We flew home from the end of the tour (Phoenix) on the morning of September 12, 2024, and a week later, we were back up and running. Here's how the end of September looked.
September 19, 2024: Atlanta, GA. We played a private event at the rooftop on Ponce City Market on rented gear. Getting to the rooftop is kind of a pain in the butt, between the parking and the need for someone to accompany you on the elevator. Once you get up there, it's not too bad, though.
Anyway, kind of a lame gig, and the backline guys weren't really on the ball, so we had to wait around (I want to say that they forgot to send all the wireless microphones? Something like that--they forgot an essential part of our show gear). So, it took extra time waiting around because they had to go back and get the stuff, then bring it over, park, do the elevator thing, then hand it over to Zach to get it going.
Another big factor in this gig--Nick got sick and couldn't sing at all, so the setlist was carved up to work around this problem.
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| not great, but edible--some kind of coconut curry thing |
The next morning, we were off to the northeast for a few shows. First up: Pier 17 in Manhattan. I'm always about this gig, with a long history of technical problems and personal mistakes. Today was scary, but I made it through without any catastrophes.
Nick was still sick all weekend, so the setlists all worked around it.
ESPN has a studio in Pier 17, and a couple of the producers were cool enough to give us a quick tour in the afternoon.
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| helicopter pic from my run in the afternoon |
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| the view off the back of the stage |
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| within a couple hundred people of selling out |
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| cookies! |
September 21, 2024: Asbury Park, NJ. On the other hand, I always play well here, probably the relief of making it out of NYC. This was a fun one!
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| almost sold this one out, too |
September 22, 2024: Boston, MA. We played in a different place--Roadrunner--than we usually do in Boston. I was glad we were indoors, as the fall temperatures are right on the edge of where I start to get uncomfortable. Nice room!
September 27, 2024: Indianapolis, IN. This one was a bummer. Hurricane Helen made landfall in the Florida panhandle headed for Altanta (and then up to Louisville, KY), so we flew out on the evening of September 26 to stay ahead of it. The band's love affair with Indianapolis goes back to our earliest days, so we were extremely disappointed that we couldn't play the show.
The night we flew out, the outer edges of the hurricane were in Atlanta, and it was pouring! I drove to the airport and pulled into the park-and-ride lot, which had the usual number of cars, but no activity--nobody coming or going, and most importantly, no park-and-ride shuttles! I circled the lot until I found a shuttle, but she wasn't driving, just blocking an opening in the fence that could be an illegal entrance/exit. She said that the tower could see me, so if I would just go back to where the signs told me to park, a bus would come and get me. So I did. And stood under the tailgate of my car in a torrential downpour for at least fifteen minutes before I gave up and called a Lyft to get me from the lot to the terminal. Except...a Lyft driver won't come in the lot, so I had to walk in the aforementioned torrential downpour and the accompanying three inch deep rivers raging in the parking lot to the front gate, where at least I was out of the rain (but my socks and shoes were soaked, and my jeans were wet up to the mid-thigh). I waited on the Lyft guy, but then probably twenty-five minutes after I'd driven on the lot, a park-and-ride bus finally circled over to me and picked me up. I was thankful, but also awfully annoyed that it took so long. Plus, canceling the Lyft cost me three bucks.
So, yeah, we got to Indy just fine, spent the night, got up the next day and went to the gig. It rained and the wind blew all day, it was ugly, but it felt like nothing more than crappy weather.
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| nothing to do but practice! |
It felt like the storm was going to move away enough that the wind advisory would be be lifted and everything would be ok, so we waited it out, but in the end, the gig was canceled, mostly because of the potential risk from the high winds. The state fair accident was weighing heavily on a lot of the local crew's minds (
you can read about that here).
September 28, 2024: Atlanta, GA. We all flew home Saturday morning, giving me enough to time to go home and change clothes before heading to the Trolley Barn for a jazz trio gig as part of a private event. It was a really satisfying evening with two friends, Craig Shaw on bass and Kevin Bales on piano, both of whom played beautifully.
One scary moment on this gig: about thirty minutes into the night, a man had a seizure and collapsed on the floor. We didn't really know what to do, so I helped keep him on his side and tried to keep his mouth/airway clean until the EMTs arrived. That was nuts! After maybe ten or fifteen minutes, he had recovered and they got him on the gurney so that they could take him to Grady for further treatment.
September 30, 2024: Atlanta, GA. Home recording time! Mark Dannells sent me a song of his that needed a sax section sounding part, and he played some stuff into his computer that generated some kind of musical notation. Between the recording and the chart, I was able to tease out what the parts were supposed to be. It was a tedious process.
It ended up being four voices, so I recorded twenty sax parts, doubling everything so that he'd have blend options. Here's a sample of how it sounded.
