Yacht Rock closed out the year with an Atlanta show at the Park Tavern. I do love that we've somehow managed to play this gig multiple years in a row, finishing by 12:30 AM (thank you city noise ordinance!) and home in our own beds to sleep it off. From the poster, it appears that the party went later than we did--I was home by 2 AM!
In addition to our normal show, we played an unplugged style set upstairs for the VIPs. I think it was ok, but in that cavern of a room, who can tell? Bencuya's toy keyboard had trouble holding at A=440, but he turned down and we did our best to ignore him. The crowd mostly ignored us, too, so...you're welcome?
Our main show began around 10:15 PM (we played straight through to 12:25 AM or so). The crowd of a thousand, maybe more, was surprisingly interested in the music--not the usual drunken shit show we've come to expect from that crowd on New Year's Eve. All around, the band fared well, though I had three random equipment issues pop up:
1. The EWI, on but not responding, at the beginning of Peg. I turned it off and on again and it was fine for the rest of the night.
2. My top keyboard (or maybe that channel in my mixer?), stopped making sound at the beginning of Brandy. The weird thing was that it was registering that it was making sound on the meter on the mixer, but the signal wasn't making it from the mixer to Kip and Zach. The bottom keyboard was fine, though, so the send for that channel wasn't working? I have no idea. I changed sounds, went back to the right sound, unplugged the instrument cable, plugged it back in, and everything was fine. Wuzzup with that.
3. My in ears went dead during the encore, and I played all of Rich Girl with them out, listening to the sound in the tent. When I put them in at the end of the song, things were back to normal.
Other than that, it was a very enjoyable show. Load out around the catatonic dudes and the crying girlfriends was pretty easy (and we had crew guys available to help drag stuff to the parking lot), it wasn't as painfully cold as the weatherman said it would be, and when I started my truck, Michael Brecker was coming out of the speakers. Not a bad way to ring in the new year.