The guys in Yacht Rock Revue headed up to NYC last Wednesday for a private/corporate gig, and we managed to secure an opportunity to perform on SiriusXM that morning. The performance was at 9:20 AM, but it felt like 5 AM--our hotel was over by LaGuardia, and we had a 6:30 AM lobby call to ensure that we made it on time. Therefore, at 9:20, all the benefits of the the coffee I'd consumed had worn off, and I was falling apart.
Sirius has a cool set up with a nice sound-isolated performance room right in the lobby, and they mostly knew what instruments we were bringing, so things were mostly setup, and they had an engineer (and assistant) who knew what he was doing.
Anyway, we played three songs--What a Fool Believes, or original Step, and Last Christmas. Right off the bat, I crashed and burned in my attempt to cover the What a Fool synth part on flute--I had it together at home, but I just got a little off, completely fell apart, HAD TO FUCKING STOP PLAYING, and then recovered, and then I was mad at myself until basically yesterday, and that pretty much sucked any fun that I was going to have out of the experience. To top it off, I played glockenspiel on Step, and even though I was playing the correct notes, the bars bounced around and hit wrong notes, so I got sabotaged by this stupid thing, and so who knows what I played on the sax solo because my head was splitting open at that point, and so Last Christmas was probably fine, but I desperately wanted out of the building at that point.
I've searched the internet and not found any recordings of it, so just take my word for it. Hopefully the engineer has my microphone tucked into the mix enough that maybe it just sounds like I wandered off or something. Also, hopefully I never hear it.
(Update: I found it. It's here if you scroll down. The flute isn't really sticking out in the mix, so there's only a couple of spots where I can hear myself crash and burn, but it doesn't sound as godawful as I thought. I guess I got away with it, sort of. The end of Step has a bum saxophone note, though. I still hate myself.)
So, back to the hotel for a run (yep), a nap (nope), an aborted lunch delivery (for some reason, my phone tried to have my food delivered to Irving Plaza in Manhattan instead of out in Queens), a second lunch delivery that I cancelled ten minutes BEFORE the guy handed it to me, and then a ride back into Manhattan to set up for the corporate gig.
Tonight's adventure was in the basement of a Texas BBQ place in NYC. Right. Got it.
Excited isn't the right word for a corporate gig, but I was...keen on playing a regular gig in our regular format with the regular gear and the in-ear mix and all that, just to kind of wash the bad stuff out of my mind. There wasn't anything particularly great about this gig, but it felt normal, and that was a relief.
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| sittin' in the back of the bus with this dude all night |
We flew home Thursday morning.
Friday, we played a show at Iron City in Birmingham, Alabama. The debut of our new lighting rig with the video board behind us. Nifty.
I was all set to walk in the rain to an Indian restaurant, but Iron City fed us, and the food was great! Roasted cauliflower, green beans, roasted potatoes, salad. Hell yeah. This really hit the spot.
They also got us a cake--"Congrats on 'sailing' out." Nicely done! This cake was really good, and probably really bad for me, but it was really good.
On to the gig, which went pretty well, even though we were a little rusty from not having played a regular ol' Yacht Rock gig in quite some time. I like the room, and I would rather play here than out in the Alabama heat during the summer...but I think we're back outside in the summer...
Saturday, we played a corporate holiday party in Dalton, Georgia. Not the most exciting gig we do, but they are very nice and very well funded, shall we say! Just like my gig last Saturday, the lights went out in the middle of a song, but the local crew guys got it back up and running pretty quickly.
The usual Roadhouse reference:
Sunday was my church gig, and my flute face was good--I got some time on the instrument Saturday before the gig, and also Sunday afternoon.
Also, I want to be sure and mention that I did get paid for last week's jazz gig--I didn't mean to imply that the guy wasn't trustworthy--I was trying to show how this random quintet came together, played a gig, and went our separate ways, and each of us just assumed that 1. we could pull it off without any kind of preparation; 2. we would be compensated for it down the line. No contracts, just good faith!
One more busy week of gigs this year (capped off with the Yacht Rock Holiday Show at The Roxy on Saturday).