), and they also did lots of the driving and loading and unloading of gear.  Worth every penny to me!

Friday:  Mercy Lounge in Nashville.  A great show in a great room!  The Mercy has lots of vibe, and when we play there, lots of people.  I'm pretty sure this one sold out.  We played well--off to a good start!  Special thanks to Daniel Morrison from the Schooner for sitting in with us.  We love Nashville.

Saturday:  we drove up to Indianapolis to play a wedding under our pseudonym Constantly Awesome. The set list was very little Yacht Rock, and much more Springsteen, Mellencamp, Beatles, Skynyrd, AC/DC, etc.  For me, this is always a weird gig.  Most don't have saxophone, and I'm generally not up to speed on a particular part to play, so I kind of hang out and try stuff.  Sometimes it's tambourine, and sometimes it's the wrong chords.  Whatever.

We played an amazing room called the Indiana Roof Ballroom.  The only other time I was in this room, I was still in college--someone hired me to play in a big band for a commercial that was filmed there.  The place has been around for almost a hundred years--in its prime it hosted national and regional big bands who played for dancers.  It's beautiful and sounds great.  Quite a treat for us to perform here!

Sunday:  travel day.  Our hotel in Indianapolis was also hosting an Amway convention, and the elevators were clogged both at check in and departure.  Monkey and I walked down seventeen flights of stairs with our luggage.  Not fun.

Across Ohio and then across Pennsylvania we drove.  Western Pennsylvania means Deer Hunter to me.  Eastern Pennsylvania means Witness.

Our lodging was a house/cabin in the woods south of Harrisburg, lined with the world's largest collection of beer cans.  I slept on a futon in the Pacific Rim room.  Weird as hell.

Monday:  we continued on until we reached the southern tip of the New Jersey shore--Cape May.  It's a quaint little town with a modern convention hall.  They have a summer concert series, and we had the privilege of opening for John Ford Coley.

It was a nice little room with a good sized stage.  Our set was just under thirty minutes long--right when we'd really locked into the sound of the room, we were done!  For this gig, Robbie Dupree joined us.  He's a very cool guy.  We hung out with him after the gig at a nice Mexican restaurant, where he fed us story after story about his adventures.  Definitely a  "I can't believe I'm sitting here" moment.

Here we are playing Steal Away.



Here are some other videos from our show.









We spent the night at the Inn at Cape May.  It's an old Victorian hotel that is said to be haunted;  an upgrade from the beer cans, though.

Tuesday:  we headed up the Garden State Parkway to New York City for a day off.  Nice!  As in the past, we stayed at the Holiday Inn Soho, right on the edge of Chinatown.  A great place for a day off!  I ran some errands, got some exercise, and helped get the van into a parking lot.

One place that I really wanted to see was the 9/11 Memorial.  It's mind blowing.  I had to leave--the spectacle of it became too overwhelming.

I ate supper in Little Italy;  the only guy in a tiny restaurant right at closing, listening to Harry Connick Jr's version of Winter Wonderland off the When Harry Met Sally soundtrack.  Later on Our Love is Here to Stay from the same soundtrack came on, and the waiter and I in unison sang the triplet lick that ends the sax solo.  Weird, but very cool.

Tuesday night I went to Small's and checked out some music.  Great to see a packed jazz club at 1 AM!  I was going to stay and play the jam session, but at 2 AM it still hadn't opened up, so I split.

Wednesday:  after lunch we headed to Brooklyn for our show at the Brooklyn Bowl.  For this show, we had Elliot Lurie from Looking Glass (Brandy) and Robbie Dupree.  Walter Egan (Magnet and Steel) was supposed to fly up from Nashville to join us, but his flight was cancelled due to bad weather.  They were all in the second set--the first set was like a giant Dave feature, with big solos on Biggest Part of Me, Africa, Maneater, and LA Lindsay.

Special thanks to the pocket of guys out in front of me for demanding Baker Street.  Sorry it didn't happen.  Next time!

Brooklyn's own Elliot Lurie at the helm

Thursday:  We headed up the east coast to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut for our next show.  This was the first one with all four guests--Walter made it, and we also brought in Bobby Kimball from Toto.

This stage sounded good, and the casino crew was helpful in every way (in contrast to the Brooklyn Bowl crew).  These guys brought out gear in for us, and brought it back to the trailer at the end of the night.  Very nice guys, too.

I liked playing here a lot.  The room didn't have much reflection, so the stage was kind of dead.  It didn't get too loud or boomy.   One weird thing--the Wolf's Den (where we played) was surrounded by mechanical wolves on top of posts, about as high up as telephone poles, and they would occasionally all start howling, even if it was during or in between songs.

Afterwards, we hung out in a pub on the premises--a Boston firefighter (Artie, which sounds like Ottie) who came down to see us with some of his friends kept buying us beer.  Bobby Kimball showed up, too.

Friday:  we drove all day from Connecticut to get to Baltimore for our next show.  It was a long day--I think we were in the van for almost eight hours.  This show was in kind of an alley between bars (outside of Rams Head Live, where we've played before).   We noticed that the banners advertising our show said we were the Yacht Rock Venue.  Umm…

This stage was much more difficult--it was kind of like playing in an canyon between the two buildings, with a glass roof over the top.  Ouch!  Not the best acoustics for amplified music--kind of sounded like a train station.  Still, we had a pretty decent crowd.  Monkey played his ass off, particularly in the first set.

Saturday:  the ride to Philadelphia took about two hours.  I didn't get back from the YMCA in time to ride in the band van, so I rode with the guests.  It was uneventful.

Philly's gig was in the sports complex, in between Lincoln Financial Field (home of the Eagles) and Citizen's Bank Park (home of the Phillies).  Not too bad, though a thunderstorm passed through right after load in and brought everything to a halt for about forty-five minutes.

As we waited to begin, the advertisements on the big screen said we were comprised of members of Toto, Steely Dan, Michael McDonald, and the Doobie Brothers.  Not quite.

Robbie's watching us

Other than the humidity and the distraction of a giant video screen showing the Phillies game, this was a pretty good show.  Mark Cobb's playing was on fire.  Awesome stuff!























Sunday:  the band van just about died on the trip from Philly to Washington DC.  Somewhere in between, we rented a uHaul truck to bring our trailer--it was just too much weight to get up the hills.  The van muttered along at around forty miles and hour.

The Hamilton is a great room to play.  Everything about it is cool--it sounds good, it looks good, the guy who runs it is really cool…it was really nice ending to the tour.  We were back to the same set that we played at the Brooklyn Bowl (this time with Walter).

Great show all the way around.  If it didn't sell out, I don't know how they could've gotten more people in there.

Monday:  the van needed new O2 sensors (and possibly some other things), so we left Pete, Monkey, and Hans to stay until it was repaired.  The rest of us (except for Kip, who flew home) drove the "guests" van back to Atlanta.  We all hope our gear is back in town in time to play the CBS Better Mornings show Wednesday morning.

Don't forget!  This Saturday!