AAA

That's Arizona, Atlanta, and Austin--a crazy weekend of travel and gigs.

Thursday: Head west! We flew to Tucson, a three hour and forty-five minute ride. Long enough that I could sleep for a few hours and still wake up and watch a movie.

On this trip, I watched Darkest Hour, chronicling Winston Churchill's rise to prime minister at the dawn of the second World War.

We landed, grabbed our bags, and boarded a spacious limo bus to Marana, AZ, on the north side of Tucson.

Unfortunately, that wasn't our bus! We had to get off, grab our bags, and walk to our much smaller van parked in the next ring of parking.

First thing first, we checked into our rooms...at the frickin' Ritz Carlton! Sweeeeeeeeet.

With a few hours to kill before soundcheck, I went for a run on the nearby Wild Burro Trail, which ran through a canyon directly behind the hotel!

(not part of the trail--the cart path behind the hotel!)

The weather was in the low 80s and kind of overcast, so it wasn't too brutal out there. Off to soundcheck.

A stage with no cover and some pretty rough rental gear met us. Everything worked, but everything felt old and dusty. I guess there was only one Nord Electro available, so I ended up with a Nord Stage, and the sustain and expression pedals provided wouldn't work with it. I tried all the usual stuff (flipping the polarity on the pedal, flipping the polarity on the keyboard), and nothing fixed it. Eventually, I put the Fantom sustain pedal on the Nord (which worked), found another sustain pedal in the gear box that worked on the Fantom, and played the gig with only one expression pedal. Not a huge deal, but kind of annoying.

Back to our hotel rooms for an hour (and a snack).

Ready to go...

The weather was pleasant for the evening, and I didn't mind the bugs that congregated on my keyboards. The crowd wasn't rabid by any means, but they danced, and this gig was a pretty easy 100 minutes.

Our set ended with a fireworks show.

We were back at our hotel by 10:45 PM, which was good because our lobby call was at 4:15 AM. Ouch. "It's 7:15 Atlanta time!" you say, but that's still early for The Dave.

Friday: Head east!

We got back to Atlanta just after lunch, everybody went home/fought through some hellacious Friday traffic, and then we regrouped in Piedmont Park for our annual Purple Rain show. I'd practiced the hell out of this stuff last week when we didn't have any gigs, so I was ready to go.

Earlier in the week, we'd packed all of our gear in the van and trailer, and so when we arrived at the stage, everything was roughly set up. Hallelujah. This must be what the next level of gigging feels like.

After soundcheck, I went for a short run around the park.

The gig was one giant set with the album on the back half--a little over two hours long. It was a great gig with somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 in attendance, and we gave them a really good show. That tent we were in sounded terrible, though--too many sound reflections and too many microphones. I got used to it, but there was nothing Kip and Zach could've done to fix it.

Once the gig was over, I packed my gear up and left it in a pile on my corner of the stage. Home by 11:30 PM. Oh yeah.

Saturday: Head west! We had an early afternoon flight to Austin for a fundraiser. I felt a hundred percent better after a good night of sleep in my own bed.

There was no line at security. Nick's backpack got pulled for closer inspection (his harmonicas are mistaken for gun clips), and the security guard pulled out a bottle of vodka that he'd taken from the green room/tent the night before.  Whoops! He said, "I thought my backpack felt heavier."

We got upgraded to first class. Ha ha ha ha...I don't know what to do with myself up here. At least they didn't bring around the hot towels on this flight.

Aaaaannd...I couldn't sleep! Maybe I'm dying. Anyway, it's about a two hour flight, so here are some pics of the world. I watched Black Panther. It was ok.

We were outdoors (though covered on a nice size stage) for our show, and the temperature was right at the edge of being too hot to be outside on a gig. I was in the shade, though, so it was bearable.

The big story of the day...this Roland Fantom had a broken compact flash card reader, so none of my settings would load. Usually I just pop the card in, "restore" my stuff from the card, and it's just like my keyboard. This one would not. The same thing happened to me last year in Santa Fe, and the backline guys had another Fantom brought from their warehouse. I asked the backline guy about getting me another keyboard--"I'm from Oklahoma City, so the warehouse is seven hours away. That's not going to work." No, it's not. Hmmm. Or should I say, HOLY FUCK!!!!!!!!!!

So, I'm freaking out. I tried a different card, I tried a different card reader. It's not happening. I did have a backup of my settings saved onto my laptop, but 1. The file was over a year old; 2. I've moved the files from the keyboard to the computer, but never from the computer to the keyboard. How do you do that?

The internet wasn't terribly helpful, and I had almost resigned myself to having to program the entire night's setlist from scratch. I could get as far as being able to see the "backup" files in the menu on the keyboard, but I couldn't figure out how to make them load. Finally, I found a page on Roland's website that helped--when the icon pops up on the laptop, delete the existing files and replace them with hour backup files. Ah ha! Did that, powered down the computer, powered up the computer, and bang! My keyboard was back, and my stress level went from one million to zero.

The Tito's Vodka RV was set up close to the stage.

After the whole keyboard thing, this gig was really easy; the weather was great, the food was delicious, and the sound on stage was excellent. No problems at all. Also, most of the women in the audience were really good looking. Thanks for that, too.

Sunday: A pretty good night of sleep in a familiar hotel, and a late morning flight home. Home by 3 PM.

We're back at it this coming weekend, with public and private gigs in the northeast. Check back here maybe Tuesday for an update.

Backtracking

I was trying to think of a clever title for this blog post--something about how we didn't really travel in the sense that there was an airport or a long day in the van. This past weekend we hit Athens, Chattanooga, and Atlanta. Not local, but regional? Short trip? Athchattatl? So...not quite local. I woke up in my own bed every day, but I also saw some monotonous interstate. Here we go:

Athens: Weren't we just here? Yes, but it was Stop Making Sense. This was a regular Yacht Rock show, and it sold out weeks ago, which is fun because the vibe at the Georgia Theatre is really hip. We played well, too (though goddamn I Just Wanna Stop is still kicking my ass). I had a good alto solo on Reminiscing, a song which has come back into our sets very recently, and a good flute solo on Lowdown. After however many years, my body has stopped trying to solo on flute like it's a saxophone--my embouchure would kind of fall apart during improvisations.

Set One:




Set Two:




I also purchased a cool new t shirt after the gig. Take a good look at it before it's covered in ice tea and salsa stains.

Chattanooga: Weren't we just here? Yes, but this gig was a private fundraiser in a hotel ballroom. Lots of down time between soundcheck and the first set, so I went for a long run in the rain. Other than that...I can't really think of anything. This was one of those gigs were it felt like we were the animals at the zoo, and the people on the dance floor kept banging on our cages to try and see what they could make us do. Money makes some people weird.

Venkman's: Weren't we...ok, whatever. An Unplugged show on Sunday night. I guess it was sold out? Hard to say--the cap at Venkman's is flexible.

Some entertaining moments on this gig. I had some good solos on piccolo and flute, and some good organ moments on Islands in the Stream. I am also pleased to report that I have slain the mental dragon that was ruining the intro to Sailing. Other things: the soprano sax made an appearance for Hey Nineteen and bari for Your Momma Don't Dance, and my triangle part on You Can Do Magic was not nearly as amusing as last time, I guess.

Here's the show:




No gigs this week, so check back here in two weeks, where (assuming I make it through), I'll have a recap of the Arizona-Atlanta-Austin run. Something about three A's may end being the blog title,  I bet.

What?

I played at Blind Willie's in Virginia-Highland last night with Scott Glazer's Mojo Dojo, alongside John Sandfort, Nick Johnson, Jez Graham, and Adam Goodhue. A great hang, but it was sooo loud, sooo loud. I'm deaf.

Everybody on this gig is good, but I must mention how great it was to stand next to John Sandfort all night, with his huge sound, great time, and killer ideas. Just...wow. Love his playing.

Scott has some crazy stories, and last night he introduced Sam and Dave's Broke Down Piece of Man by saying that Sam had sung at Col. Bruce's 70th Birthday Party at The Fox here in Atlanta, and he went through the whole thing about Bruce collapsing onstage and ultimately dying at the end of the night, and how he'd afterwards talked to one of the musicians who was  on stage at the time--he just got completely off track from Sam and Dave for several minutes in describing Col. Bruce's night, and at the end of the story he turned around to Nick and said, "Nick--you were there, on stage too!" Eventually, it came back around that Sam had sung that night, and Nick said, "No. I think you're thinking of the Greg Allman show," and Scott goes, "Oh...anyway, here's some Sam and Dave!"

Texas

Our tour of Texas--before it gets too hot. Actually, it got really cold there for a day! Check it out:

Thursday: Houston House of Blues. We flew to Houston early enough to take a long lunch before load in. Around 4:30, the gear started coming up from the street. 

I'm trying to think of the last House of Blues we were in that didn't sound that great...maybe New Orleans? This stage is really nice.

There was still time to kill after soundcheck, so I went for a short run around the city. The weather was overcast and low 70s, which felt pretty good.

So, on to the gig...which was just really sloppy. We were tripping over each other all night. It was not good. I couldn't wait to get off stage.

Friday: We had a private event scheduled in Stafford, TX tonight as the monetary anchor of the trip. Stafford is right outside of Houston, so we had most of the day to kill. I did some more exploring on foot.

The fundraiser was at a place called the Redneck Country Club, and it looked to be a predictably Guns-and-God Republican shit show of a place. I mean, Ted Cruz was there the week before us, and his name was still on the marquee. Fuck that guy.

A little pregame basketball--it was warmer outside than it was in the venue.

There was a menu full of dinner options, but finding one without meat was impossible. I had a salad and french fries (do they still call them freedom fries here?).

What a pleasant surprise! This gig was really good--we bounced back and played really well, the crowd was excellent, and we helped to raise a ton of money. Plus, no guns and no rednecks. We survived.

Saturday: On to Dallas.

We played four nights in Texas, and the daytime temperature for three of them was in the low to mid 70s. The ONE NIGHT where we had an outdoor gig, the high for the day was in the low 40s. Conditions in Dallas were tough.

We stopped for gas at a Buc-ee's. I didn't go in.

Lunch in middle-of-nowhere Texas was difficult. We pulled into a shopping center with a Wal Mart and a Mexican restaurant so that a few of the guys could buy some warmer clothes for the evening. The restaurant menu had no meatless options, so I tried to order fajitas with no meat, which completely baffled my waitress. She didn't seem to understand, and I was trying to ask without explicitly saying "I'm a vegetarian and I'm not going to eat that" (which probably would've been better than just asking for meatless options). Eventually, I said, "Can I get fajitas with JUST the vegetables and no meat?" to which she replied, "Soooo...do you want chicken?" "This isn't going to work" I said, and walked out. Kip was nice enough to let me borrow the van and drive to a Subway for a veggie sub.

Onward! The wind was particularly brutal today, but lucky for us, the back of the stage blocked it, and the venue rented two heaters for the stage. We smelled of kerosene exhaust, but no frostbite.

This is the one on our side of the stage, with its replacement just outside. The first heater that they brought in would occasionally (once every few minutes) belch a stream of black smoke and seem to stop working, so the swapped it out.

After all of my griping about the temperature, the gig was fine. I was cold for the first hour, but I eventually was comfortable enough that it was no big deal. Once my hands were warm enough, I was fine.

Most surprising of all was the crowd--we thought nobody was going to come out and freeze with us, but there were several hundred rabid fans at The Colony. I would never have predicted it.

Load out was chilly.

We got to our hotel around 1 AM, and they'd sold some of our rooms. Three of us were bumped to the place across the street, but the guy across the street didn't seem to know anything about it. Then he locked up his computer and couldn't check us in. Then he was on the phone with their corporate help line, but they were no help. Then he couldn't run the credit card to pay for the rooms. Then he made keys for us, but wanted to follow us upstairs to make sure we could get in. It was not a good situation. Evidently, he woke Pete and Nick up in the middle of the night because he didn't copy down the credit card number correctly, too. That's some one star service right there.

Sunday: To Austin, but first, Buc-ee's. Yee haw.

We were under a time crunch today--the venue (3Ten Austin City Limits) had booked an early show in front of ours, so we had to soundcheck and get out of the way pretty early. We picked up lunch along the way into town.

We got there right as a church service was letting out--this room gets used a lot. Finally, it was our turn to drag the gear in and set it up. We plugged our stuff in, sound checked, and then pushed as much of our gear to the back third of the stage as we could, and put several things in cases in the storage room. Still, the early show band (6 pieces!) was not happy about having to work around our stuff. What was 3TenACL thinking, booking two big bands to play on a pretty tight stage?

Anyway, we had a few hours to kill, so we went to our hotel. I went for a run. The weather was perfect.

We came back right as the early show was finishing, reset our gear, and line checked everything.

Pre show porn watching? Everything was pay-per-view, so we stuck to scrolling through the options.

This show was easily our best playing of the weekend, and the crowd was electric. Was it sold out? Not sold out? The internet said yes, but maybe there were a handful of tickets available at the door. So if it didn't sell out, we can really close. Great gig.

One little hiccup: my laptop did the "mouse cursor moving all over the place on its own" thing for the first third of the gig, and a couple of times, the MainStage page would fly away and it'd just be my desktop (though it didn't close MainStage, so I could still play). It was a piece of dust in the track pad or something. After some clicking on it, everything calmed down. Fun!

Monday: A waffle for the road.

Our flight home was delayed, first by a half hour, and then by a full hour. Lots of time to wander and/or sit.

Apparently, our plane had a tire problem earlier in the day. Once we finally boarded, things were smooth--I slept the whole way home.

Georgia Theatre and Venkman's this week! See you there.