We loaded in at 2 PM, onto an uncovered stage that worried me--I'm not fond of leaving all of my gear in direct sunlight for several hours. Fortunately (I guess), the threat of rain became real enough that the whole stage was tarped. It turned out that it did NOT rain (yay!), so all gear was fine.
The humidity did some weird things to my EWI, though--it appears that my train wreck at Chastain was maybe not a transposition button issue after all, but an issue with the heat/humidity. I think it's possible that whatever senses that my fingers are touching maybe needed an adjustment (there's a small screw-like knob on the back that can regulate this).
Hey Nineteen was early in the set and everything worked fine with the ol' EWI. Later in the evening, Africa was once again a strange problem of one or two notes not transmitting correctly--the B I was fingering was sounding as a Bb, and one other note (an F or E) was also wrong. All the other notes were correct. Hmmm. So, Africa had some troubles, but only where those couple of notes occurred. Weird because I played the B and the other note in Hey Nineteen and they were correct. My next thought was that maybe my Africa patches had become corrupted somehow, but we played Rosanna (with the solo beginning on B) a few songs later, and it was once again not working correctly. The shame of it!
I got home, set up my EWI rig, and everything worked perfectly. What the hell? Anyway, I readjusted the aforementioned screw-like knob. Hopefully that settles it. I guess we won't know until I screw up Africa tomorrow night at the Fox. At least we'll be indoors (upstairs in the Egyptian ballroom)--then I'll be able to rule out the weather. It does appear that my EWI has some sort of prejudice against Toto songs. Maybe it's some Bobby Kimball voodoo.
In other news, Dustin (of Schooner and AM church gig fame) filled in for Mark Bencuya, who is on vacation. He did a really good job. Speaking of which, there was a guy who, at a glance, looked like Bencuya. We were totally confused. What was he doing here?
