Athens, GA

The Georgia Theatre never disappoints.

Nice gig! Everybody (including Keisha and Kourtney Jackson, who were with us for this one) was in a good mood, and you could feel it on stage.

You know how I usually hate my solo on Biggest Part of Me, and then it turns out that it was at least decent? The opposite happened here: I felt like I did pretty well, and then a friend sent me a video of the solo, and it sounds like I'm just randomly trying some shit out. Thus, here's a picture, but not a video!

  

photo cred: Chadwick Hunter

We also played our original, Step, which we had debuted at the Revival show a couple of weeks ago. I'm still trying to get the hang of it--not quite comfortable yet. Also, we closed the night out (like the Revival) with Bohemian Rhapsody. I'm not sure why, but I felt like I was wildly pitchy for the first section--like there was no tonality, and I just had to go off muscle memory.

Anyway, yay Athens! It was good to see y'all.

A Long Day in Santa Fe

Santa Fe! This was our third year playing this gig--some kind of private party at an expensive house on a hill, and every year it gets a little bigger, a little more expensive. This year, they built a boat deck, and we played up in front of the bridge. How clever is that!

The views are beautiful.

And the property is also gorgeous.

We arrived really early--flying west from Atlanta to Albuquerque, we landed at noon, ate lunch at the airport, and then piled into a sprinter van for the trip out to Santa Fe. After helping set up the backline gear and then sound checking, we still had several hours to kill. I went for a run (it was hot and there was altitude), and then we took the house shuttle into town to find food.

I hit the Indian place (of course), and they were so slow, they turned the lights on in the dining room when they seated me! I ordered dal makhani (lentils sautéed with onions, garlic, ginger, and tomatoes) and a side of rice. Pretty good.

Met up with everybody else for a stop at Starbuck's before the shuttle took us back to the gig.

Every year, we've had trouble with the weather, and this year was no exception. Rain passed by our hill on several occasions. When I went to check on the stage (and my stuff), the local guys had tarped everything except my saxophones, flute, piccolo, EWI, and laptop. Dudes! So, I put all my stuff back in the cases and made sure my computer stuff would stay dry.

We delayed the start by fifteen minutes to see if the rain would get us. It held off, though, and I unpacked my horns and we got to work.

This one was tough. It felt like we'd been hanging around all day (we had), and the crowd was pretty lukewarm in their response to us. An 8:30 PM start time felt like 11:30 to us.

At one point, a couple of really big moths (like 3 inch wingspan, bodies like your pinkie finger) came out of the desert to check us out. If there's such a thing as being attacked by moths, we were! I had one that landed on one leg, then moved to the keyboard (noo!), then moved to my other leg (NOOOO!), and I swear he was chewing on my pants, so I brushed him off, and he fell on the stage and played dead for a couple of songs. Eventually, he flipped over and just hung out there, then crawled up on the foot of the keyboard stand. Moth attack repelled!

We finished around 10:30 PM, packed up whatever was coming with us (mostly my saxophones and stuff), hopped in the sprinter van and headed back to our hotel in Albuquerque, an hour away. I was in bed at 12:30 AM, and up at 4:20 AM to catch the shuttle to the airport. Ouch.

Cool car in the airport.

I slept the whole way back to Atlanta. The seat next to me was thankfully empty, and I feel like it was some kind of karmic payback for the giant woman who was sat in her seat AND mine on the way out to New Mexico.

I don't know if I took a nap this afternoon, but I somehow managed to get to my church gig. It's--amazing is not the ride word--maybe it's impressive? how much my physical chops are affected by hard days like this. I knew my brain would be tired and I'd make dumb mistakes reading charts, but my flute face took the whole rehearsal to come around to something sounding decent. Anyway, I made it through the actual service just fine.

Live on the Green

Yacht Rock was on the road again this week, beginning with a Thursday evening show in Nashville a their "Live on the Green" festival. We were in a the 7:30 PM slot. Way back in 2012, we also played this program, though they held in October then, and I remember I was underdressed and very cold, and I borrowed Mark Dannells' jacket. You can relive it here.

Anyway, after a somewhat chaotic load in and set up, we only had time for a super quick line check before giving way to the next band's set up. I guess we were a little late, but the stage crew was also a little slow with the plan for a drum riser, and we had to wait til that was set before we could build around it.

The festival then drove us to a nearby hotel to relax before our set. Urban golf carting!

After about an hour, we made our way back over to the backstage area to eat dinner. Quite a crowd had already gathered to see the band before us, American Authors.

The change-over--one drum riser rolled aside, our riser rolled in, and we brought our gear back into position around it.

Here's a crowd shot. Pretty fun gig. I heard that there were 20,000 people out there? I guess that it's possible, even though I could only see these people who were lit up. The spotlight was also pretty intense.

We finished, and immediately went into a fire drill of running our gear off the side of the stage, laying it down (I commandeered a large table and piled keyboards, saxophones, and pedals on it), and going back for more. Ten minutes earlier, we were rock stars! Now we're just trying to get our shit out of the way so the next band can start on time. So it goes...

Chastain 2019

The 2019 Yacht Rock Revival was once again at Chastain Amphitheater in Atlanta, and we were fortunate to once again sell it out--6,900 people. 

It's surreal. It blows my mind that we're playing a gig on the same stage where I've seen Sting, or Hall and Oates. Instead, it's us on stage, and I can look out in the audience and see my parents out there singing along.

The guests for this year were Matthew Wilder, Robbie Dupree, and Johnny Townsend and Ed Sanford (Sanford Townsend Band). Gary Wright was originally on as well, but he fell ill earlier in the week and had to cancel. We played Dreamweaver without him (even using his backing track!).

I especially enjoyed playing Sanford Townsend's Smoke From a Distant Fire, which is a song we used to watch on video back when we were just starting out. Here's my chart.

Their other song for this show was I Keep Forgettin' (a hit for Michael MacDonald), which was cowritten by Ed. In order to fit it in Johnny's vocal range, we had to drop the key by a fourth! Hello transpose button!

Here's my outro solo on Biggest Part of Me. Going up a quarter strength on tenor reeds has been a big improvement. 

Savannah

But wait--there's more! We got home Sunday, did laundry on Monday, and left for Savannah Tuesday morning in a stinky van. Four hours later, here we are.

This gig was a corporate thing, played on a combination of extra gear we had at home (our gear was now en route from Massachusetts), and rental stuff. Kind of a "whatever" gig.

Fireworks ended the night at 9 PM.

The Hard Way

Here we go--three more. Lots of time in the van.

Thursday: The band flew to Washington, DC, where we met the van and trailer. From there, we drove two hours to Dewey Beach, Delaware. 

The Bottle and Cork has been around for a long time, and attracts some pretty big groups. I'd only heard of it because Mark Bencuya has a t shirt from there. They had a t shirt with us on it, but they misspelled Revue. Not impressive.

Before the show, we had a quick photo session for AARP, led by these two hipsters. It's unclear why this happened to us, but it did.

Ticket presales were very good, and then the last three hundred or so sold, and all of the sudden, we were at capacity. How about that?

This was a pretty great gig--the sellout, the energy of the people, and probably because the place looks like some shitty bar in a beach town in Delaware (of all places) that they clean out every night with a firehose that suddenly became this epic night. When it was going down, I reminded myself that  tonight was probably going to be the best night of the run because the other two would be private parties.

To top everything off, the green room was extra nice! Showers, pool table, laundry. Well done.

At the end of the night, we got back in the van and drove two hours to Philadelphia, where we spent the night.

Friday: We were supposed to fly from Philly to Boston at maybe 11:30 AM (I can't remember exactly), but the flight was delayed before we even left the hotel, and then once we got to the Philadelphia airport, it was delayed I think twice more, and we ended up leaving around 2:45 PM, which was bad. Delta upgraded us, though. First class, but I still had to sit next to Monkeyboy.

Once we made it to Boston, we got in a van, and the driver drove 100 miles and hour for almost three hours straight until we got out to Chatham (on the cape of Massachusetts).

Our gear had been driven up from Philadelphia much earlier in the day and loaded in, so we finished setting everything up, changed clothes, and launched head first into the gig. I think we started around a half hour late after all the travel delays.

This one was some sort of private party for members of the club, and once we got going, there were lots of people in this tiny room. It was one of those nights where rich people get drunk and misbehave because the only musicians they've ever encountered were in a bar.

stage diver

After the show, about thirty people invited themselves into our green room, drank our beer, and ate our pizza. One by one, the seven of us realized we'd been overrun and snuck back upstairs to pack our gear and escape.

Saturday: We spent the night in Hyannis, Massachusetts. Scenes from my run...

Around the time that we were supposed to head off to the next gig, it was discovered that the leaf springs on the trailer were broken. We emptied its contents into a Uhaul, dropped the trailer for repair, and took the van (with a few things like saxophones and luggage) to New Hampshire for show number three.

We played this gig two years ago (you can relive it here, if you wish). Same kind of thing--late summer party, band on a barge in the lake. We were fortunate that we'd rented most of the gear instead of using our own stuff because 1. The weather didn't look good, 2. We were trying to leave as soon as our time was up.

We made it about halfway through the night before the weather began to deteriorate, so we packed up all of our stuff (mostly my stuff) and hopped off the barge. The backline guys packed as much of their stuff up as they could and tarped everything. Rain followed shortly thereafter.

Inside the house, we set up around the NINE FOOT STEINWAY! and played a half dozen more songs. I think the party attendees enjoyed this even more than the outdoor show--it quickly turned into a Yacht Rock sing-along in the living room. Easy night. This part was especially fun.

From here, we drove the two hours to Boston, spent the night, and flew home Sunday morning.