Five gigs in a row! Yacht Rock played a stretch of five shows that ran from Friday of last week through Tuesday of this week--very different for us in that we rarely play public shows on Sunday night, and never on Monday. Nevertheless, every show was very well attended, which maybe signals that runs longer than our usual Thursday-Saturday plans are now possible.
New fans (Myrtle Beach, Sea Island), and old fans who hadn't seen us in many moons (Raleigh, Charleston). Lots of people who'd never seen an EWI before.
Friday: Park Tavern in Atlanta. As I've said before, it's nice to play a big gig at home. This one was 1,200 people, and they were moderately rabid. I had a pretty good show except for Arthur's Theme, which I completely ruined--for some reason, I started the string part on F major instead of D minor, played two more wrong chords, and threw up. Actually, I didn't want to throw up, but I just couldn't figure out why what I was playing didn't work, but didn't sound completely wrong (should've been D minor instead of F major, so the F and the A were right...). I had to give up on it for a second and wait for muscle memory to get me back on track. Anyway, I sucked real bad for that song, but the rest of the gig was solid.
Saturday: Raleigh. The ride from Atlanta felt like it took all day--around seven hours with the lunch stop and gas stops.
We hadn't played the Lincoln Theatre in several years. I remember it being small and kind of crummy, and it's still that way (in spite of the hip mural on the side of the building.
So...something like 650 people showed up! (800 capacity). Woah! Last time there was 100+, so this was an excellent surprise. We had a very good, entertaining show, too; I felt really connected to what was going on, so maybe I'm getting over some burnout from the past month or so. The stage is nice and dead sounding, too, which makes the in ear mixes sound great.
I'd guess we'll be passing through here a bit more regularly now, maybe connected to Asheville,Charlotte, and South Carolina?
Sunday: On to the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach. Another one to check off the list!
Houses of Blueses we have now played: New Orleans, Chicago, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, San Diego, Dallas, Houston, and Anaheim.
Houses of Blueses we have not yet played: Las Vegas, Cleveland, and Boston.
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| another HoB, another fake water tower |
Speaking of blank looks: if you're bored with what's happening on stage, please take your fat ass and move away from the front row. For a while, the "What the hell am I looking at?" expressions were kind of funny, but after twenty minutes or so of people leaning on the barricade, acting like this was the most miserable night of their lives, I was starting to get a bit annoyed. Go back to the fucking Olive Garden if that's what makes you happy.
We debut two new songs (for us, obviously) tonight: Lady by Little River Band, and I Love a Rainy Night by Eddie Rabbitt. We wobbled a little bit on Lady, but I Love a Rainy Night was solid. Both are really good adds.
The encore was Hold the Line and Taking it to the Streets. I had one of my better, more coherent solos on the latter. Sometimes I feel like I'm just standing there throwing up on myself until the band shuts it down.
Monday: Woah! Public show on a Monday night, and another place we haven't played in many years! We rolled into Charleston for a gig at Music Farm. Everything was way ahead of schedule until we found out we had the times wrong, and then everybody was crunched to eat and change before showtime. I managed to squeeze in about an hour of warm up and dinner at the Thai place around the corner.
Once again, the attendance was way beyond expectations, with 625 in a room that holds 800--on a Monday! It felt plenty full, and all of those people soaked up some of the sound in a very boomy room.
We broadcast the show on Facebook Live. Both of the new songs were much improved (and very well received!), and I had a good solo on Biggest Part of Me (around 51:32).
Tuesday: One more gig! We were hired to play a concert at the Sea Island Beach Club. The stage was set up in between the back lawn and the dunes. Scenic, but very windy.
All of the gear was unloaded from the trailer to a box truck, driven to the beach, and unloaded onto the stage.
This gig started slow, but after about an hour, people finally started moving closer to the stage, and the night ended with an extra long and pretty aggressive photo/selfie session. No big solos to speak of on this one, which was a good thing because I was fried by the time we finished.
Once they let us go, we cased everything back up. From there, back on the box truck, driven back to the front of the building, and Kip and Zach repacked the trailer. We then drove a little of an hour back to Savannah to spend the night. It was a long day.
No gigs to speak of this week, but Friday, July 13, we'll be playing Abbey Road and more Beatles at Venkman's in Atlanta. It should be a really good change of pace for us. I'm looking forward to it.
