Friday: Yacht Rock headed up to the northeastern corner of Georgia, hopped the state line, and continued into South Carolina until we reached Walhalla. Never heard of it? You're not alone.
I'm guessing this was some sort of local concert series.
It looks like a old school auditorium, smells like an old auditorium. A charming little room. Sounded good, though.
I don't remember much about the gig, but it did enjoy the chance to sit on a bench outside for about an hour and practice. Actually, that's not true. The room was so dark, I never saw anyone in the audience. I remember that.
Saturday: We played at The Senate in Columbia, South Carolina for the first time today. Since we were early to load in and the weather was perfect, I had a chance to walk around the state capitol complex and some of the University of South Carolina campus.
By the time I made it back, set up was in progress. We played this gig with the drum riser pushed off-center and turned thirty degrees, and no one that I asked had any explanation why. It didn't change anything sound-wise, so...I don't know.
A couple of other things about this one:
1. Mark Dannells woke up feeling pretty sick, and by the time we started this gig, he was in hell--he kept a stool onstage next to his amp, and ended up playing a couple of songs sitting down.
2. Pete's guitar pedal had some sort of issue during the gig, so Zack came out to check on it. In the process of crawling between my keyboards and the drum riser, he must've stepped on the mic cable for my saxophone stuff such that it immediately started going in and out (which I fixed by kicking my effects pedal a few times).
3. The Indian restaurant that I selected was closed. I went instead to the Mediterranean place next door because they had "vegetable curry" on the menu posted in the window. "Vegetable curry" turned out to be steamed veggies dumped over rice, which was blah.
Other than that, it was a pretty good gig. I had a better Biggest Part of Me solo than the night before (when I kind of shot my wad too early and played a bunch of crap).
Sunday: We spent the night in Greenville, South Carolina. Monkeyboy was in such poor shape that we left him at the hotel--our sub guitar player, Matt Reed drove up from Atlanta to cover for him. When we called him, he'd just returned home from a gig...in Charlotte! Ouch!
Oh yeah--this is the gig where there's a drain directly in front of the stage, and when the wind blows at you the smell of raw sewage is quite powerful.
Having said that, the weather forecast earlier in the week said there'd be rain and cool/cold temperatures, but this day was pretty perfect for an outdoor event. Yay for that.
On to the gig--Matt Reed played great! It felt like his tenth gig in a row with us. No problems at all.
My gimpy sax mic cable gave out completely at the show, and so Zack opted to completely bypass my effects pedal, which made a lot of the stuff I played feel...underwhelming. I had a spare cable with me, but it was packed away because everything worked fine at soundcheck. Bummer.
Nothing else particularly memorable about this one.
Will Monkeyboy survive? How will he get back to Atlanta? Stay tuned for next week's blog!
