October 2025

Not as much stuff happening in October...

Wednesday, October 1, 2025: Mashantucket, CT. What a name! This was a corporate gig at a bar in a casino. We started the day by flying from Atlanta to Hartford, where two sprinter vans picked us up and drove us seventy-five minutes to the gig.
 We used rented gear for this one, and all of it was good, but hot damn, my in-ear mix was worse than ever! It sounded like I was playing along with a band in the room next to us. All I could hear was my keyboards and the kick drum. Totally survivable for ninety minutes, but it was really bad. We have another fly date coming up in December, and I would like to set everything at the same level and then start turning individual instruments down. Maybe that's the move...? Some consoles have an app and wireless so that I could make adjustments without having to ask for a million things, and I would like to try fixing it that way. We'll see.

Anyway, soundcheck took a very long time, so I missed the chance to run on the treadmill, and the gym closed before the gig finished, so no run today. There were a few dinner options, but I went with Subway (oh man, the guy making sandwiches was so inept I thought I was going to run out of time before he finished making my order), and then had some chips and fruit in the green room.

On the plus side, I used my "other" pair of saxophones because my "road" pair are in the trailer in Atlanta. Something is definitely wrong with my "road" tenor.

Thursday, October 2, 2025: travel day. Reverse it! 9 AM lobby call, 4:30 PM back home. Kip bought a dozen doughnuts for the ride back to the airport. 

Saturday, October 4, 2025: Portland, OR. I was asked to sub with the Yacht Rock Schooner guys on a fly date in Portland, as the regular guy is having some kind of in-ear/motion sickness issue and can't fly.

We flew out the night before. That's a long time sitting on a plane.

We stayed in the Duniway Hotel downtown, one of my favorite spots. 

One pleasant effect of jet lag: I am up early enough to justify breakfast! These were great.

the view from my hotel room window

A very quiet Saturday in the war ravaged PNW.

Zach Wetzel (former YRR monitor guy) was with us on this gig, running sound and coordinating all the details, and we had a chance to go grab lunch and catch up. Good Indian food just a few blocks away!

the view from the gig

OK, so this gig...somebody's birthday party, at a winery. We (the Schooner) were the opening band--the second band was an ABBA tribute, and there was a rumor that they'd been flown in from Europe. Woah! This is expensive.

For me, this was kind of a weird one. I only played saxophone, no keyboard, so it was familiar and yet not so. Some songs had no saxophone, so I just went and stood in the back corner of the stage. Am I doing this right? 

Whatever. The evening's schedule got out of whack, and we ended up only playing for an hour.

Saturday, October 11, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Delta Airlines turned 100, and they rented out Mercedes-Benz stadium for the party. We played a set after Ludacris and before Thomas Rhett. WSB must've left the party early.

We had an early call--8 AM--to meet at the stadium loading dock to be escorted in. From there, we went straight into setup.

I brought my other tenor sax from home so that I could feel the difference between my road ravaged tenor and the one that stays at home. Surprise! They both feel fine. I am still insane.

9 AM soundcheck. Finished by 9:30. 

Our part of the show was scheduled for 3:30 PM, so lots of hanging out. I took a nap--no surprise there. After lunch, more hanging out. We had credentials and could walk around, but it felt crowded enough that I thought I'd probably catch Covid or the flu or something. The odds were too good, so I went back to our suite behind the stage.

I went side stage and watched a little bit of Ludacris, and it felt like most of the Delta people were there to see him and see Thomas Rhett, and probably had no idea who we were.

Anyway...the gig! Mostly good. I wasn't shaky nervous--I would say I felt kind of disconnected from the whole thing, like "Huh, this is what a giant stadium show looks like," except that I happened to also be playing at the stadium show. My mind was kind of wondering. I guess the inability to focus on what's happening is also a form of nerves? In my defense, there was a lot to look at.

As we got into it, I started to think about how I hadn't messed up the Africa solo in a while, and usually I get nervous about playing that solo at a big important gig in front of gazillion people, and then I made myself nervous and messed up the solo, so...way to go, Dave. That was annoying. I tried to think about how it was two measures in the middle of a two hour show, maybe not the end of the world, but it definitely bummed me out. I guess I should be thankful that at least it didn't show up in the news clip.

When I went out front to play Baker Street, the first time I leaned back, I caught sight of myself in the video screens up in the ceiling, and I was like DO NOT LOOK AT THAT!!!!! It was disorienting, and I wanted to look at it to see what I looked like, but there was a chance that it was going to make me mess or fall down. Can't have that! So I had to close my eyes when I looked up, but also don't look at the camera when I look down, and also, don't fall over, and also, don't mess up.

 

So much for that. I packed up my gear and went home, tired and annoyed.

Sunday, October 19, 2025: Atlanta, GA. I got a text Tuesday afternoon about playing a New Orleans jazz (known as "trad jazz," like traditional) brunch in Buckhead, in the middle of Atlanta. It's more like dixieland (but without the vests and arm garters) than Miles Davis. For me, it meant a lot of clarinet playing, so I was mostly interested in the chance to do that.

So...I got the address, the times, and the setlist, and on Sunday, I headed down there. Ugh. It was some kind of chain "New Orleans" everything-ending-in-"-eaux" restaurant with a weird parking situation, two people in the restaurant at 12:30 PM, and all the vibe of a CVS. Plus, the piano player forgot the power supply for his keyboard and had to go home to get it, so he missed the first forty minutes of a three hour gig. At one point, I had to go re-up my parking IN THE MIDDLE OF A SONG because the restaurant's validation expired after two hours. They said, "If you get a ticket, just email the restaurant general manager and they'll pay it." Yeah, I'm sure that's not a pain in the ass.

Anyway, the music was pretty fun, and the trumpet player leading the band was really good at this style. As for me, nobody hires me to play clarinet, so I liked the opportunity to play in this context. I think I did pretty good, but for the record, I did not get called to come and play again, so maybe not.

Thursday, October 23, 2025: Atlanta, GA. Yacht Rock played for the Live Thrive and the Center for Hard to Recycle Materials for several years in a row. I'm a big fan of recycling, so count me in!

The venue for this gig has bounced around. Most recently, it was at a distillery in West End, but that was horrible room for live music. This year it was at The Stave Room in town. Also a bad room for live music. At least it was closer to my house, though.

Our set up seemed like it was happening in slow motion--I think we were short a crew guy?---so the soundcheck ended up getting cut a little short (we were trying to rehearse some songs that we haven't played in a while).

The vegetarian dinner option was...half a potato with a glob of cheesy crap on it, two samosas, and some kind of little salad thing. Not enough food.

It was an ok gig. I think we played well and the crowd was great, but the room, being a big metal and concrete box, did us no favors. I tripped a little bit on the Africa solo (it's going to take a while for me to get my confidence back), and I blew a tricky spot in Everybody Wants to Rule the World, but I remembered how to play Maneater, so maybe those cancel each other out.

I brought home ten bananas from our rider. Score!

Saturday, October 25, 2025: Raleigh, NC. We flew to North Carolina to play a birthday party for someone with too much money. 

the Raleigh airport is nice

scene of the crime: a stage in a country club ballroom

vegetarian pasta dinner--pretty good!

We got into town pretty early, so we set up and sound checked and ate dinner and went to the hotel to check in and I ran (I ran so far away, I just ran, I ran all night and day, I couldn't get away) and we went back and hung around in our green room and dealt with the crazy lady who was a guest at the party and wanted to stir things up "backstage" while we were looking at our phones.

It was all pretty predictable, the crazy lady (who kept leaning over the rail to see what else was on the setlist, and also had some great ideas about what we should be playing), the drunk middle aged guys, their stylish wives, the holding-on-for-dear-life performance of the goddamn Africa solo. Yeah. It was a Saturday night gig. It was fine.

post show pizza

After everybody had decompressed and eaten a piece of pizza, we took cars back to the hotel (and the crew packed up our gear), and flew home the next day. No big deal.