Thursday +

Yacht Rock had a pair of gigs Thursday, and then a van ride to north Georgia and back Friday.  I took several naps.

Thursday:  the day began with a morning performance at Timber Ridge Elementary.  We did one of these a few months ago in Nashville.  I'm guessing it was purely a publicity stunt, except we didn't really do much with it on social media, so...there was a guy with a camera from WSB there, too, but we didn't get any coverage (as of yet) because everybody's fixated on the weather.

On to the next thing!  We played our third consecutive Thursday nighter at Venkman's.  I took a nap in the green room between soundcheck and the gig.

As a tribute to Glenn Frey, we added a song from his first solo album.

Nick is on paternity leave for the next six weeks, so Greg's brother Ganesh (of Yacht Rock Schooner fame) is filling in.  He sang lead on this one.

Friday:  we headed to Nashville for a private gig.  This trip was doomed.

I woke up from a nap when we pulled over to deal with a flat tire.

photo cred:  Greg Lee

 As conditions in Tennessee deteriorated, we hung out a convenience store, and finally the gig was called off.  Good thing, too, because an 18 wheeler flipped on the other side of Monteagle.  Who knows what would have happened to us.

I slept the whole way back to Atlanta.  After dividing our gear, we went our separate ways for the weekend.

Dave and Dave!

Dave and Dave Duo made our triumphant return to Venkman's Saturday afternoon.  I kind of wondered if we'd been blacklisted or something, as we'd played there twice in November, and then...nothing.  All the brunch dates in December and January filled up without so much as an inquiry, so I finally spoke up about it.  Anyway, we're back, and I believe we'll do one a month for the next few months.

So...Dave (Ellington) and I tried a few of his newer tunes culled from a recent quartet gig, plus a handful of our old reliables.  Fun stuff!  I felt really good on this one.  I'm going to blame my mistake coming back in at the end of Cold Duck Time on the crowd noise (the sold out puppet show that proceeded us was packed), and my starting Crawdaddy a whole step too high was because I was accustomed to reading concert pitch charts.  Damn.



If you like what you hear, you can come see the David Ellington Quartet (with me) January 30 at Venkman's for brunch, 12-3 PM.  The website says trio, but Ellington says quartet.  http://venkmans.com/event/brunch-w-david-ellington-jazz-trio-2/

Unplugged

Yacht Rock played another Thursday night at Venkman's.  Since Mark Cobb was unavailable, it was decided that we play without drums, hence the "Unplugged."  Not entirely true;  the show was acoustic guitar oriented, but I still played a keyboard, as did Bencuya.

looking cool and probably playing something dumb (photo cred:  Jim Ramsdell)

Beyond that, this was another fun Thursday night.  Since the idea was to pare things down, it was fun to renegotiate our way through these songs in a slightly different format, so I played more hand percussion, played some string parts on organ, and played the Africa solo on flute.

Other random things...

1.  Monkeyboy didn't realize that we were going drummer-less until two songs into soundcheck.

2.  We added Gerry Rafferty's Right Down the Line.  I think it's a keeper!  Then again, I say that about every song we add.

3.  We played David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World, learning it in the green room thirty minutes before we went on stage.  I guess it went ok?  Other than the Young Americans album, I've not been exposed to much David Bowie, so I'd never heard of this song.  Everybody else acted like it was as familiar as something like Hey Jude, so...oops?  Also, I guess Nirvana covered this song--I didn't know that either.  Everybody was annoyed with anyone in the audience who suggested that it was a Nirvana tune.  Uhh...I know nothing.  My interests lie elsewhere, I guess.

4.  A drunk lady got on stage during Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard, and in between every line in the verses (sung by Pete), Greg Lee would ask for security.  Our monitor guy Zach (happy birthday Zach!) finally came up and dragged her off.  By the hair, I hope.

5.  Monkey played acoustic guitar into his old TC Electronics pedal, and the thing would randomly shut off every couple of songs.  At one point, he tried to punt it off the stage.  He refused to believe that his power cable might have been going bad.

6.  The keyboard stand company sent me replacement knobs.  I only needed one right now, so the other is ready the next time this happens.

7.  Greg Lee has a new EP out!  I played on one song (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/greglee3/OneKindofLove).

The whole record is great, though.  You should buy ten of them.  Check out his new website here:  http://www.gregleesongs.com

8.  Emergency gig!  The Dave and Dave Duo is back up and running, and we're playing at Venkman's tomorrow afternoon after the puppet show (what?), 1-3 PM.  Who knew that all I had to do was email and ask for more gigs there?

10 High vs. Venkman's

The Yacht Rock Revue began a string of Thursdays at Venkman's last week, vaguely (super vaguely) reminiscent of our old Thursday night gig at the 10 High...except the load in wasn't disgusting, and ceiling didn't leak, and it didn't stink of cigarette smoke, and the PA worked, and at the end of the night my ears didn't feel like they'd been hollowed out with a screwdriver.  It was on Thursday night, though, and there were some familiar 10 High faces there checking us out.

At set up, I found out that another keyboard stand of mine had died, once again at the same knob--the threads on the screw were stripped.  Fortunately, Nick had to swing by his house for some other stuff, and he grabbed one of the spares from the rehearsal room.  I called the manufacturer after soundcheck, and when I asked for replacement parts for this particular stand, he knew exactly what I was talking about.  "I have nightmares about this particular knob."  OK...sympathetic customer service!

my broken keyboard stand (d. January 7, 2016) and its shitty predecessor (d. July 9, 2015)

Nick had a really good set list for this one--an excellent mix of old and new stuff, and neither set was too long.  I can dig it.

Come see us next Thursday when we'll do it again!  Maybe I'll even have a new knob for my keyboard stand.

Quartet

I was barely able to pull myself together Sunday morning to head back to Venkman's for a brunch gig, this time in a quartet led by David Ellington.  Filling out the band was Mike Beshara on bass and Ben Williams on drums.

I think it went pretty well.  My sides were sore, making good breathing difficult, and I was pretty tired, but I hung with it as best I could.  Dave threw several originals at us, plus a variety of odd meter tunes (I'm getting the hang them), and the Chick Corea classic You're Everything (my worst solo ever in a long time!).

We finished up at 3 PM.  I went home and crashed for a couple of hours, staggering back out the door in time to make my church gig.  By the time I'd returned home, I almost felt like me again.

Hangover Ball

...and just like that, 2016 began with a gig!  Yacht Rock plays the Beatles (formerly known as Please Pleaserock Me) performed two sets at Venkman's.   It seemed like pretty much everybody who didn't want to deal with drunk people the night before instead chose this show.  Nice move.

Our horn section for the evening was Paul Poovey on trumpet and Tom Gibson on trombone.  Both played very well.  Also playing well on the gig was The Great Bencuya, whose fantastic chops shown through in my in-ear mix--probably because it wasn't clouded with my own attempted keyboarding.  The entire second set was one of those times I wish I could've just watched over his shoulder.  It was particularly awesome.

Not particularly awesome was my sax solo on Oh Darling! The first part was fine, but I remember thinking How does this end? right before I screwed up the end.

Post show hijinks at Monkeyboy's expense (hiding a guitar case) and then at my own (with my bari sax going missing for several minutes, thanks to Kip).  All in good fun.

What was not fun...the next morning, I woke up knowing that I was going to barf--from my first second of consciousness, I could feel it.  It arrived (multiple times) about a half hour later.  I thought that throwing up had solved whatever was bothering my stomach, but after showering, there was an encore (multiple encores).  I spent the rest of the day in bed, actually glad that I had no gig on a Saturday night.  No drinking or anything the night before...it was some kind of one day stomach virus that tried to kill me.  The fever finally broke after midnight. Miserable.

NYE 2015

New Year's Eve 2015.  Yacht Rock played at Park Tavern in Atlanta again, a gig we've played for most of the past few years.  The gig is on the ice skating rink, so it's a bit chilly, but the noise ordinance fortunately sets the ending time of the gig right around 12:15 AM.  I can recall some crappy country club New Year's Eve parties I played in the past where the last set would begin at midnight, finishing around 1 or 1:30 AM.  No thanks.  People are a mess by that point.

The Schooner guys opened the evening with a fine set of their own.  We jumped up right after that and played maybe 75 minutes.  Not a bad gig!  Home by 2 AM.