More Travel Tales

Another week of traveling and gigging! Here we go.

Wednesday: I travelled to Charlotte, North Carolina with our second band, the Yacht Rock Schooner, for a gig at the National Whitewater Center. There's a huge rock climbing wall and long zip lines, but the main attraction is the giant manmade river where kayakers, rafters, and olympic hopefuls come to train. Pretty cool.

Greg Lee and I were filling in for the usual guys on the gig, who are led by Greg's brother Ganesh. I only played sax and flute, so I tried to keep busy singing any background vocals I could handle. It feels strange to not play my keyboard parts that fit around the sax and flute parts.

The gig was for web designers (their job was to take news stories and format them for news websites). There looked to be a couple of hundred of them. Unfortunately, the bar was approximately one hundred fifty yards to the right of the stage (down river!), so other than a painful few moments when they were all forced to come and stand in front of the stage for some remarks, we had less than a dozen in the audience. Ouch! Maybe they were all listening from afar...

 Thursday: Greg and I took the shuttle to the Charlotte airport, where we caught a flight to Atlanta. At the Atlanta airport, we met up with the rest of the Yacht Rock Revue, and boarded the plane to Chicago.

Our first show of this run was at Joe's on Weed Street, a place we know well, having played here numerous times.

Before the doors had even opened, I was in trouble--I guess I'd bent a key on my alto (the low D) when I was packing my gear for this trip. In trying to diagnose the problem, I accidentally knocked a cork out from under an adjustment screw on another key. After a quick phone call to my repairman, I bent the key back to its correct position and screwed in the adjustment screw to compensate for the cork that was lost. Greeeeaaaaat.

How would this one go? We hadn't played a Yacht Rock gig in twenty-six days. The answer? NOT WELL! I, for one, spent the first third of the gig desperately trying to catch up--I remembered my parts, but everything needed a extra ninety seconds to line up in my brain. I was miserable. I wanted to quit and fly home that night.

It took almost until intermission for me to find my groove again.

That being said, over 500 people on a Thursday night is not too shabby! We'll take it. Next time we come through Chicago, we'll be at the House of Blues, and I am already pumped about that.

photo cred: Andrew Costello via Twitter

Friday: I slept with Greg again. In the same room, I mean.

Northern Indiana--lots of nothing, which is its own kind of beautiful.

 

Our show at The Vogue in Indianapolis sold out the week before, I believe. It feels like we are hometown heroes.

Indy was a kick ass show! Completely different from our rusty Chicago gig. Just that quickly, we were back to our usual standards.

The video from our Facebook Live broadcast is nothing great to watch--the camera is having trouble locking in, but the audio is spot on. Another great mix by our crew of Kip and Zach!

Saturday: After the show, the van and trailer headed south. We slept for a few hours in a hotel in Indy and then caught a REEEEAAAAAALLLY early flight to Chattanooga (once again with a layover in Atlanta!). The van and trailer caught up to us after lunch (and another nap).

This day's gig was in the historic Engel Stadium. I think this one may have been part of a summer concert series or something. 

Unfortunately, rain was in the forecast. The opening band was to play around 7 PM, and we were to begin at 8 PM.

We barely got any kind of soundcheck in before the rain interrupted us.

Future radar on the Weather Channel app said we were going to get nailed around 7:15.

So...the opening band (Jason D. Williams) started up, and they were fantastic. Kind of a Jerry Lee Lewis thing, but the piano player was CRUSHING IT.

A few songs into their set (let's say 7:15!), however, the sky opened up. That was the end of that. They tarped everything. Once it was clear that this was no passing shower, the local crew helped the openers pack up and split.

We waited and waited and it poured, and then the lightning started, and the sky continued to unload on the diamond. It seemed really obvious to all of us that the gig was not going to happen, but we hung around until it became official.

Since we weren't able to play anything from the stage, we ended up doing a forty-five minute set in the stands, where I attempted to add saxophone parts and solos to several songs that required neither. Not my best playing.

photo cred: Mark A. Herndon

 After that, we waded back out to the stage and packed our gear.

I think more rain came through after we'd escaped--we drove through a good bit more on our way back to Atlanta. Home by 12:30 AM. We survived!

A Weekend of Odds and Ends

When did we last play a Yacht Rock gig?...as I write this, twenty-three days ago in Boston. Since then, it's been Zep/Who, a week off, and last Friday's project, the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense. Around that, two other little gigs. Here it is.

Thursday: I played a gig in a band centered around local celebrity chef Ford Fry. Mark Cobb has played multiple shows in Ford's band, and he pulled me in to be the utility guy, playing a little bit of saxophone, a little bit of keyboard, and a little bit of miscellaneous percussion. A dozen songs were picked (four Beatles, four Zeppelin, and four Stones).

The event was some sort of private party for car people, and Ford was doing the catering. We were set up on stage at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta. Sweet! I've never been on stage at the Fox.

For me, this gig was all about playing keyboard with a great band (other than Ford and the lead singer, everybody else in the group was a professional musician--Mike Lemond, Benjy Shanks, Mark Cobb, and Kevin Spencer) something I would not normally be privileged to do, and if I had to play Brown Sugar to get there, so be it. Maracas on Jumpin' Jack Flash? Done. They let me play the keyboard solos on Get Back and Revolution, and I must say I got pretty close on both of them! I even played the banging piano part in Rock and Roll, and I was so thrilled that it sounded so good until my arm started getting tired and my eighth notes died a slow death. But...whatever! I was almost The Great Bencuya for a few minutes!

Friday: The Talking Heads Stop Making Sense at Venkman's. The songs are long and repetitive, but it was a fun deviation from Yacht Rock nonetheless. Also, we killed it (especially on our first show). I think it appeals to the bands' collectively off center approach to music. This one will be back. Super fun.

You'll want to jump around seventeen minutes in for the beginning of the show.



Saturday: The Greg Lee Band hopped on I-20 East, headed to Covington to some upstairs listening room on the square. We opened for a singer/songwriter and her band from Nashville. We played ok, had a good time, and (most of us) ran out the door as soon as our set was over. Home before midnight. Passed out on the couch.

The next two weeks are NUTS!: Tuesday rehearsal for Purple Rain, Wednesday with the Schooner in Charlotte, Thursday with the Revue in Chicago, Friday in Indianapolis, Saturday in Chattanooga, Sunday church gig back in Atlanta. Then, Tuesday in Miami, Wednesday back in Indy, Thursday in Atlanta, Friday is our Purple Rain show in Atlanta, and Saturday is Savannah, and Sunday I'm back on the church gig in Atlanta. As Skip Caray once said, "We'll either bond or never speak again."

Zep/Who

Yacht Rock (plus special guest Peter Stroud) played a show of all Led Zeppelin and The Who last night at the Variety Playhouse. As you might imagine, not much for me to do--of the twenty-six songs, I played on nine (2 background vocals, 2 tambourine part, 2 keyboard parts, 2 horn parts, and 1 cowbell part). Lotta hanging around...

I watched a few songs from the floor...

Watched a few from the balcony...

Hung out in the green room...

Here's my chart for the beginning of Stairway to Heaven. I've seen a few others on the internet, and I don't agree with them.

All of the moving stuff (particularly the entire second line) was difficult to play smoothly with the sustain pedal (but not overlap anything). Also, I made the mistake of not hearing my part against the acoustic guitar at soundcheck--at the gig, I had to back my volume way down so I could hear (and stay in time) with Monkeyboy.

Quick load out from this one. I was home by 12:15 AM.

The Great Northeast

Good times in the great northeast! I'm a little late in blogging about this, but...so what. The past week has been a little hectic with rehearsals and a show (and life beyond all of that), so I blew it off. 

Thursday: We flew in to BWI (Baltimore), where the crew, van, and trailer picked us up on our way to Silver Spring, Maryland for our first show.

Silver Spring has a Fillmore--the brand "Fillmore" (like San Fran/Bill Graham Fillmore) has been hung on several cool rooms around the country by Live Nation. We've played a few of them: Charlotte, TLA in Philadelphia (which has since gone back to being the Theatre of the Living Arts, and Irving Plaza (which has gone back to being Irving Plaza). If we had a heavy schedule of Houses of Blues and Fillmores, that'd be cool with me. Nice crews and stages in every one. Maybe they should build one in Nashville?

Anyway, this was maybe not a popular move with our friends at The Hamilton in DC, but I like this place! It's a bigger room, and considering that it's no big deal for us to pack The Hamilton, maybe this is the next step? Or maybe we alternate?

This was a pretty good show, from what I remember. It had been nearly two weeks since our last Yacht Rock show (in LA!), so there might have a been a little rust, but we got back into the groove pretty easily.

photo cred: Kaitlyn Peel

Friday: We stopped for lunch at this mom-and-pop Italian sandwich place called Ioannoni's (5 vowels, 4 consonants) in Delaware. Always a line from the counter to the door. Always somebody on hold on the phone. Always two people yelling to two other people behind the counter, and another person calling out the names of the completed orders. My wife would say, "They're Italian! What do you expect?"

No veggie option. I ate a meatball sandwich instead. Really good.

On to New York City. We made pretty good time to Irving Plaza (there before load in time!), leaving us almost an hour to kill. I went for a walk.

warming up

Sold out! This show was one of our most epic New York shows. The sound was great, the set list was great, and the crowd was tremendous. Our special guest for the evening was Albert Bouchard, famous as the drummer (and cowbell player!) for Blue Öyster Cult. He joined us on cowbell and vocals for Don't Fear the Reaper. Woah!

The rest of the night was equally great. Sometimes it's difficult (because of the in ear monitors) to gauge how the crowd is enjoying the show. On this gig, I could tell. We hit a home run. Even when someone began releasing smiley face balloons, we were unfazed--Zach collected them all, and eventually began stabbing them with a knife. I tried to pop one on Monkeyboy's head (no luck). Together, we burst it with the headstock of his guitar, which unfortunately made his guitar go out of tune. So much for that.

Post gig pizza stop around the corner from Irving Plaza.

Saturday: We continued up the east coast to Boston for two sold out shows at The Sinclair.

Two sold out shows; we played one complete gig, they cleared the room, and we had to do it again! Getting back to the energy of the first set for the second was tough. By the time it was all over, we were FRIED.

photo cred: Karyn Estrella

I'm really proud of my sax solo on this one (around 1:25). That horn part sounds good, too. Another great mix by Kip!



Somehow, we persevered, finished the gig, got all the gear back into the trailer, and made it to the hotel. Then this happened...

(Monkeyboy)