Here's a bit of an oddity from last week's calendar: Yacht Rock had a gig in South Carolina on Thursday, drove home on Friday, drove back to South Carolina for a gig on Saturday, and came home again on Sunday. Lots of time snoozing and looking at my phone in the van over those four days.
Thursday: Gig #1 was some sort of multi day food festival in Palmetto Bluff--I never did quite catch on to exactly what was going on, probably because I was asleep in the back seat of the van for most of the ride.
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| typical backstage sign |
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| this cool truck became a doughnut display in the evening, with treats on every peg on the sign in the back |
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| singers! |
At the center of this small festival was a three level treehouse. Super cool.
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| our tiny stage |
I thought I'd fixed my laptop, but the same creeping mouse pointer things occurred. Just like last time, the sounds were unaffected, but it appears that my computer has a ghost in the machine.
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| I spent most of the break at the fire pit, trying to keep warm |
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| the overhead trees at load out |
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| drive fast, Zach! |
This show was our triumphant return to the Newberry Opera House, which I believe is their fully restored community arts center. The room sounds great (it's really dead and really dark in the audience, so much so that it feels like a television studio), and the hospitality is handled by a couple of old ladies who prepare a Thanksgiving feast for the band (they even made me a special vegetarian meal of black beans and rice).
I read online that the cause of my crazy laptop problems might be because of a bad power supply. I think that's completely plausible; plugging my phone into the charger brick that came with my iPad causes the touch screen to behave erratically, and I had some popping sounds earlier in the year from my EWI rig that would go away when I unplugged it from the power supply. To test this theory, I used my power supply from my fly-date gear. Surprise! The laptop was stable for the entire gig.
Unfortunately, this happened to be the night that the batteries in the EWI itself died, and it was just my luck that it happened right at the solo in Africa, hanging a MIDI note and then going completely dead. Damnit! I played EWI on three songs the entire night--why did it have to happen right there?
After we finished the song, the band allowed me another crack at the solo, and OF COURSE the damn thing worked that time. I went ahead and swapped out the batteries after that.
A word to the wise: even though the EWI has a little light that signals when battery power is low, it will start acting weird before the light comes on. When it behaves erratically, try changing the batteries.
Later in the evening, I hopefully redeemed myself with one of my better solos on Taking It to the Streets. Maybe the audience will remember that more than the failure of my equipment.
Lastly, Greg's magic fan died, probably of heartache after he cut his long locks off several weeks ago.
Turkey Eve shows are Wednesday, November 22, 7 PM (unplugged) and 10 PM (regular) at Venkman's!
