Two More

This past weekend's adventures:

Friday: Yacht Rock played a private show at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. A little strange--we've played more than a dozen times in this room, but this was the first private/corporate party. Interesting. For us, it was a dress rehearsal for next week's big public show at The Tabernacle--this year's Yacht Rock Revival, so in addition to the band, we also had Keisha and Courtney on background vocals, and the mighty horn section of Rob Opitz, Gary Paulo, and Richard Sherrington.

Pretty good gig, all things considered. The horn section (directly over my left shoulder) mostly sounded fantastic, and I felt like I played pretty well doing my usual thing. My EWI rig continues to scare me, though--this gig's hiccup was in Peg, where it randomly decided to play a half step lower than my fingering for a couple of notes. Having updated the MainStage app and the OS, I've hopefully ruled out the possibility that my laptop is ready to die. The EWI itself seems ok, so my thinking is that the MIDI cable is going bad, and it's transmitting bad data to the computer. Saturday's gig is a fly date, meaning I will be on different cables, but the same laptop and EWI. If things are solid there, I'll try replacing the suspects in my regular gear.

Too much about that...the horns were great!

Saturday: 8 AM came much too quickly, and I was out the door and headed to the carpool. We flew (in costume as part of a promo for the Revival) to Boston, then piled into a Sprinter van and drove two hours north to New Hampshire for a birthday party.

First up, check this out--as you may know, carrying two saxophones and the EWI, and my backpack (total weight 44 pounds), is a point of high anxiety for me. I'm always only one cranky gate agent or one tiny regional jet away from having to check my instruments, which would most certainly result in damage, as the leather gig bags in which I carry them are not ATA approved. In anticipation of some big fly dates later in the year, I am trying to find a solution where I can check my saxophones (all the sax players say 'Woah! You're crazy', but so is tempting fate by using soft gig bags). Step one: for this trip, I checked the alto and the EWI in a Pelican (a 1615 Air, which is the largest Pelican that you can check without being charged overweight or oversized).

I'll just go ahead and say that this solution worked great! My instruments survived and life was grand. The end.

The rest of the story: New Hampshire on a lake. Our "stage" was a barge next to lake club. The occasion was a fiftieth birthday party. We showed up at 4:30, set up, ate, played basically 7-9 PM, watched the fireworks/packed up, and were on the road back to Boston by 9:30 PM. Easy gig. The backlined gear was good. The weather was nice. The barge was rocking all afternoon until the boat traffic finally died down. I have no complaints.

photo by Peter Olson

These little guys swarmed us once the sun went down. One came all the way back to Atlanta (still alive!) in my new alto/EWI Pelican!

My fly date EWI rig performed flawlessly (even after I accidentally knocked the EWI off the table), which hopefully means that my suspicions about the cable are correct. Too bad the next gig is FREAKIN' HUGE! I guess if the thing still messes up next weekend, I can throw myself in front of a bus or something.

Sunday: Homeward bound.

The kid behind me kept kicking my seat.