Chastain 2019

The 2019 Yacht Rock Revival was once again at Chastain Amphitheater in Atlanta, and we were fortunate to once again sell it out--6,900 people. 

It's surreal. It blows my mind that we're playing a gig on the same stage where I've seen Sting, or Hall and Oates. Instead, it's us on stage, and I can look out in the audience and see my parents out there singing along.

The guests for this year were Matthew Wilder, Robbie Dupree, and Johnny Townsend and Ed Sanford (Sanford Townsend Band). Gary Wright was originally on as well, but he fell ill earlier in the week and had to cancel. We played Dreamweaver without him (even using his backing track!).

I especially enjoyed playing Sanford Townsend's Smoke From a Distant Fire, which is a song we used to watch on video back when we were just starting out. Here's my chart.

Their other song for this show was I Keep Forgettin' (a hit for Michael MacDonald), which was cowritten by Ed. In order to fit it in Johnny's vocal range, we had to drop the key by a fourth! Hello transpose button!

Here's my outro solo on Biggest Part of Me. Going up a quarter strength on tenor reeds has been a big improvement. 

Savannah

But wait--there's more! We got home Sunday, did laundry on Monday, and left for Savannah Tuesday morning in a stinky van. Four hours later, here we are.

This gig was a corporate thing, played on a combination of extra gear we had at home (our gear was now en route from Massachusetts), and rental stuff. Kind of a "whatever" gig.

Fireworks ended the night at 9 PM.

The Hard Way

Here we go--three more. Lots of time in the van.

Thursday: The band flew to Washington, DC, where we met the van and trailer. From there, we drove two hours to Dewey Beach, Delaware. 

The Bottle and Cork has been around for a long time, and attracts some pretty big groups. I'd only heard of it because Mark Bencuya has a t shirt from there. They had a t shirt with us on it, but they misspelled Revue. Not impressive.

Before the show, we had a quick photo session for AARP, led by these two hipsters. It's unclear why this happened to us, but it did.

Ticket presales were very good, and then the last three hundred or so sold, and all of the sudden, we were at capacity. How about that?

This was a pretty great gig--the sellout, the energy of the people, and probably because the place looks like some shitty bar in a beach town in Delaware (of all places) that they clean out every night with a firehose that suddenly became this epic night. When it was going down, I reminded myself that  tonight was probably going to be the best night of the run because the other two would be private parties.

To top everything off, the green room was extra nice! Showers, pool table, laundry. Well done.

At the end of the night, we got back in the van and drove two hours to Philadelphia, where we spent the night.

Friday: We were supposed to fly from Philly to Boston at maybe 11:30 AM (I can't remember exactly), but the flight was delayed before we even left the hotel, and then once we got to the Philadelphia airport, it was delayed I think twice more, and we ended up leaving around 2:45 PM, which was bad. Delta upgraded us, though. First class, but I still had to sit next to Monkeyboy.

Once we made it to Boston, we got in a van, and the driver drove 100 miles and hour for almost three hours straight until we got out to Chatham (on the cape of Massachusetts).

Our gear had been driven up from Philadelphia much earlier in the day and loaded in, so we finished setting everything up, changed clothes, and launched head first into the gig. I think we started around a half hour late after all the travel delays.

This one was some sort of private party for members of the club, and once we got going, there were lots of people in this tiny room. It was one of those nights where rich people get drunk and misbehave because the only musicians they've ever encountered were in a bar.

stage diver

After the show, about thirty people invited themselves into our green room, drank our beer, and ate our pizza. One by one, the seven of us realized we'd been overrun and snuck back upstairs to pack our gear and escape.

Saturday: We spent the night in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Scenes from my run...

Around the time that we were supposed to head off to the next gig, it was discovered that the leaf springs on the trailer were broken. We emptied its contents into a Uhaul, dropped the trailer for repair, and took the van (with a few things like saxophones and luggage) to New Hampshire for show number three.

We played this gig two years ago (you can relive it here, if you wish). Same kind of thing--late summer party, band on a barge in the lake. We were fortunate that we'd rented most of the gear instead of using our own stuff because 1. The weather didn't look good, 2. We were trying to leave as soon as our time was up.

We made it about halfway through the night before the weather began to deteriorate, so we packed up all of our stuff (mostly my stuff) and hopped off the barge. The backline guys packed as much of their stuff up as they could and tarped everything. Rain followed shortly thereafter.

Inside the house, we set up around the NINE FOOT STEINWAY! and played a half dozen more songs. I think the party attendees enjoyed this even more than the outdoor show--it quickly turned into a Yacht Rock sing-along in the living room. Easy night. This part was especially fun.

From here, we drove the two hours to Boston, spent the night, and flew home Sunday morning.

Three More

Here's three more:

Thursday: Slept on an airplane and woke up in Providence, Rhode Island. We've played this place before as a public gig, and someone who'd seen us booked us at Féte for her birthday party. Our arrival was early enough that we went to the venue, dropped our bags, and went to lunch.

Even after a leisurely veggie burrito, there was still loads of time for me to basically play everything I would work on when practicing flute at home, and I must admit, it was really nice to go through everything on a gig day. The backline rented for the evening finally showed up, though, and it was time to go to work.

I did really well in the backline roulette--two really nice keyboards, plus a super cool keyboard stand (a "Z" style one).

This was a strange gig. There were only about a hundred people in the room, which usually translates to a low energy evening, but my in ear mix sounded good and my keyboards sounded good--I don't know, I guess I was kind of in the mood. Maybe it was the second veggie burrito that I had for dinner?

Friday: Got on another plane and woke up in Indianapolis, where the van and trailer picked us up.

This was a charity/fundraiser gig back at the Vogue Theater in Broad Ripple. Even on our own gear, it was hard to get in the mood to play this one.

There is, however, an Indian restaurant down the street from the Vogue (actually, there are two, but one is about a block away, so that's the one), so...I present Aloo Dumm and a side of roti.

Anyway...this one. Some gigs, I worry that I'm going to close my eyes when I'm playing and accidentally fall asleep, and my dream will be so vivid that I won't know I'm out. This was one of those. I could never get going on this one.

Saturday: It's down I-65 we go. 

The final stop of this trip was Louisville, gigging at the Mercury Ballroom. I like this room.

Nothing to report from soundcheck. With no Indian food within walking distance, I decided to try Ethiopian food. I can't figure out what the name of this is, but it was basically salad, pickled cabbage, and some kind of red lentil stuff. You tear off pieces of the pancake looking stuff and use it like a tortilla. Everything was pretty good, but there was some kind of spice in the pancake thing that didn't taste good after a while, so I gave up on that and ate everything with the fork.

I ate pretty quickly, and had more than an hour to warm up before the show.

We had a really nice crowd, and my enthusiasm for playing returned. As you might guess, this was the best gig of the weekend. Louisville was pretty cool. The capacity of this place is supposedly 900, and we officially were about half full, but it felt like quite a few more than that. I'm not sure where the other 450 would have stood.

Our midwest horn section was once again on the gig with us, sounding good and going a little sharp on the crescendoes. It's been nice having them frequently with us--I don't even need to cue them anymore, and I think we've found all the mistakes in my charts.

And that's it! More travel this coming up, so check back in a week.