Back to Indianapolis on Saturday for a festival appearance downtown. The high was projected to be 79 degrees, and we were all pretty excited about a break from the summer heat.
Before we even left Atlanta, we had a major emergency: Monkeyboy's Delta app on his phone crashed right before we were called to board, and the person working the gate was unwilling to help him--he'd obviously had a boarding pass and photo ID to make it through security to the gate, and THEY COULD EVEN FIND HIM IN THE COMPUTER FOR OUR FLIGHT, but for some reason they couldn't print a new boarding pass, so they were going to leave him standing there as they shut the door to the airplane and pushed back. We were on the plane asking the flight attendants to do SOMETHING to intervene, and eventually the asshole red coat Delta dude let Monkey come through. Things were TENSE. Delta screwed up BAD.
Anyway, we made it. Airport lunch in Indy. On to the gig!
There was some sort of awful battle of the bands before us.
A few thoughts about this gig:
1. The weather was great, but as we progressed through our time slot, the direct sunlight found more and more of us, and it got hooooooooooooot. Too bad, too, because if we could've stayed in the shade, this gig would have been in perfect weather.
2. The gig was over at 6 PM! Woo! If we'd planned a little better, we conceivably could've flown to Indy, played the gig, and flown home all in the same day.
3. I'm still scared to death of my EWI set up. The patch-switching snafu from Birmingham has been cured by a new MIDI cable, but Tuesday night, the transpose button turned off unexpectedly (I think? Maybe a brushed it by accident or something), and the setup button next to it turned on. The transpose button thing happened again at soundcheck, which spooked me, and I spent fifteen minutes after soundcheck trying to figure out if I could make it do it again (which I could not). However, I paid extra extra extra close attention to it on the three EWI songs we played. I put in new batteries (when the batteries start get old, the EWI tends to get weird), and hopefully this solves all my problems.
4. After the gig, I spoke to a woman who asked me, "When did you learn how to play the saxophone?" Trying to explain to her that it's kind of lifetime long endeavor did not go well. I immediately began to plot my escape from the conversation.
There was no green room available, so we changed clothes literally in the street, in between the production truck and the double-parked van and trailer.
And...Kip stole my phone...
After we ate, Kip and I walked to the hotel (with a pit stop for frozen yogurt). It wasn't even 9 PM and the weather was so nice that I took the opportunity to go for a walk around downtown Indianapolis.
Check out the rubber bands on this dude's alto. Several things we also duct taped in place. Ouch! He saving up to buy a new horn, so I put extra tip money in his case.
The Indianapolis Indians (minor league team) finished their season on this night, so I got to see the fireworks show and check out right field.
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| No. |
I passed a bar that had a mechanical bull in the window, so I went in to check it out. They were also having a mustache contest, so I thought, "Why not?"
This dude came off the bull a couple of times, and it kept swinging after he fell and pinned him to the mat. Should I ride? It's easy to think of how many way I could injure myself in front of strangers, so I got out of line. Leave it to the experts.
I did a lap around the bar to see what the other mustaches looked like. Clearly I would not win, so I left.
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| Look at those sad eyes. |
Bus terminal. MARTA doesn't have anything like this.
I walked into another bar and listened to this trio play a couple of tunes. Nobody I'd ever heard of, but they were great!
War memorial.
More war memorials.
By this point, the foot traffic had begun to thin and the motorcycle and cars had begun to cruise around, so I headed back to the hotel.
I didn't notice this earlier, but the Indiana Roof Ballroom was right across the street from our hotel. Yacht Rock played a wedding reception there, and years earlier I had performed on a regional healthcare commercial shoot while still in college. I don't think I've ever seen the front the building before.
The state capital was also right on the corner of the hotel.
The next morning, we flew back to Atlanta. I stole the hat of the dude next to me while he was sleeping.
Something I'd never seen before at the Atlanta airport: as we were riding the long, two or three story escalators down to the plane train, we heard "LOOK OUT!" behind us, and turned just in time to see a suitcase bouncing down the steps. The Great Bencuya stuck a leg out and caught it. Seconds later, we heard a scream, and looked up to see a woman summersaulting down the escalator. Ouch! Paramedics were thankfully on the scene in seconds. Pretty freaky.