New Stuff

In the midst of all the travel, I forgot to mention that Yacht Rock released an album of new material on Friday, plus a silly video for one of the songs! Check it out.

Colorado

Yacht Rock spent last weekend in Colorado, playing a couple of high altitude shows. I love this place. Colorado might just be the best state in the country.

But first...Thursday night, I played with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra at Venkman's. Not my best playing! I came up short in preparation, and it bit me in the butt. Several of those charts are much too difficult to sightread (or play after working through them the night before, as I attempted). Add to that a pretty lame solo, and, yeah...I was kind of disappointed in myself.

Friday: We came in to Denver through what was probably thirty minutes of consecutive turbulence. Monkeyboy almost broke the armrests off his seat. I slept through most of it (though I had a dream that I was flying, but I was in a closet inside the plane, and the only other guy in the closet was eating potato chips and trying not to throw up).

Anyway, the Colorado sky. Beautiful.

Our show was at the Mission Ballroom, a relatively new place and a venue we've never seen before. Quite big and well laid out. We like it!

After soundcheck, I jumped in a Lyft to make the short (2.5 mile) ride to my favorite Indian food restaurant. The quickest way to get there, unfortunately, was on the interstate, and by the time I'd gotten there, eaten, and gotten a ride back, I'd probably wasted $20. Should've just ordered it delivered!

I made it back to the venue with plenty of time to warm up and change clothes, and also injured my big toe while throwing a tampon a Monkeyboy. It was as stupid as it sounds. I immediately had to put on the shoes that I would wear on stage and go play, and I wondered if my toe would swell up so much that I wouldn't be able to take them off later. For the first four or five songs of the night, it really hurt, and then the Advil kicked in.

Anyway, it was an epic night. 3,300 people in attendance. Lots of fun.

The next day, I went back to the same Indian restaurant, had the same waiter, and sat at the same table, and the food was just as good.

By the way, my toe wasn't too bad. The tip is bruised (maybe?), but I was able to run, the nail did not turn black, and I can grip with it.

After lunch, we headed off to our gig in Breckenridge, where they apparently had more snow.

Here's some news: altitude matters for wind players. Holy hell! My reeds felt kind of stiff, but not awful, in Denver (5,280 feet). Breckenridge's altitude (9,600 feet) was tough! It felt like I had popsicle sticks on my mouthpieces instead of reeds, and the solo I played at soundcheck felt like my sinuses were going to explode from the back pressure. I actually looked inside my tenor to see if there was something stuck inside.

I warmed up a ton and felt better by the time we started the gig, but geez. Maybe I should pack some softer reeds next time we come through here.

Other than that, nice room! The place holds 750 people; I'd guess there were 400 people?

The hotel sells oxygen bottles. How crazy is that?

We woke up Sunday morning to six inches of fresh powder. Wow! It made for a tricky journey back down the mountain to the Denver airport. Hard to believe that I was snorkeling in the Bahamas six days ago.

Mostly at Sea

I'm late with the blog, so this one will be quick!

Thursday: I played a gig in Columbus, GA with friends (Rob Opitz, Marla Feeney, Wes Funderburk, Tyrone Jackson, Billy Thornton, and John David) at a meeting of Georgia Science Teachers. It was supposed to be a Mardi Gras theme with possibly 1,000 people in attendance, but it ended up being about 100 people drinking and sitting across the room from us. Very little to suggest Mardi Gras.

For our part, Rob had a couple of books of Dixieland arrangements that were really fun to read, so we played these and a few funky/second line jazz tunes for two hours. Not a bad way to spend an evening!

Friday: Yacht Rock flew to south Florida to join up on the Sail Across the Sun cruise, traveling from Miami to the Bahamas. We had three shows over four days. The rest of the time was spent watching the other bands, sleeping, eating, or running on the treadmill.

Night one looked like this on the pool deck.

Not bad, though I've noticed that the pool deck tends to be a bit lackadaisical about gear. For instance, I got a cheap Guitar Center keyboard stand, no table for my computer, and only one sustain pedal (the two theater shows had a better keyboard stand, the percussion table that I requested, and two sustain pedals for the two keyboards). Not sure who's to blame, but it's definitely not as good as it used to be five or six years ago. I wonder if the backline company just doesn't want their decent stuff to sit outside.

Saturday, was a sea day (no port), and we were in the theater. Another good crowd, though I had a pretty terrible performance and wanted to jump overboard. At least the pictures look cool.

Sunday was a day off in Nassau, Bahamas. The band had a photo shoot and then we walked around town a little bit, but there isn't a whole lot to do here. Mostly t shirt shops and duty-free places that sell questionable diamonds and expensive watches.

The best thing about Nassau (once you've seen it), is that everybody else gets off the ship. Stay aboard and enjoy some quiet time without them!

Monday was spent mostly at Norwegian Cruise Line's private island, Great Stirrup Cay. They have food and activities, and it's a nice way to spend a day. We tried stand up paddle boarding, snorkeling, sleeping in a lounge chair, and eating all the fruit at the buffet. Interesting that their watermelon source doesn't provide seedless melons like pretty much everywhere in the US.

Our last show of the cruise was really late (11:45 PM-1 AM). Not my favorite time slot. Pack your suitcase before you go to soundcheck!

For the most part, I rebounded from my shitty performance and played pretty well, though it once again took me about twenty minutes to settle into the pace of the evening.

Florida

The tour continues! This past weekend, Yacht Rock was in Florida for a few shows. This is the perfect time of year to be down there, because the heat will return in a matter of a few weeks.

Thursday: We left dreary, rainy Atlanta after being delayed for a couple of hours...

...and landed in sunny Tampa!

This evening's weather outlook was imperfect at best. The line of storms that had crashed through Georgia was still getting dragged out of the Gulf of Mexico. To try and fit it all in, the start time for our show was moved from 9 to 8:30 PM.

Pretty nice gig, though! I think some people stayed away because of the threat of a rain, but it was still decent crowd, and the breeze from the oncoming storm was kind of pleasant. We played alright--it took a while for everybody to relax and settle in, but for the most part, the night moved along quickly.

Immediately after the gig, I looked at my phone. Hmmm, tornado warning...is the warning the bad one, or is it a tornado watch that's bad? WARNING! I headed back to the stage and began packing in a hurry, and put the last piece of my gear in the case just as the blowing rain began.

Friday: Off to Ft. Lauderdale (the routing for this trip--Tampa to Ft. Lauderdale to Orlando--is not ideal). This place reminds of me of a place we used to play in Atlanta called Andrews Upstairs. It holds the right number of people for where we're at in south Florida right now, but it's kind of a trashy-early-2000s--Buckhead thing (probably only makes sense if you're from Atlanta).

One thing I do like about this place--there is an excellent vegan cafe/store around the corner, and I had a wonderful meatless meatball sandwich. Fantastic.

We added in Lionel Richie's Running with the Night tonight--a new one for us. Other than that, it was business as usual. The EWI's batteries died and I had to swap them out over the course of three or four songs, and I sweated that, but yeah, everything else was same as ever.

I had the solo room on this night, and the hotel put me in some kind of crazy suite that was bigger than any apartment I ever lived in. I felt weird going into the other room and turning out the light.

Saturday: Up the Turnpike we go to Orlando, a drive I have made on more than one occasion.

This evening's gig sold out, which, according to the internet, was 2,500 people. Damn! That's really cool. Nice gig. Nice weather, too!

The keyboard stands made it to the gig tonight. I'm cool with them as long as someone else puts them together and takes them apart!

We brought Peaches, our lighting guy, for this show, and had some really good moments, such as this one during Baker Street.

For David--The Lady Wants to Be a Star

Here's a transcription I just finished of Michael Brecker's solos on For David from The Lady Wants to Be a Star (Martee Lebous, 1976). When else are you going to hear a diminished whole tone scale in a pop song?

This whole thing is great. It's largely major pentatonic, and it's slippery, but precise...his time feel really makes this an exceptional moment in a forgettable 70s pop song.

Paste and The Color Purple

Tuesday: Yacht Rock played a live session at Paste Magazine in downtown Atlanta. It's more record promo stuff. 

I finally feel like I'm getting a good handle on the originals, and all the stuff I've worked on is gelling into a cohesive part that makes sense in my head now. In short, I am finally getting it right. FINALLY! Jeez!

Anyway, here's the show. Nice mix by Kip.

Friday: Remember how last week I flew home and went straight to a rehearsal for The Color Purple? The dress rehearsal was tonight, and it went pretty well. The vocalists are fantastic! We're giving a concert performance only, so there's no staging, but dang...the actors are killing it.

There were a few things, though. First, the Roswell Performing Arts Center is about 60 degrees on stage, which is a little cold, especially sitting in a chair and not moving for a few hours. It also makes tuning a challenge. Second, the audio crew had a lot of trouble getting the three monitors for the band to work(!), and then getting the correct instruments in each. I don't understand why they didn't have everything checked before the musicians even showed up--and then to ask us to come in early on Saturday to help them solve this technical dilemma? Say what? Third, the layout of the band made seeing the music director a challenge--she was so far off to my side (like between 9 and 10 o'clock) that most everything I could see was peripheral. Since I had never played this show with these people, I was trying to go on every physical cue I could get.

Saturday: We played the show in Roswell. Still cold, but the monitor situation was a little better. My solution was to point the speaker away from myself and listen to the drummer's wedge instead (which was lots of piano), and I turned my chair towards the music director as much as I could without looking like I was sitting sideways on stage. Made it through just fine.

Sunday: Same show, different room! Our second/final performance was at Actor's Express, a small theatre in the King Plow Arts Center (many a wedding have I played at King Plow!). We had an afternoon rehearsal/tech run-through, which ended early because the audio guy had everything dialed in before we got there. Imagine that!

This show was on headphones. The band was in the wing overlooking the stage, set up in a line...in the dark, so no visual cues! The music director did have a talk-back microphone in our ears, though, so we got count-offs and stuff that way.

And that was that! Saw an old friend, made some new friends, got a little better at playing clarinet. It was a fun gig! And I made it home in time to see the second half of the Super Bowl, which was about as much as I can handle these days.