Some different stuff this weekend! Dig it:
Thursday: Yacht Rock road tripped to Athens to play the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense at the Georgia Theatre. Most importantly (to me), this was the debut of my new Prophet 6 synthesizer--a pretty awesome machine, especially considering how small my role is in this show. I shopped around and considered several different synths (price tags and analog vs. virtual analog) before finally biting the bullet. This is the real thing.
Highlights from the post-soundcheck pre-gig run...
Saved By the Band opened with a very strong set of covers.
The room was nowhere close to full, but there were enough people there to give us some positive feedback--maybe 300 in attendance? That was just fine, as we needed a shot at this show before our Friday night back in Atlanta.
Once I got going, I was fine, but I blanked on the first thing I was supposed to play, and I just stood on stage thinking, "Why does this sound so weird?" It's because you're fucking up, dumbass.
Friday: Variety Playhouse back in Atlanta.
Nick bought a new pedalboard/guitar interface and debuted it this week (he actually pulled it out of the cardboard box on stage in Athens and used it that night). It sounds great and it's very user friendly.
Our show sold out! I'm shocked that this show, hatched on a plane ride home from somewhere, has gone from something fun to do at Venkman's to selling out the Variety Playhouse in four shows.
Greg plays guitar on this show, and he bought a pretty new Telecaster for these gigs.
I remembered to play all my parts tonight. Other than a couple of minor flubs, I played really well.
You can see the whole show here. Kip's mix sounds perfect.
Saturday: Back to our regular programming...Yacht Rock at The Signal in Chattanooga. This is a new venue--a converted warehouse in a hipster looking part of town. Easy load, great local crew, and a nice green room. Excellent.
I drove separately since I live up I-75, and got there a little earlier than the van and trailer. After setting up my gear, I still had about a half hour to annoy everyone in the room, blowing solo saxophone over Just Friends and Airegin. I must admit that after hardly playing saxophone in the past three weeks, things felt and sounded good.
Ready for the show...
We came within a hundred people of selling out (1,200). Wow! I thought we'd be really flat after Friday night, but this was a solid show. The room sounded good and the crowd was great--that definitely helped. I like this place a lot.
Monkeyboy's amp went to sleep after soundcheck, and they had to unplug it to wake it up, all of which caused some chaos when we walked out on stage. Once we got going, though, things were fine--just some weird gear shit.
Remember how great I was playing before everybody else showed up, when I was showing off on some jazz tunes? I thought that would translate to a good solo on Biggest Part of Me. No such luck--it started well but plateaued pretty quickly. Maybe I wasted all my good stuff too early in the day...booo.
A few professional shots from Ray Soldano Photography:
Headed to Texas this week. See y'all out there.
