They Say it's Your Birthday...

Yacht Rock played the surprise birthday party of one of our friends/fans last night.  Happy 40th to one of the coolest people we know!

Party Time

Yacht Rock played a small party at the Buckhead Theatre last night.  I really have no idea what we were celebrating, but then again, I guess that doesn't affect my job.

As is often the case these days, I have little to say about the gig.  Mark Cobb was particularly inventive and creative in the first set, and Mark Dannells had a really weird/cool solo on How Long.  My personal excitement reached its peak when I began Africa (of course) in the wrong key (using my Bobby Kimball down-a-whole-step set of patches).  Once I realized what was going on, it was an easy fix and I went back to work.   At the end of our show, I ended up in the middle of a conga line on Call Me Al.

There's not much vibe at the Buckhead Theatre (it feels like a nice high school auditorium), but the sound on stage was very good.  After the show, Cobb and I found out that the front of house guy had recorded the whole thing (they were listening to it as they wrapped cables).  Wow!  It sounded great.  We were kind of impressed with ourselves and the front of house mix.

Also, I took home an entire pizza.  Cold.  It was free, though.

Wednesday night, I created a horn part for an original song somebody had sent me, and Thursday mid day I recorded horns over it as a demo--next week I'll probably go in the studio and do it for real.  

Hey, we're in San Diego this Sunday night at the House of Blues.  Come see us!

In other news…I'm currently listening to Larry Goldings, Peter Bernstein, and Bill Stewart live at the Village Vanguard on NPR.  It sounds great.  You can check it out here:  http://www.npr.org/event/music/243027513/peter-bernstein-larry-goldings-bill-stewart-live-at-the-village-vanguard

Also, I bought the newest Jeremy Pelt record, titled Water and Earth.  Excellent stuff.  Dig it.

Cinking In

Yacht Rock played a gig for Stewart Cink's Cink It Challenge, a Pro-Am golf tournament to raise money for The Pregnancy Resource Center of Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Medical Center Newborn Intensive Care Unit.

Another relaxed gig for cool people.  The most difficult part of the gig was navigating from the clubhouse back to the main road in the dark.

We had Kip and Zach on sound two nights in a row (Saturday and Sunday).  What a joy it is to work with these guys.  I hope we can make it full time at some point in the future.  Having good, reliable sound men is becoming more and more important as we do more high profile gigs.

For the second night in a row, we received gifts!  No t shirts on this one, but we got Parker's Pickles.  Yessssss!

The Bacon Gig!

Yacht Rock played a party at a home near North Druid Hills Country Club--a gig we've also played three times before, I think.  The hosts are huge fans of the band, so the gig is always really cool.  Plus, there's forty pounds of candied bacon.  Bacon, bacon, bacon…I had at least twelve pieces.  It's amazingly good.  This is one of the best gigs we do, and the bacon is one of the reasons why. 

We set up in a long, narrow tent on a plateau in their backyard.  The first year, the gig took place in early December (night of the SEC championship).  It was so cold that might EWI froze up and stopped working.  Since then, it's been a few weeks earlier, and therefore not nearly as cold.  It's a weird set up due to the space;  drums all the way in the back, then the two keyboard rigs facing each other (Dustin subbing for Bencuya tonight), and then the Nick and Pete flanked by Greg and Monkey across the front.  

Here's some more craziness:  they made t shirts for us (and wrapped them in a bottle of vodka, but I gave that to Monkey).  This takes Yacht Rock fandom to a whole new level.  These people are way cool.

We're already looking forward to next year's party!  The diet begins tomorrow--I love the bacon.

Sunday morning was ye olde church gig.  I played on a new soprano piece I got from CE Winds.  I'd finally reached the breaking point with my old mouthpiece (which I customized/destroyed with files and sandpaper over the years).  If only I'd known what I was doing, my old one would play like this one does.  I think the tip opening is a bit bigger--I may have to change to a softer reed.

Tonight is another really relaxed gig at the kickoff party for Stewart Cink's Cink It Challenge.  Please stay tuned for an essay comparing and contrasting our scalps.

Please Pleaserock Me at Smith's

Please Pleaserock Me played a show at Smith's Oldest Bar last night to a packed house.  The wrinkle in this one was that Mark Bencuya was out of town, so Nick successfully picked up a bunch of his keyboard parts.

For the horns, I took a solo on Don't Let Me Down (instead of the Billy Preston wurly solo), and I arranged the strings on I Am the Walrus for the horns.  Tricky stuff.

Greg Lee brought his new 12 string guitar to the gig.  Very very cool.

Smith's feels like it's on the verge of closing…in addition to the usual smells and the non functioning restroom, they were out of good beer (they gave us the choice of Bud Light or Yuengling), some menu selections, vodka for Monkey…hope we're not loading out when the back stairs finally give way.

That said, it sounded great on stage and out front, and everybody played really well because of it.  Good gig!

We finished at 11 PM.  Another band was slotted to play at midnight, so we loaded out quickly (with help from the staff, which was very very cool).  See you in December!

Hey Monday!

Hey…it's Monday again!  Another weekend has blown past.

Thursday:  Yacht Rock played at the Georgia Theatre for Halloween, performing all of Michael Jackson's Thriller and then a set of 70s/80s stuff.

We wore the Ghostbusters outfits for Thriller.

Oops!  As we walked on stage, I noticed that my stack of charts had been blown onto the floor by the air conditioner.  Aaaaagh!  I think I could probably make it through the album without them, but I like the short term memory bump.  Thankfully, there were enough 10 second spaces in the first few songs that I gradually got them back in order.

I actually played a really good sax solo on Lady in My Life for the first time in years.

The Yacht Rock set was our usual stuff.  We've been playing Kiss You All Over and Love Will Keep Us Together, both of which I enjoy playing (though I bombed the solo for the latter).

Nice crowd!   440 people through the door.  I heard that UGA was on fall break, so maybe not everybody was in town.  Athens seemed really dead.

The Georgia Theatre is a fantastic room--looks cool, sounds good, and the crew helps load the gear.

One bad thing:  by the end of the gig, my elbows, forearms, and hands were hurting--the sore, tender, tendonitis/ulnar nerve kind of problem.  Not good.  I couldn't fall asleep until I took some Advil.

Friday:  We spent the night in Athens and then headed to Charleston to play the Music Farm.  Half the trip was through middle-nowhere-Georgia until we finally jumped on the interstate.

The Music Farm is a really cool venue!  We played a great show (including TWO encores!) for over 300 people.  Not bad for our first time in Charleston.  The crew also helped load gear in and out.

I ate at Basil Thai Restaurant, just down the street.  Totally awesome, but then again I'm genetically predisposed to like anything served with white rice.

I sat at the bar (which obviously faces the kitchen).  What a cool set up!  The two woks stay on the fire the whole time.  A water spigot is right above each one, so after each dish, they wash the wok and their tools right there, dump it in the moat around the fire, and move on to the next thing.  Very cool to watch.

We added the Blue Swede version of Hooked on a Feeling (ooga chuckas and all), which we had learned last weekend for the wedding.  It went over well.



More forearm and elbow problems (though the back of my hands didn't hurt like the previous evening).    Advil in the morning, Advil in the evening.  Once again, my arms were so uncomfortable that I had to take medicine to dull them enough that I could sleep.

Saturday:  the final gig on this trip was a birthday party in Anderson, South Carolina.  We had Kip and Zach running sound for us on this one.

The stage was really small and I had no monitor, so Kip ran me a line into the open channel on my mixer--voila!  My amp is also my monitor!  Kip is super awesome.

As quickly as possible, we loaded out and headed back to Atlanta.  I slept most of the way.

Sunday:  my AM church gig was pretty good.  I was able to get a spot in with the rest of the band, which makes a big difference for me--I'm not playing into the back of the preacher's head (or the bandleader's), and I can hear everybody so much better.  A win!

My PM church gig had a problem with the main speakers.  The far side/left side isn't working.  I would suspect somebody's been tinkering with the main set up and has accidentally panned everything to the right side, and now can't get it back to the center position.  You'd think that the biggest Catholic church in the diocese would have a dedicated audio pro to make sure that everything always sounded perfect, but instead...we have volunteers.

My flute face is either really bad, or my flute is really out of whack.

A guy and his girlfriend were really amused by my performance (both of them gesturing towards me and talking and laughing, and mimicking playing flute).  Do you get paid to go to church?  I do.

I also had the chance to drop the line "Throw me the idol, I throw you the whip!"  You've got to use it when you get the chance.



Monday:  I woke up today (Monday) without pain in my arms.  Maybe I'm allergic to the keyboard.

We're at Smith's Olde Bar this Friday, performing a set of Beatles stuff (with some new ones--it's time to write some more horn charts!).