Yacht Rock played a wedding at the Egyptian Ballroom Saturday night. I got the feeling they were pretty big fans by the number of specific song requests from our list--probably almost half! We also learned a shag song (yuck) and Who Loves You by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I like this tune a lot, and I think it's a good add. Hopefully it'll be a keeper. If nothing else, it's an effort towards changing things up and keeping the set list from going stale. Same old songs on every gig=bored band.
What a video, too. Funny to think that hairy, middle aged men could be pop stars.
The big problem on this gig was the catering, who delivered plates of once hot food to our green room. Do I really want to try and eat a plate of cold beef, cold fish, cold shrimp, and cold fries? Got any fruits or vegetables? This was totally inedible, so I went out to my truck and got a granola bar to carry me through the gig. Not cool. I realize we're not their primary responsibility, but that "meal" was pathetic. After we complained, they brought some grapes and bread and maybe a scoop of hummus, and another plate of shrimp. I don't know. I'd already given up at that point.
We watched Footloose until it was time to play.
Other than that, it was a pretty decent gig. Zach ran sound (Kip was out with Shawn Mullins). The crowd was into it pretty quickly, which made for a pretty entertaining gig. Cobb showed up a with a set of Steve Jordan sized cymbals (18" high hats made of two crashes), and then played most of the night sounding kind of like Steve Jordan.
I wish I'd kept count of some of these rooms in which I've played multiple gigs. I bet I've played the Egyptian Ballroom close to fifty times by now.
Load out was actually not too bad. The aforementioned catering people split seconds after the end of the reception.
In other news, I had my second week of two (back to back) church gigs. I still haven't nailed down everything in the first one. So close, and yet so far. I'd love to get in there more often and actually be comfortable with what we were doing. My flute face took forever to settle in, too. I couldn't find my tuning, and I kept doing weird stuff with my embouchure as I tried to get there. Finally, I put my head joint back to the spot where I almost always have it and everything was cool with the pitch and my sound. Stoooopid Dave.
The second mass was nothing worth mentioning. Flute was good, but my pitch on soprano felt all over the place. I gave in and opened the tuner app on my phone--I was in tune. Confidence! I feel tone deaf tonight.
Yacht Rock is on the road this week! Stops in Ardmore/Philly (Thursday), NYC (Friday), a wedding in Virginia Beach (Saturday), and then Charlotte (Sunday).
