After the big Jamaica trip, we resumed activity the following week at the Miami Boat Show in Miami Beach. It was great to see all of our gear again!
The weather was definitely going to be tricky--there were lots of little pop up showers blowing in off the ocean. It wasn't rain so much as mist, and it came and went quickly (we were starting to put away gear as the rain intensified, the DJ behind me looked out and said, "Don't bother. It's almost over"). They decided to tarp the stage after soundcheck just in case.
I went for a run. Wednesday afternoon at the beach is pretty quiet.
It occurred to me while running back towards the stage that Miami Beach is what the rest of the county thinks is Miami. Past and present residents know it's more like US-1, strip shopping malls, and endless canals as far as the eye can see!
The Art Deco thing is still really cool, though.
We got started for a small crowd, and then it started to spit rain a little bit, and everybody moved under the cover to our left, and over the course of about six songs, they dispersed, leaving us to play for four or five people! We stayed on stage for about fifty minutes before the gig was called.
In other news, my friend Steve Augeri released a new song, If You Want, that we recorded about a year ago. I recorded my part at home and emailed it, and we talked on the phone to make some adjustments. Why doesn't it happen this way more often? Anyway, the song turned out great. Enjoy!
Church gigs are back! The cathedral in Atlanta where I have been playing off and on for over twenty years finally allowed wind players back. Yay for that! My regular service with this group ended March 15, 2020, in the beginning of the Covid pandemic.
This gig is a great way to keep my flute chops in shape. I was actually kind of nervous at the beginning--the style is somewhere between folk and classical, and so I fret much more about intonation and phrase endings and stuff that doesn't bother me when Yacht Rock plays Lowdown.
Also happening right now, I've been writing horn parts for a friend's Christmas album. The rhythm section parts are recorded and then sent to me, and I've been stacking lots of saxophones! Here's a bit of one of them, called Snowfall.
More of these to come as I crank them out!
In the world of Yacht Rock, things are slow for the next couple of weeks--just fine with us, as Nick is out with a ruptured Achilles tendon. In a couple of weeks we hit the road again, with subs, until he's able to hobble out and sit on a stool. It may be until the end of the summer before he's sidestepping again.
