Turkey Time

Two Yacht Rock gigs this week--the day before Thanksgiving, and the day after.

Wednesday night was pretty good. The only song that kind of bit me was Minute by Minute--there's a tricky spot where I have one beat to change sounds and get both hands lined up correctly. Sometimes I need a little extra time. That was the case this evening. Everything else was fine. I never could really find my groove, though.

Other thoughts: local jazz legend Kevin Bales was up front checking us out all night. It was cool that he was there checking us out, but I think it got in my head that I needed to impress him.

Alyssa Olson (Pete's wife) guested on Islands in the Stream. She sounded great and looked to be having more fun than anybody in the room.

Here's video of the gig.



Friday's "Black Friday" gig unfortunately didn't Steely Dan's Black Friday (which would've been cool). In fact, with a couple of subs in tow, the setlist stayed much closer to songs we've been playing for years. Mark Cobb and Mark Bencuya were our designated survivors for the evening, so we had Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums and Dustin Cottrell on keyboards filling in.

This show seemed to flow a little better than Wednesday night, and I didn't start watching the clock until we were well into the right hand column. The crowd was really good on this night, too, and that helped. Whatever it was, I was quite a bit more comfortable.


This one was also broadcast across the internet:

Listen People, It's too Cold for Outdoor Gigs

Two outdoor gigs this week...in mid November...what the hell? I'm sure it's fine when you're walking around (and can LEAVE WHEN YOU GET UNCOMFORTABLE!), but I'm sitting on a stool touching a cold plastic keyboard or a cold piece of metal, and I like the check, but my hands go numb and we need to stop this outdoor gig in November bullshit.

Thursday: Off to Bluffton, South Carolina for a food festival thing. We played this gig last year (you can read about it here). I'm still not exactly sure who's attending this or why. Also, why does it have to be so late in the year? A month earlier would've been much better, temperature-wise. 

green room boredom

this is about twenty degrees too cold for me

Fortunately for me, Kip had a heater brought to the stage, which we planted right behind me. My hands still got cold, but I was able to occasionally reach up and thaw them out when things got really dire.

Basically, this was a nifty corporate gig.

Friday: We raced back to Atlanta, dropped Zach (half of our sound crew) off at the airport, went home for a couple of hours, and then returned to the airport to catch a flight to Boston. I scored an upgrade to Delta Comfort--lots of legroom.

I watched most of the HBO Documentary about Robin Williams. Fortunately (I guess), we landed right as things were about to get depressing at the end of his life. I don't think I need to see the rest of it.

In the hotel room, I watched most of The Shape of Water. It's REALLY weird. Like, sex with Amazonian-swamp-creature weird. I don't need to see that ever again.

Saturday: 7:30 AM lobby call, and it's 40 degrees outside. This was the basic framework for today's gig. We played a tailgate party for the Harvard/Yale football game at Fenway Park. Once again, I like the gig, but holy shit is it cold.

soundcheck

our green room/tent was toasty warm

why God, why?

This one was not too terrible. I mean, it was crazy cold, but we only played for an hour an a half, so just as I was reaching the limit with frozen fingers, the show was over. As you can see, the crowd response was ok, but it wasn't really a concert, so it's understandable that there wasn't a giant mass of people directly in front of us.

Go Harvard! (their alums hired us)

The bass amp started whistling like a boiling tea kettle in the last fifteen minutes. Kip and the local crew guys were on it pretty quickly with a spare.

I had Indian food for lunch. Excellent.

Harvard won.

After lunch, we headed to the airport for our flight home. This perfect six month old was in front of me, but it wouldn't have mattered if he'd been a little terror--I was asleep for nearly all of the ride home.

One Too Many

Soooooooo...five gigs in a row may have been one too many for us. We made it, but...

Thursday: This trip started with a flight to Newark, New Jersey.

Atlanta traffic has infected the airport

I know it's practice, but it's still a bit unsettling to see this as you're taking off

Gig number one: Sayreville, NJ at the Starland Ballroom. It didn't look like much on the outside, but this place turned out to be pretty OK. Denny Laine and the Bouchard Brothers (of Blue Oyster Cult) joined us. We had right around three hundred people in the audience, which actually felt like a decent crowd--they had good vibes.

Albert Bouchard sitting in

Friday: Before heading back to the airport to pick up Keisha and Kourtney Jackson, we stopped at Harold's New York Deli, a strange and magical place that felt very...New Jersey. Heart stopping amounts of meat and the world's largest pickle bar. I ordered a veggie burger and fries.

From the airport, we made our way through Friday afternoon traffic and steady rain out to Long Island. Somewhere along this trip, a NYPD car pulled up next to us on the shoulder of the road and flipped on his lights. Zach (who was driving) tried to give him some room, but he stayed with us, so Zach pulled over. The officer then tried to yell at us through the PA bullhorn on his car, but no one could understand him over the traffic and the downpour. Zach tried to exit the roadway and the cop came flying around in front of us and cut him off, and then jumped out of his car screaming so much profanity that it was impossible to understand what he wanted. After he'd finished flipping out (and scaring us all to death), he let us go. From what we could gather, commercial vehicles with trailers were not allowed on the roadway/parkway we were on. We were in a van with eleven people--a passenger vehicle--which seemed to stump the NYPD when he was screaming "ARE YOU A FUCKING PASSENGER VEHICLE?? ARE YOU YOU A FUCKING PASSENGER VEHICLE???" and Zach said "Yes sir." What's the right answer here?

Anyway, we somehow avoided what felt like an inevitable physical confrontation, made it to the Paramount in Huntington, and set up for the show.

We love this place. 1100 people in attendance. If the weather hadn't been so bad (mid 40s and raining), we'd definitely have come close to selling it out.

with Denny Laine (far left)

Saturday: After sleeping late, we opted to head into Manhattan early for lunch.

We played a sold out show at Irving Plaza. This one was particularly great--New York has always been excellent to us, but the energy was good and we played really well. Guests for this show were the same as the night before: Robbie Dupree, Denny Laine, and Albert Bouchard.

A few videos:

Sunday: Gig number four, and sell out number two. We drove to Washington DC and set up for our show at The Hamilton, another one of our favorite rooms. My mix sounded so good that I almost forgot we were on stage.

We broadcast this show on Facebook. Here's set one:




No big letdown in Saturday's energy--this was another really good gig!

Monday: The final show of this run was Night Two at The Hamilton--sell out number three. Everybody slept late and then headed into DC to hang out until soundcheck. I ended up walking from our hotel, which took me right past Reagan National Airport, across the Fourteenth Street bridge, past the Jefferson Memorial, and into town. It was a cold, grey day.

Indian food for late lunch/early dinner

We were collectively pretty flat on this one. Nothing was bad, but the band was a bit fried. The crowd didn't seem to notice, though. Everybody had a great time.

Once again, the Hamilton announced our next two shows here (April 11-12), and they sold most of the tickets before the end of the night.

Tuesday: Seconds before I fell asleep.

More of the Same

I'm having all kinds of trouble getting into the mood to write this blog, so keep your expectations low.

Wednesday: Halloween. I played at Blind Willie's with Scott Glazer's Mojo Dojo. In addition to Scott on bass, the band was comprised of Steve Cunningham on guitar, Dan Lawrence on keyboard, and Zack Albetta on drums. For the first time, there was no second horn player--one fewer person to outplay me! I've worked with Dan on this gig before (among several other gigs in the last twenty something years), but I'd never met Zack until this gig. Excellent playing, and a really cool guy to boot. Steve and I decided that the last gig we played together was fifteen years ago. He's just as funny and quirky as ever. 

As you might expect, there wasn't much of a crowd--maybe a dozen people--for the entire evening. We amused ourselves, though, mostly by ridiculing Scott's well worn jokes and preambles to various songs. Playing-wise, I was just ok.

Thursday: The Yacht Rock Revue birthday party. As legend has it, this is our eleventh year as a band, and we celebrated with a gig at Venkman's.

This one wore me down with the long drive to get there, the tight stage set up, and then the three hours of down time before we played. By the time we finally got on stage, I was over it. Tough gig--I was not interested in playing.

Friday: Some kind of corporate gig in Atlanta, alternating sets with a bar mitzvah DJ. I was strangely more energized about playing than the night before. 

Ganesh Giri Jaya subbing on drums tonight

I love this picture

Saturday: Outdoor gig in Dalton, GA, in November. Greeeeeeeeaaaaaat. 8-10 PM.

Fortunately, there were two propane heaters on the stage, and the one closest to me helped keep me relatively comfortable (I also wore tights and a long sleeve thermal shirt under my stage clothes). I spent a lot of time standing under this thing.

Once again, no idea for whom we were playing. It wasn't even clear whether or not this was even a private gig, as they closed off the streets in front of the park and let people walk up.

I don't know...anyway, this was a really cool spot, and we had a lot of fun with the trains going by behind us every so often. If they had a summer concert series, this would be a fun one to come up and play in warmer conditions!