Duo at Oglethorpe

David Ellington and I played an afternoon duo gig at Oglethorpe University Saturday afternoon.  I'm not sure what the occasion was.  We were background music for some type of reception in the student center (which is beautiful, by the way).

Special thanks to the student who, with a mouth full of food, leaned across the organ to tell Ellington we needed to stop at 4:30 so her boss could do something.  He spent the break wiping that off.

Also thank you to Mr. Enthusiasm, whose dragging claps on two and four almost brought one tune to a halt.  Later on when he yelled for Mr. Magic from across the room, I knew we were in trouble, and soon after that when he sat down in front of us a sang Oye Como Va at full volume while I was soloing, I almost screamed.  I bet your teenage son was really proud of you.

Anyway...most of this is really good.  Check it out.

Madness in Athens

Yacht Rock was back in Athens Friday night, this time for a private party at a country club.  We were there plenty early to set everything up, soundcheck, and eat (we headed out to an excellent Mexican restaurant).  By the time we returned, the audience was pretty drunk and disorderly--lots of really bitchy demands for the hand percussion, people falling onto the stage, people trying to get on stage, one girl swinging a guitar cable like a jump rope while the guitar was being played, and a woman who repeatedly slapped Pete in the leg with a party favor while he was trying to play.  When we're the sane ones who are scolding people over their behavior, that's saying something!  

There's a special sort of attitude that comes around when alcohol meets affluence, the kind of thing that makes you wonder how they'd like it if we came to their jobs during the week, sat on their desks, spilled a beer, yelled at them when they were on the phone, and insisted on using their computer to look at porn.  It's all in good fun until it's no longer fun.

Anyway, all's well that ends well;  ninety-eight percent of those people were harmless.  We finished up at 1 AM (a rare three set night!), packed the trailer, and headed back to Atlanta.  Home at 4:05 AM.

More Keyboard Stand Crap

The keyboard stand thing continues to frustrate Mark Bencuya and me.  In Houston last week, my eyebolt solution took a hit when one of the bolts failed--the threads had once again flattened out in one spot, and thus would not tighten properly.  We swapped it for a fresh eyebolt and played the gig.

However, I'm still wondering: why?  I brought Bencuya's stand home, retapped the threads in the stand, cleaned up the threads on the eyebolts, and reinstalled everything.  I could already see, though, that the threads were beginning to flatten out in one spot just from one gig, so it is only a matter of time before it needs more repair.

In checking my own keyboard stand, my eyebolts began to hop off the threads right then.  It made me wonder:  if the threads in the stand are good and the threads on the bolt are good (and their sizes match), what is causing the bolt to deform when they are tightened?

I now believe that the root of the problem is a strong spring that fits in the joint of the keyboard stand.  When the bolt is tightened, the spring is putting too much force on the threads, causing them to flatten and eventually fail.

No springs for me, and even after tightening and loosing these bolts several times, the threads still look good.  Maybe this is the solution?  I'm less sure of this than ever.

Houston

Yacht Rock was hired for a particularly cool gig last weekend in Houston, performing revival-style for a corporate concert at Minute Maid Park in Houston (home of the Astros).  They built a stage over the third base dugout and we played facing the stands.  We backed Elliot Lurie (Looking Glass), Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss (Player), Matthew Wilder, and Eddie Money, and Ambrosia played their own short set as the opener.

I've never been to Houston before, but I've heard that the summers are pretty miserable.  The weather on this day couldn't have been more perfect.

The grounds crew spent much of our set up taking care of the field, which equated to water everywhere, including these puddles perilously close to the power supply.

Ambrosia's soundcheck.  Every time they came to a spot that was originally a sax solo, I wanted to throw stuff.  Greg subbed on bass for them and NAILED IT!

So...a run down of the show:  Nights on Broadway, You Make My Dreams, no problem;  Dancing in the Moonlight and Brandy with Elliott, just fine;  Still the One and Africa, all good;  Kid's American and Break My Stride with Matthew, easy;  This Time I'm in it for Love, at a frantic tempo, but that's how they want it;  How Long in a different key and plenty of "I can't tell which guitar is supposed to be soloing right now";  Baby Come Back with more dramatic fermatas than ever;  Taking it to the Streets--the batteries died on my tenor microphone right when we started this tune, so I had to sit out the first verse to swap them with the alto batteries (which probably means it'll die again in another gig or two);  then the Eddie Money stuff.

Eddie changed endings and his song order at soundcheck, grilling us at the rehearsal.  At the gig, however, all the endings kind of went out the window.  He also sang more at soundcheck than he did at the gig (during the show, we played an entire chorus of Shakin' with only the background "woahs").  I tried to sing along to myself to keep my place in the song, because without the lead vocal, it would be easy to lose your place.

I'm not sure what the final order was, but I think it might have been Two Tickets to Paradise, Baby Hold on to Me, Shakin', and then Take Me Home Tonight ("Does anybody have room in their car for me?" was his joke).

We came off stage after that so they could shoot off fireworks, but the audience demanded an encore...but we don't know any more Eddie Money songs!  Eddie suggested we do a truncated version of Two Tickets, and we decided to go into Footloose to close out the evening.

Word never got to Monkey about the change, and he ended up playing the beginning of Footloose on the wrong guitar (tuned a half step down).  Then he flipped out and started cursing.  Once we got off stage, Nick dragged him into the dressing room and laid into him for screaming obscenities into a microphone.  Yikes!  Fortunately, Kip had muted Monkey's vocal as soon as he realized that he was probably going to go berserk.

Anyway, the fireworks went on for at least ten to fifteen minutes, giving us plenty of time for a long gig post mortem.

We brought a lot of gear to this one (quite a bit of Kip and Zach's PA).  Pete made sure the pack was correct.

The next day, we flew home.  I bought the only banana in Houston (Bush) Airport for $1.41.

Train Cruise 2016

Cruise time!  It's been a year since our last cruise--the 2015 Sail Across the Sun/Train Cruise.  Time to do it again.

Thursday:  up too early to fly to Ft. Lauderdale, and then we took a shuttle to the port of Miami to meet the boat.  I'm pretty sure we do this to save money.

A few changes for this one:

1.  Nick is still on paternity leave, so Ganesh Giri Jaya (of the Yacht Rock Schooner) filled in for him.

2.  Kip and Zach were along as crew, and they brought the in ear monitors.  Leading up to this trip, there was some doubt about whether or not we'd be able to use them because of the different sound systems on the boat and the short turn around time between bands.  They agreed to give it a shot.

As usual, the host company, Sixthman, made it very easy for us to hop on board.  A quick check of our rooms--we have balconies this year.  Monkey on one side...

and Kip and Zach on the other.

The cruise ship terminal at the port.

After lunch and a little bit of a nap, it was time to turn the boat around and leave.

A stable of yachts--check out how the one in the middle of the picture has a HELICOPTER on the back.

Once we'd left the harbor, I squeezed in a couple of hours of practicing.

Gig number one!  We had the atrium stage, which situates us directly across from the front desk of this floating hotel.  After the frantic set up (and some quick checking of the in ear monitors), we settled in for our seventy-five minute set.  The show was fun, but getting on stage, throwing our gear together, plugging into the PA, and sound checking in about forty minutes is really stressful.  I was glad that there were no equipment failures.

Friday:  Sea day.  Breakfast of...

Maybe the best part of the entire cruise was the balcony door.  I slept the first two nights with the door open, which was great with Miami's 70 degree, low humidity winter.  Then again, one time I woke up and Zach was looking at me from around his balcony.

Gig number two!  This one was supposed to be outside on the top deck around lunch time, but the wind and the potential for wet weather caused us to be moved into the atrium for a second straight night.  No problem, though.  All the rough moments from the previous night's in ear mixes were completely solved.  This was one of the best atrium shows we've ever had on this boat.

Saturday:  I woke up off the coast of Jamaica.

Zach.

Breakfast.

It looks great, but we'd heard from people who went ashore early that this port was pretty crappy--very few options for food, too many options for cabs (to take us where, exactly?) and shitty weed (and who wants to get busted and possibly left behind in Jamaica?).

Monkeyboy and I walked down the sidewalk (propositioned eleven times in ten minutes for cab rides).  As we began to loop back around to the ship, we ran into The Great Bencuya and his girlfriend.

Our original idea was to eat at Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville (in indication of how bad the options were), but the wait was damn near eternal, so we left.  On the way back to the boat, we happened across a bistro, across from the guy with the coconuts and the rum.

It took around two hours to get our meals (I had a nine dollar chicken wrap, so it wasn't anything out of the ordinary.  We would have eaten better if we'd stayed on the boat.  Catching the zika virus would have given us something to do.  A waste of time and money, but at least I can now say I've gotten off the ship in Jamaica, and I never have to do it again.

Gig number three was also to be on the pool deck, but the winds and the rain moved us into the smallest stage on the boat, the Spinnaker Lounge.  The stage is small and dark, and the low ceiling means that the lights are almost at eye level.

The two atrium shows used a compatible monitor mixer, so our in ear mixes were mostly the way we always have them set (small problems on the first night, but things were really good on the second).  The Spinnaker used a completely different system, so Zach had to create new monitor mixes for all of us from scratch, and he nailed it.

Sunday:  I was very happy to have this last day at sea free of gigs.  Not much happening in the ocean today, except for a race with a container ship.

I saw some of Train's last set.  Very good.

So...Greg, Monkey, and I were drunk enough to get involved in the singles mixer (even though we aren't single).  When we arrived, it became speed dating, so we were volunteered as target practice.

Monkeyboy made name tags for the three of us.

One of my dates was particularly disinterested in the process.  It appears that we were doing shots.

I should point out that the theme for the day was The Great Gatsby, hence the flapper dresses.

Uhhh...we had wine.

We left (Greg crawled out on his hands and knees to get away) the speed dating thing to go to the tequila tasting (already in progress).  Sixthman had volunteered us to sort of cohost the event with Train's bass player.  We were totally obnoxious.  I'm pretty sure he hates us.

So...I had no tequila.  Greg had no tequila.  Monkeyboy had lots of tequila, and had to go to his room for the rest of the cruise.

After a cooling off/sobering up period, the surviving members of the band attended our traditional meal at the teppanyaki restaurant.

Greg and Ganesh celebrated their birthday.  The restaurant staff tried to divide this cake nine ways (a lethal dose, 6"x6"x4").  I tried, but after eating two helpings of fried rice, there was simply not enough room left in my human container.

We split up and everybody went to pack.  We raced a couple of cruise ships.

Monday:  get off the boat!  Where is our shuttle back to Ft. Lauderdale!

Waiting to go through security.  Pete pulled this hat from the bushes behind us.

I slept the whole way home.  It's the only way to fly.

See y'all next year!