Cruisin' Again

Yacht Rock was invited (for the sixth year in a row) to perform as a musical guest on the Sail Across the Sun Cruise. For the past five years, the band Train has headlined this cruise, but they are stepping aside, leaving us a decent chance of not playing on this boat anymore. I think I've had enough of playing on the ships, so if this is the last one, so be it.

Wednesday: the ship leaves from New Orleans, but we flew into Baton Rouge to save some money. I slept the whole way--I'm an excellent sleeper.

The van we'd arranged to drive us to the port was more of a limo than a church van, so we were forced to pile most of our luggage up on the floor. Not very comfortable for the ninety miles to New Orleans.

 The view from my cabin balcony.

We left New Orleans around 5:30 PM.

After a nap, a run, and dinner, we checked out Christopher Cross' set in the theatre. Great band--the sax player, Justin Vasquez, was fantastic. Also, Keith Carlock (of Steely Dan!) on drums. Wow!

Thursday: I slept for as long as I could because I like to sleep, and it helps to eat up some of the free time. Our first set was at noon on the pool deck.

This may have been our best set on the boat--the weather was good and the crowd was great. We played with a lot of enthusiasm. Also, all of the gear worked (foreshadowing!).

I caught some more music this night on the boat. First, the Easy Stars All-Stars played really slick arrangements of Beatles and Michael Jackson tunes. I couldn't get enough of these guys!

And they threw this in...

After that, we headed up to the pool deck to catch Jason Bonham playing Led Zeppelin. The guitarist,  Jimmy Sakurai, was sooooo spot on in his Jimmy Page imitation. Imitation maybe isn't the right word--maybe obsession? Check out his website here. Freaky!

Other than that, nap, run, food, bed. The usual.

Friday: We reached our only foreign port--Cozumel, Mexico, today, and it was raining. $3 for a poncho.

We've eaten at La Choza just about every time we've ever been in Cozumel. You can't go wrong.

we're looking at a turtle (up against the wall between Monkeyboy and Pete) eating a piece of ham

the view from my balcony on this fine day

This evening's gig was in the atrium, and though we always hope for an epic show, tonight's gig was loud and sloppy, ending with my EWI refusing to stay transposed (which made the Rosanna solo a disaster). No pics. It was rough. I don't think any of us enjoyed being on stage.

Saturday: Woke up to the sound of thunder...we were pushing directly across the Gulf of Mexico through a thunderstorm. Thankfully the water and wind was calm--just rain and thunder and lightning.

This day began with a meet and greet/autograph session, an hour and a half of people walking by our table asking us to sign posters and pose for pictures. After that, nap, run, eat, and wait--our last show of the cruise wasn't scheduled to begin until 11:45 in the Atrium.

offshore oil wells in the Gulf

Our last show was packed! Unfortunately, this room doesn't sound good. We pushed ourselves through it. At the end of the night, the production guys wouldn't let us play an encore, they got booed when they began taking the PA apart, and Nick and one of the guys got into a shouting match.

Most of us did a lap around the boat before calling it a night--I'm not sure which band this was, but they were the guys with the djembe player who loved to yell "MAKE SOME NOISE!" into every open microphone. So obnoxious.

Sunday: Time to go home, and not a moment too soon.