We're still in the midst of shooting (or being shot, I should say) a documentary, so this show had the extra pressure of cameras filming everything. I, for one, had a stationary camera staring me down all night. It's probably two hours of nerves and mouth breathing.
Some pictures from soundcheck. We also played five songs so that the cameras could do close ups.
Before the show, we took a ride around the block so that the film crew would have footage of us rolling out of a limousine and into the back door of the Tabernacle. The first try at this almost ended in disaster when the driver couldn't get the door open.
The gig was awesome in every way. A few scattered thoughts:
All my gear worked--replacing the MIDI cable between the EWI and the convertor seems to have solved my little glitches. I still had a few little things, but they were all operator error (missed the footswitch button for a patch change, etc).
That said, my tenor playing? Booooooo. I picked a fine time to overblow a couple of solo entrances that started in the palm keys. Instead of getting the right note, I got the "DUUUUUUHHH" under note sound. Also, reports from the horn section indicated that my solo on Taking it to the Streets was good, but it felt like four minutes of saxophone diarrhea.
We expanded the band with a horn section (Rob Opitz, trumpet; Gary Paulo, tenor sax; Richard Sherrington, trombone) and background singers (Keisha and Kourtney Jackson). All awesome people and killer musicians. They made us sound even better. The horn section was particularly forgiving as I kept emailing out reworked versions of the Kool and the Gang and Dazz Band songs, since the parts changed drastically from the studio recordings.
It was an fantastic night. Kudos to the Tabernacle, our crew (Kip, Zach, Kerry, and Matt), and Pleaserock (Nick, Pete, Kristen, and Rebecca) for pulling together another legendary event.
Sunday: Time for some original music! The Greg Lee Band (which includes everybody from Yacht Rock except Nick and Pete) followed Indianapolis Jones (Nick's original band, featuring Mark Cobb on drums) at the Grant Park Summer Shade Festival.
Really great weather, and great music! Indianapolis Jones sounded terrific, and Greg's band was good, too, as far as I could tell. Most of what I heard was the Marshall guitar amp behind me.
I went home and took a long nap. We made it through the weekend!
