January was busy for Yacht Rock! Here are some highlights...
Thursday, January 9, 2025: Montclair, NJ. We arrived in New Jersey pretty early in the day, so as soon as we arrived at the venue, it was time to go to lunch. Fortunately, there's an Indian restaurant across the street from The Wellmont Theater, so off I went!
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| maybe it's a joke, but...wrong kind of Indian? |
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| a fellow runner |
It was really cold, mostly because the wind--gusts up to 44 mph!. I ran off down the street, thinking that I was doing really well because 1. I wasn't too cold, and 2. I felt like I was running well, and just before my turnaround point, it dawned on me that the wind was at my back, and the second half of the journey was going to be a lot more difficult! (and I was correct!)
The Wellmont was really good. It definitely sounds like a big ol' cave of a room, but we had a huge crowd and they were into it. Maybe we were kind of rusty? It seems like that's always the case when we have a week or more off.
Friday, January 10, 2025: Huntington, NY. The vans/trailers caravan made its' way out to Long Island for two nights at The Paramount. We decided to not stop for lunch, and instead got to the venue early and ate in Huntington. My Indian restaurant was closed, but there was a Thai place (RuCha Thai Cuisine) across the street, so that's what I had. I can't even remember what this was, but it really hit the spot. That's some kind of fried...zucchini on top? I ate the whole damn thing.
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| damn right it's mine |
Coming back from taking this picture of the marque, there was a guitarist busking on the corner, and at first I thought he was making fun of me, but I guess it was just serendipity. Baker Street in the freezing cold on a guitar with questionable intonation. Right on.
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| meanwhile, the party backstage raged on |
The Paramount is great! Sold out. Great energy. More accuracy than last night!
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| birthday cake for me, courtesy of the Queen of the Anchorheads! |
Saturday, January 11, 2025: Huntington, NY. Gig number two here.
Our hotel could've been mistaken for a bank, and my shower used to be the water fountain. Nobody else said anything, so I guess I ended up in a room with no water pressure.
Back to RuCha for more Thai food. This was the more traditional stir fry with tofu kind of thing. Delicious.
Monkeyboy showed Bruce (our new guitar tech/crew guy) how he wants his instruments restrung. We'll see how it goes. I want to believe that the look on Bruce's face is at least fifty percent sarcasm.
Night number two. I was kind of hit and miss. I can't say why. I slept, I ate, I ran, I warmed up. Maybe I tried too hard? I dunno. It was still probably fine, just not a home run.
Sunday, January 12, 2025: Staten Island, NY. A new venue for us--the St. George's Theatre. Wow!
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| I shared this dressing room with Pete and it had a space heater and it was glorious |
Really nice place. Nick did his best to watch the Packers game while we were performing (his iPad was hidden between he and Greg). I don't remember any detail about our playing, but I do remember warming up in a bathroom downstairs and listening to Hans talk to everybody who came into the catering room...for at least an hour.
This show was early--maybe like 5:30 pm? Early enough that we packed up, drove to Newark, New Jersey, and I was running on the treadmill at 10:20 PM. Four miles. The two guys who were coaching each other through some weight lifting were really loud. I ran six miles in the morning before we left Long Island, so regardless of whatever I played on stage, at least the exercise part of the day was successful.
Thursday, January 16, 2025: Evans, GA. Evans is a suburb of Augusta, and they have a very nice performing arts center. We played here last year.
This gig was pretty terrible for me. I just couldn't get my shit together. Monkeyboy was the same way, and we were equally frustrated. At one point, he turned around to me and yelled "THIS. GIG. SUCKS!" It turns out he was getting sick with Covid, too, but he didn't know it at the time.
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| We signed the wall last year. They haven't painted over it yet. |
After the gig, I was going to jump on the treadmill, but the exercise room closed at 11 PM, so I missed it by about ten minutes. That's the way this day went. Briefly I considered running outside (the weather was acceptable), but hmmm...Augusta at 11 PM just seemed like a bad idea.
Friday, January 17, 2025: Charleston, SC. Since I got shut out of running last night, I got up and ran on the treadmill this morning. The ride from Augusta to Charleston took a few hours, so I was able to grab a solid nap before we arrived.
I had this excellent lunch at Big Gun Burger Shop and Bar around the corner.
We played a fundraiser for the College of Charleston baseball team. They do an excellent job hosting us.
Good gig here. We played the Charleston Music Hall for the first time, a pretty decent venue. Limited dressing rooms, though, and the one I was in had the only bathroom, so it got really stinky.
The schedule was really relaxed, and I squeezed in about an hour of flute playing before soundcheck. After soundcheck, there was still lots of time to kill, so I went for another run. Twelve and a half miles on the day. Woo.
Thursday, January 23, 2025: Sarasota, FL. Florida in January is the way to go. We started in the purple performing arts center in Sarasota (it has a name, too--the Van Wezel). Not bad. Plenty of time for me to do sax and flute noodling in stairwells. I also went for a run, which was awful because the weather was surprisingly bleak--cold, very windy, and overcast.
This place had catering, including some kind of killer vegan soup (it tasted like a meatless gumbo), but it was so hot that I burned my mouth with every bowl. I mean, it was so hot that you couldn't hold the ladle to get the soup for more than two seconds. I had four or five bowls anyway.
I left a pair of running shorts hanging in the dressing room. I guess their time was up. RIP.
Friday, January 24, 2025: Clearwater, FL. It's a short drive from Sarasota, thankfully, about an hour. Greg Lee, Nick, and I did a three song radio performance in Tampa. Do people still listen to the radio? Unknown. This place had a nice little setup for acoustic performances.
We hit some strip shopping center Mediterranean joint for lunch.
This day's show was at Ruth Eckert Hall. Soundcheck was slow developing, so I got in plenty of noodling beforehand (also remembering that I got yelled at by the production manager last year for noodling side stage when the union rules said nobody could noodle on stage at a certain hour). I also went for a run, but the path along the bay was closed, which was kind of a bummer. And it was kind of chilly.
I guess the gig was fine. Nothing memorable.
Saturday, January 25, 2025: Orlando, FL. Woke up in Plant City, went for a run, blew up a bathroom at a Ford dealership. We had lunch at a shopping center, so I had a pub sub from Publix. I also bought one for later, because the House of Blues has pretty bad food.
The Orlando House of Blues was packed! Pretty good gig, though we were zooming through songs so quickly that I missed the beginning of Lotta Love (it starts with saxophone), and I was pretty mad about it for a couple of songs. But other than that, it was a slammin' show.
After the gig, I grabbed my pub sub out of the green room fridge and started in on the first half...the ingredients were not what I was expecting, but it say "veggie" on the sticker, and it was the only sandwich in the fridge. It was at that moment that Bencuya came over to tell me how he'd hidden Kip's sandwich behind all the drinks as a joke.
Uh oh. He'd actually hidden MY sandwich, and I'd just eaten half of Kip's sandwich. Kip was furious at Bencuya about it. He refused to eat the other half of his sandwich (or the other half of my sandwich), so we had to make a pit stop at Steak-n-Shake on the way to the hotel.
Sunday, January 26, 2025: Fort Lauderdale, FL.
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| today's warmup room |
Last year, we played a different venue in south Florida that was really crappy--this place was better in every way, plus we had a big crowd.
Not pictured: the five pounds of pasta I ate for dinner, or the chocolate lava cake I had for dessert.
Monday, January 27, 2025: travel day. We drove from Fort Lauderdale to Saint Augustine. Another pub sub in a parking lot.
We had dinner at some steak place (I had an impossible burger). It got ok reviews from the band. Most of the guys headed on to a second location (a bar). I walked back to the hotel and ran three miles on the treadmill, bringing me to eight miles on the day.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025: Jacksonville, FL. The Florida Theater. If you're willing to climb a lot of stairs, there are ample dressing rooms in which to play flute.
A little saxophone repair here: this felt was coming off the arm on my alto, so the key on the right was not closing all the way. Super glue saved the day. I'm glad I noticed this before the felt broke completely free.
Dinner was catered, but the vegetarian option was shepherd's pie (basically a bed of veggies under a two inch blanket of mashed potatoes). Not my thing. Peanut butter it is!
Really good crowd for a Tuesday--even the balcony looked full.
Friday, January 31, 2025: Brown County, IN. Our lighting guy (James) things that the Brown County Music Center feels like one of those non-traditional church places, and I would agree. It sounds good, though, and the load in is easy, and I found a spot to noodle without bothering anybody too much.
I tried running here last year and didn't like it, but I discovered that there's a YMCA right across the parking lot from the venue (hell yeah!), so I ran on the treadmill there.
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| there's still snow in the corners of the parking lots |
Indiana is always a good show, and since Nick and Pete are from right down the road in Columbus, there are lots of friendly faces.
February 1, 2025: Nashville, TN. We played the Ryan today. Hot damn! Big show!
I think it went ok. I was a little wobbly on the Africa solo but I think I got it right. All my other stuff seemed fine. I didn't have much feeling about any of it--I guess I'm just glad to get through the gig without being miserable from a bad performance.
We had an after party at Robert's. It was very loud in the back (where we were), very loud in the front (where the band was), and not too bad in the middle.
It's a drag that Nashville doesn't have more places like this--most of the bars on Broadway have a famous name and a corporate vibe to them, like "Garth Brooks' Good Times Saloon" and they serve Applebee's food with stupid names like "The Friends in Low Places Salad." Maybe this place has corporate backing as well, but it doesn't feel like it. Hang in there against the rage of capitalism!
