North Carolina +

Thursday: We drove up to Asheville from Atlanta for our show that evening at the Orange Peel. Remember that first time we played the Orange Peel back in the summer of 2012? (it's right here). Still pretty great to play here; big stage, big fan, big room.

And hello! Back to the Indian food! There was a place around a half a mile away, so I went for it...and then the rain came, and I got wet. The food was really good, and even though the waitress wouldn't let me order what I wanted (telling me it was too spicy...but how can I find out if I can handle it if you won't let me try it?), I got over that. I was sincerely pissed for a while, though. Their stuff is definitely spicier than average, so...ok.

potatoes and cauliflower = aloo gobi

photo by The Kippen Conner

Asheville! Sold out. It was kind of boomy, and 1,050 people are pretty noisy, but it was a fun first show of the run. Man, it was hot, though. The feeble air conditioner just couldn't keep up. We were all pretty sweaty at the end.

Friday: We went ahead and ate closer to Asheville at a Mexican place that appeared to be a former Pizza Hut. Not great, but decent. As I am much more aware of the every place's recycling situation, it was really annoying to see that the salsa bar was stocked with little plastic cups.

I drove most of this day's trip, mostly in the rain, and everybody else in the van was scared to death.

The Ritz in Raleigh where we played was different from other venues where we've played recently. For one thing, it was kind of in an industrial warehouse sort of area, so the food options were limited. It looked like we were going to order pizza for after the show, so I ordered...INDIAN FOOD!...and had it delivered after soundcheck. This turned out to be a good move because 1. It started raining, and the dudes who were going to walk to Subway were turned back; 2. the after-show pizza thing fell apart, so those who intended to eat then were left with nothing. Grubhub for the win.

I know that security is there to keep us safe, but they were pretty tight--we all had wrist bands put on us as we got out of the van, and then we had to go through a metal detector. It's for our own good, but I really don't like having to wear a wrist band when we perform. I wish there was a nicer way to deal with it.

Chana masala. Wassup.

One other thing that was weird about this place was that the staff was kind of pushy. They had some sort of party in the lobby at 6:30, and we were given the vague threat that they'd cut power if we hadn't finished sound checking by then. At 7:30, a staff member came to me off stage while I was warming up to tell me that the doors were now open (nothing directly, but I took that to mean that I should stop playing). I took my saxophone and found a backstage stairwell where I could play a little more.

Nice looking crowd! The place where we used to play in Raleigh was kind of dark and dumpy, and this place was quite an upgrade. According to the internet, this place can hold 1,974 people. We had something like 1,300 people (I think---I'm fuzzy on this one). Where would 650 more people go? It was really full, and super cool to find that many people here when we haven't come through that often.

And now I would like to tell the story of my most gloriously stupid fuckup in recent memory. Remember how I took my saxophone and went into a stairwell to play some after the doors had opened? I stuffed the socks I'd worn the previous night in the bell (to cut down on the volume), aaaaaaaaannnnnnddddd...I forgot to take them out, and when we got to my big solo in Biggest Part of Me, my saxophone felt really stuffy and the sound was really muffled, and neither I nor Zach could figure it out. Assuming that something in my microphone set up was failing, I tried to play my big solo into Nick's mic, and it was tragic. 

Zach took my sax mic and tested it during the next song, and it seemed to work fine, so he thought maybe I should change my frequency. When I laid the horn across my lap to adjust the transmitter, I could see the dark brown of the socks in the bell keys. I'm an idiot. Nothing I could do but laugh...for like four songs. Damn.

I do love this sign backstage, though. A few weeks ago I started carrying a large travel mug so that I wouldn't have take a plastic coffee cup from a hotel lobby, and in the evening I fill it with water when they have a water cooler instead of opening a bottle of water. Doing my part! I hope they're also recycling all of those plastic cups and aluminum beer cans that get dropped on the ground during our show.

Saturday: On to Charlotte! Why does North Carolina feel like you can drive half the day and not leave the state?

We played to a sold out Fillmore in Charlotte (2,000 people!). Wow! Best sounding stage of the run, too. As you might expect, I was disappointed that I couldn't redeem myself--no big sax solo this evening. Damn those socks. Then again, I got multiple positive comments from the band about my outro solo on Maneater, so I guess that'll have to do, even if I didn't think there was anything particularly outstanding about it.

This place is really easy to deal with--the load in isn't bad, the stage is pretty big and sounds really good, the green room area is decently big, and there are a couple of food options in the immediate vicinity. Even with the a massive downpour after soundcheck (a couple of us got trapped over at the pizza place), and a massive downpour at load out (fortunately, the band isn't involved in loading gear anymore), we had an easy time of it. And jeez...a massive crowd. Things were loose on stage, but it was still a nice night of work.


A little saxophone stuff here: I have played altissimo B on alto like this for years.

It turns up as the last note of Baker Street, and it's also in the Heart to Heart solo. It's also crazy sharp, so I try and lip it down. I heard yet another social media post of me playing Baker Street with a painfully sharp high B, so I changed to this fingering as of today at soundcheck:

which is just as stable, and a lot closer to being in tune. So...going forward, I'll use this and it'll sound better. Thank you very much.

Sunday: Ugh. 8 AM lobby call to boogie back to Atlanta. After a couple of hours at home to eat lunch and (um) "use the bathroom," and grab some gear, we went back to work, this time at Venkman's for an Unplugged set. These are mostly fun, as the "try anything" nature of the evening means that some things (talking about my fiery crash on the Hey Nineteen solo) start well and then fall apart. All in all, it's nice to play the songs and not be so married to the recorded versions, though. We can all be a little creative in our approach.

I did have some nice flute moments--Sara Smile was cool, and I was heating it up on Lotta Love and Lowdown. People cheered loudly for the solo on Africa (maybe because I didn't mess it up? I don't know).

through the secret window

The highlight of this night was the addition of Fleetwood Mac's Say That You Love Me, which Nick started playing at soundcheck. Everybody fell in behind him (tambourine for me, which limits my mistakes), he looked up the words, we checked the harmonies, and boom! New song, and one that I really sincerely love. The crowd liked that one, too. It's a keeper! Yay!



Off to Texas (mostly) this week.

Two More

Friday: Yacht Rock traveled up to Nashville for a show at Marathon Music Works, a venue that I was excited to see. We've been searching for a better room to play for quite some time, and this looked to be a winner--good size (1500 capacity), big stage, nice green rooms.

Post-soundcheck, I walked a couple of blocks over to a vegan place called Vege-licious, which was a weird whole-in-the-wall kind of place behind another shop. I had a vegan Hot Chicken Sandwich and roasted potatoes. Excellent! Very spicy (also, a near-lethal amount of sodium). Still, it was nice to try something different.

I still had plenty of time after eating to go back and warm up, and hang in the really nice backstage area (apparently the owners of Exit/In also own Marathon Music Works, so there's lots of memorabilia here).

On to the gig! Yay! Big crowd, good vibes. This is definitely the best place we've played in Nashville.  We were told that the guy who owns this place also owns The Signal in Chattanooga, and there are definitely many similarities. I like it. Easy gig.

Saturday: This was a long day. Things started with a late checkout from the hotel (with an hour run in the heat before that), then Chipotle for lunch, a couple of hours in the van, and then we were in Birmingham to headline a festival. We were scheduled to play at 9 PM and we got there in the middle of the afternoon, so the van dropped us at somebody's office/clubhouse place about a block away. Nice room! Non stop Grateful Dead played on the sound system, though.

Over the course of the evening, people (and these two sweet dogs) filtered in, and I ended up in a thirty minute conversation with one of the owners (of the dogs and the building), and the whole time he was sipping nitrous oxide out of two large balloons. At one point the guy asked me, "Does this offend you?" (what?) and I was thinking, "No, but it's really fucking weird!"

On to the show! This was a throw-and-go situation (throw your gear on stage and start playing), but we were able to uncase and preset some things off to the side, which cut the set up time down to maybe fifteen minutes.

Pretty decent gig. Pretty good crowd, and the weather wasn't nearly as godawful as predicted--I think it was maybe 80 degrees when we started. It felt longer than the night before, which usually indicates to me that the energy isn't quite there, but sitting around all day doing nothing didn't help with the flow either. Anyway, we did it, babe.

After the show, the local crew guys started grabbing our stuff and running it off stage (I took that to mean that their day was probably finished when the stage was cleared), and once we insisted that they leave everything and let us pack on stage, they were kind of worthless. So it goes.

Slice (major sponser of Slicefest 2019!) came up with some pizza that REALLY hit the spot.

After we loaded the trailer, we headed back over to the clubhouse to change, but things had gotten even weirder over there (nitrous, alcohol, fatigue, "bros"), so we took off for the hotel. When we got to the hotel, it was suggested that we just drive back to Atlanta, which we did. That kind of wrecked Sunday, but you never know if getting up and driving the next day is any better. I slept on and off the whole way home anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter.

North Carolina this week. Stay tuned.

Bumpin'

I got a last minute call/text to sub in the bari sax chair for Bumpin' the Mango's regular Monday night gig at Cafe 290. Sure, of course. I got the set list early enough that I was able to go over everything once before heading to the gig.

Weird gig. First of all, I was not the only sub, and it sounded like they were all pretty last minute--both saxes (Luke Weathington and me), one trumpet (Rob Opitz), and the guitar (Grant Reynolds) were all doing our best on short notice. Secondly, early in the second set a woman passed out in the back of the room, so we paused to ask if there was a doctor in the house. No? The paramedics were called, and the band played on! Once they arrived, we did take a short break while they loaded her on a stretcher and carried her out, and then...here's an original called Cold Drink (Shots!)! Not even ten minutes after the ambulance had left, there were flashing lights again, this time because the apartments across the street were possibly on fire! Jeez. Let's get out of here before something else happens.

Anyway, playing-wise, I felt pretty good. I realized that one of my problems playing bari is that after a certain number of low notes, my mouth get dry and something in my embouchure changes, and if I'm able to stop and reset, things are more consistent.

Also, it was cool to catch up with Grant Reynolds, whom I hadn't seen in at least a year. His guitar playing is as virtuosic as ever.

Some Non-Yacht Rock Stuff

As the title says...non-Yacht Rock stuff this week. Also, no Steve Gadd.

Thursday: I played with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra this week down by Georgia Tech (4th Street and West Peachtree) on a private gig for the opening of a building. I was kind of stressed out about this one, mostly because Rob had scheduled three sets of potential tunes and I hadn't found much time to prepare (and the music is hard). I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of work on it last week in San Francisco, but really, I just wasn't as ready as I'd like to be.

Fortunately (?), the gig had some really loose scheduling--like two thirty minutes sets with thirty minute breaks--and then an incredibly isolated rain cloud soaked the stage and killed our final set. Kind of a bummer, though--I really do enjoy playing with this band.

Saturday: After forty-eight hours of of desperately trying to get my flute chops back in shape after this week of bari playing, I was down at my church gig for a Saturday morning service. Geez, my face was tired; sounded tired, felt tired. There was a lot of playing on this one, too, and sometimes I'd play something that sounded really clear and pretty, and then the next phrase would be tight and dull. The rest of the band is tolerating it well, though.

I'll be back there on Sunday evening for the usual, and I want to practice (since I have Saturday night off), but I know I probably just need to rest tonight and get in a good warm up tomorrow.

(Monday update: my flute face was better, but not great!)

Steve Gadd! (and Some Other Stuff)

...and just like that, we're back on the road! As noted in the previous post, we flew home from Houston Sunday morning, and we were back at the airport Monday evening, this time headed to California. 

I tried to watch Green Book, but after about an hour, it felt so predictable that I had to give up on it.

Tulsa, Oklahoma

The next movie I tried was The Thin Red Line, which I was forced to watch for an hour because my screen froze and I couldn't turn it off. I didn't make it through more than forty-five minutes of this one.

Several hours later, we landed in Sacramento.

Tuesday: Our man Hans, who drove the gear from Colorado to California, flew back to Atlanta.

shitty hotel coffee in the parking lot

After a good night's sleep, we had much of Tuesday to kill before the show, so I went for a run around town. Sacramento has a nice path along the river, which is sadly also a campground for the local homeless.

Old Sacramento displays its railroad roots.

After my run, there was the inevitable walk to the Indian restaurant.

...and then the walk back to the hotel. This part of Sacramento feels like an archetypal small town. I really dig it.

Finally, to the gig! The Great Bencuya and I took advantage of the excellent weather and walked instead of riding in the van. The Ace of Spades is a pretty nice looking room in a cool neighborhood.

We ate dinner at Mendocino Farms. Hooray for vegan options! I had a vegan chili and some kind of tasty salad. Not enough food to keep me from eating all the chips and salsa later, but at least it was a healthy start.

The gig: pretty good! Tuesday night in a new city for us, so very low expectations. The crowd was only a couple of hundred, but they were really excited to see us, and I met some fanatical dudes who can't wait for us to come back. It was also nice to see some a couple of familiar faces (Liesl and Adam) in the front row. Bencuya played some terrific stuff on his Hey Nineteen solos.

Wednesday: A travel day, but we were only headed to San Francisco, so I squeezed in another run before we left town.

California state capital

 ...and also squeezed in one more trip to the Indian restaurant.

The area outside of Sacramento is pancake flat, and mostly agricultural.

Closer to San Fran, though, the hills begin to rise up.

As we zoomed across the Bay Bridge, we caught a glimpse of downtown San Francisco.

We checked into our rooms in South San Francisco, and then...there was nothing to do. I found an empty conference room and practiced for a couple of hours. Eventually, someone from the front desk came and very awkwardly kicked me out (her: "Can I help you?" me: "Umm, what?").

So anyway, we piled in a couple of cars and headed into town for dinner and drinks. Most of us ended up at a Thai place.

Then we were headed up the street to a tiki bar called Smuggler's Cove, where I had a virgin pina colada. Twas a good hang! Also, yay for paper straws instead of plastic!

Thursday: Another day to kill, and unfortunately it was raining, so I spent some time on the treadmill before heading to lunch in South San Fran. The Indian restaurant was CLOSED!, so I had pho at the Vietnamese place instead.

Yesterday's practice room was deadbolt-locked-shut, so I politely went to the front desk and asked if they had an empty room in which I could warm up for an hour. They handed me a business card and said that I could rent one (a.k.a. "fuck you"). So I played in our room instead, and hoped that I was bugging somebody, while also trying to play softly enough that I wouldn't bug anybody.

The view from our hotel room. What had been rainy and windy turned into a very pretty afternoon. San Francisco is just on the other side of those hills.

city hall

Our first public show in San Fran: August Hall. Pretty cool place. Don't step in the poop in the middle of the street! It confused me that there were supposed to be two guys loading our gear in, but one guy didn't show up, and the staff just kind of hung out and watched the other guy (and Zach and me) do all the work.

Anyway, pretty nice place. Beautiful green rooms.

This one was pretty good. Things sounded a little boomy--probably because we only had about two hundred fifty people in the room. I'll take it, though. San Fran is a cool place to visit. Once again, Bencuya was tearing it up over there.

We played Lights by Journey as an encore, and a friend told me that the song was actually written about Los Angeles instead of San Francisco:

When the lights go down in the city
And the sun shines on LA

Friday: Speaking of LA, our gear drove south for our next show, and we hopped on a quick flight to LAX. Once there, we encountered some difficulty arranging for a car to drive us to Hollywood. I think the three of us stood here for a half hour before our pick up.

It took an hour to get to our hotel. Part of the problem was LA traffic on a Friday, but the dude didn't help things at all by repeatedly ignoring the directions his GPS was giving him. I thought we were going to be forever twenty-one minutes from our destination.

So...hotel, a quick sandwich at the Subway just down the street, and a few miles of running.

Once again, we were close enough to walk to the gig, so I did.

We loaded in, set up, and sound checked very efficiently, leaving me ample time to warm up. I even had time to...walk to an Indian restaurant for takeout!

(not the Indian restaurant)

LA is a weird place, and this was kind of a weird gig. I guess our expectations are really high about who might hear us (which is funny, because it's a very LA thing for your friends to be "unfortunately unable to attend your show"). We never really settled into this one. Nerves, or whatever. My solo on Biggest Part of Me was a big pile of poop.

Anyway, we didn't quite sell out. Nine hundred plus in attendance, which looked great, and the crowd was boisterous and energetic. I wish we could've nailed it for them. It was close, though!

Butch Walker sat in with us on Rich Girl, and Sanford and Townsend (of Smoke from a Distant Fire fame) were in the audience for at least part of the show.

this dude, trying hard to mess up the guitar amp after the show

I didn't stick around for the post-show hang, so I walked down Hollywood Blvd back to the hotel after the gig. Could've been doing this...

Saturday: On to San Diego, but first, lots of hotel lobby coffee!

future Batman

 ...and I squeezed in a run, as well. Hooray for late checkout.

I even had time to shower, walk to the Indian restaurant, walk back to the hotel, grab my goddamn wallet, walk back to the Indian restaurant again, and hit the buffet.

And then we were off to the San Diego House of Blues. A little set up, sound check, and warm up before dinner.

San Diego was great! Another full house, and a much more connected performance by the band. The Great Bencuya shone again.

After the show, we drove east, landing in La Mesa for the night.

Sunday: With a full day of travel ahead of us, I squeezed in one last run for the week. La Mesa was deserted this morning.

Coffee! We passed on Starbucks in favor of this place, which was really hip.

More driving, more flat farmland.

Lunch was at Duron's in Yuma, Arizona. A big hit!

The last show of this run was at the Van Buren in Phoenix, Arizona, which is now one of the two or three best places we've ever played. Wow! What a room! What hospitality! Free socks for everybody!

Multiple green rooms...

A great sounding stage...

'Marty'

And HO LEE SHIT! STEVE GADD CAME TO OUR SHOW! 

So, the story here is that Bencuya's high school friend lives in Phoenix, and his next door neighbor is legendary drummer ("Steve Godd") Steve Gadd. My favorite drummer. Ever. Holy shit. He's enjoying a few weeks of down time in between playing with James Taylor and Eric Clapton.

Never heard of Steve Gadd? Ever heard 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover or Late in the Evening by Paul Simon? Ever heard Chuck E.'s in Love by Rickie Lee Jones? Ever heard Just the Two of Us? How about that drum solo on Steely Dan's Aja?  For me, there's also some Brecker Brothers stuff, the first incarnation of the band Steps, and some Chick Corea albums (most notably Three Quartets). Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. Steve Gadd defined drumming in the 70s and 80s. His discography is insane.

I still can't believe this happened.
















I think it took us all collectively about an hour to calm down after meeting Steve. This might've been our best gig of the run--the combination of the meeting him, going home the next day, and this exceptional venue. Plus, we had a terrific crowd of something like five hundred people! Wow! I'm looking forward to coming back here.

Steve Gadd stayed for the whole gig (including the encores), danced the whole night, and had a great time.

 I met Steve Gadd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Waaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Monday: the long flight home from Phoenix. I sat between a big, squishy ball of a man and the window, and tried not to think about peeing.

I tried to watch The Secret Life of Pets. Couldn't do it, so I re-watched Free Solo. Excellent.

STEVE GADD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!