Eats/Beats

Yacht Rock played the Eats and Beats benefit at Buckhead Theatre last night.  It's a children's charity event which features a multitude of local restaurants, bands of chefs, and us.  Sort of a hipster Taste of Dunwoody, with (by my picky eater standards) some rather exotic food.

The stage is a good size at the Theatre, the green room is nice, and the load in is pretty easy.  It doesn't have any vibe, unfortunately, and I don't have any feeling for what it sounds like out front.  The crew is also pretty dysfunctional.  We made the best of it.

The chef bands were decent/fun.  We sang Fat Bottom Girls with them (uhhh...I don't know that song) and Bencuya, Nick, and I blew through a wildy chaotic version of Let's Go Crazy.  Ford Fry plays really loud guitar.  Don't go near it.

Our part of the show was one ninety minute set.  The crowd was with us right from the beginning.  Fun gig.

Monkey ran the Kemper through Ford's 65 Amp tonight and liked it better than his Port City cabinet.  Paging Mr. Stroud...

Next in Line

Just to round out the weekend...I played my PM church gig last night.  Things went pretty well except for a bad mic cable that I had to switch out on the fly.

I bought a box of clarinet reeds this week, and swapping them out for my old reeds made a big difference in sound (and thus performance).  Funny how that works.  One thing that didn't work so well was my upper lip for flute playing--what was up with that?  My flute sounded fine, but my upper lip felt weird--like I couldn't grip the air.  I felt like I had Mr. Bill's mouth.

Big week of gigs ahead, so stay tuned.

Purple Rain, Delta, Highlands

Friday:  Yacht Rock played Purple Rain in Piedmont Park up by the Legacy Fountain.  I'd bet that most people have no idea where that is, but if you know where the parking deck is, it's right near that, up in the northeast corner of the park (closest to Piedmont and Monroe).

This is our third or fourth year playing Purple Rain.  Across the band, I think we're all pretty comfortable with it and know our parts;  like Dark Side of the Moon, it now only takes us a rehearsal or two to bring it back.  It sounded good (we listened to the board tape last night on the way home).  I had a few random mistakes, but overall, I was satisfied with my performance.

The second set was a regular yacht rock set.  Interestingly, whatever was making my hands not work Thursday went away, and I felt much better about my sax playing on this night.  I wonder if this had been a jazz gig if I'd still be saying that.

Something I don't remember seeing at one of our gigs before:  people holding up signs.  One had to do with a birthday (TURING (sic) 40 NEXT WEEK!), and one was for Pete's birthday.

Mark Cobb played ass off on this gig.  All night.  Super good stuff.

After the gig, we loaded everything into the trailer in preparation for Saturday evening's gig.

Saturday:  After a few hours of sleep, we met up at Nick's at 7:45 AM for the beginning of a long day of gigs.  

Our first gig was a big company party for Delta down at their headquarters.  We used backlined gear since ours left for North Carolina.  Fantom X7-yes!  Nord Electro 2-no!  After playing an Electro 3 for a couple of years, it's hard to go back to the 2.  At least my horns sounded good.

Good on stage sound, though Monkey did not like his choice of guitar amplifier, and the kick drum sounded like craaaaaaaaaap.

This was one of those gigs with an on stage camera man.  They also had two cameras out front.  It only took me a set and a half to realize that the video screen was above us.

After the break (and some rain), the crowd loosened up.  One guy really led the charge.

About fifteen minutes after this show ended, we were North Carolina bound to play a wedding reception in Highlands.  Fortunately, we had a crew (Zach, Hans, and Nackers) who took our gear and the PA up early and preset everything so we could walk in.  We couldn't have done this without their help.

We had a little bit of down time before the reception began.

I wonder how many other bands playing a wedding get a cheer just by walking in the room?  Pretty cool.  Obviously we had quite a few fans in the audience.

The reception was nice, though I was totally brain dead by the time we began the second set.  For example, I set my microphone and got out my piccolo to play the solo on Call Me Al, and then completely missed the beginning of it.  Nice move.

At the end of this reception (just like at the end of the Purple Rain show Friday night), we sent people to the exits with Kenny G's Going Home.  Have you heard about this Chinese phenomenon?  Read about it here:  http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/china-embraces-kenny-gs-going-home-as-its-anthem-to-go-home-20140512

We packed everything up and headed for Atlanta around 12:30 AM.  I made it to the bottom of the mountain before I passed out, waking up back in Nick's neighborhood around 3 AM.  Ugh.

Duo with Dave

David Ellington and I played a sax/organ duo gig last night.  It's always fun doing a hit with Dave, and we've got a fun batch of tunes going.  The gig is easy, the pay is good, the hang is terrific, and the food is great!  What more could you want?

That said, I am playing like SHIT these days.  My hands don't work anymore...maybe it's the connection between my head and my hands, but I'm forcing every note that comes out of my horn right now.  There's no flow at all--I feel really stiff, and my musical phrasing feels tongue-tied. The stuff I played tonight sounded ok, but I was working way too hard at it.

Anyway, here's what we did.  My hamburger was delicious.  Fries were ok.  Sometimes I think about ordering something different, but...that's not me.

Trio #4

Tyrone Jackson, Kevin Smith, and I played a pretty nice trio gig at, of all places, Stats in downtown Atlanta.  We were playing a small private party in a room there.  It was a hip looking space, though unfortunately for any music fans, it got pretty loud over the course of the night, between the conversations, the activity at the bar, and the occasional slamming door.

Maybe predictably, the three of us were more interested in playing than at our previous gig at the mall.  Kevin, in particular, had a great night, I thought.  Check it out!

To Jacksonville and Beyond

Jacksonville is far, far away.  It doesn't seem like it should take hours and hours of monotonous driving to reach it, but Yacht Rock drove down there for a gig on Saturday.  Seven hours, I think.  Even more when you miss the turn for I-10.  Oops.

One gas stop had a beer cave.

One stop had Mexican food.

Several stops required gas.

We were playing a charity event tied to The Players Championship PGA tournament.  Nothing too stressful--a couple of sets in a big tent, with an air conditioned RV for a green room and BBQ for dinner.  Things could be worse!  We had Matt Lipkins from The Shadowboxers subbing for Nick.  He did an outstanding job.

Soundcheck was long and tedious--nearly as difficult as the one we did a couple of weeks ago, except instead of a sound guy who wanted to get it right, we had the most apathetic monitor guy possible and a jackass of a FOH guy (who would ask "Is that how hard you're going to hit it on the gig?" several times).  We've done a soundcheck before, thank you.  Maybe if you'd turn our vocal mics on we could communicate with you instead of trying to yell across the tent.

I can't think of too many weird things.  The main one would be that my EWI/laptop rig stuttered all through I Wish, scaring the absolute hell out of me.  I think the culprit was my phone, which I'd plugged into the spare USB port on my laptop.  It made MainStage (which I am using for EWI sounds) develop some seriously bad latency.  I pulled the cable out and shut down iTunes (and iPhoto, which had also automatically opened), smacked the space bar a couple of times (the ultimate MainStage emergency fix), and it was fine for the rest of the gig.  Perhaps in the future I should charge my phone elsewhere.

Dannells and I traded phrases during the solo on Use Me.  We kept it going until he broke into The Entertainer.

When we did this gig last year, Monkey got something in his eye that scratched his cornea and nearly blinded him.  That didn't happen this year.  Maybe next year?

I made it home in time for my church gig.  I really really need some clarinet reeds.  If only there was a store ten minutes from my house...

Big fun at ye olde gig:  The band leader decided that one of the singers wasn't loud enough, so she asked the vocalist for her opinion, then asked the drummer for his opinion.  Then she told me to turn up the vocalist.  I turned the vocalist up.  Then she was too loud.  I put it back where we started, and that fixed it.  Uhhhhhhhhh.

Tilt a Whirl

I played a random gig with Full Tilt last night, doing the typical Atlanta corporate cover band thing.  It's really strange whenever I am back in that scene;  some of it is like I never left, and some of it is now completely foreign to me.  The Rupert's derived stuff like the sax solo on Signed, Sealed, Delivered is still there early in the night, as is the Atlanta Beat derived medley of Soul Man into Hold On, I'm Coming.  The newer things, the more current hip hop stuff, I have possibly never heard, and have nothing to play as a saxophonist.  I spent three quarters of the gig playing tambourine and shaker.

This one I have played many times.

Good rule of thumb for all you freelance saxophonists:  Don't bring a cowbell unless you specifically have to play it on a particular song, or some asshole in the audience will yell "More cowbell."  It's a race to see who can get it out there fast enough.  No one will ever yell "More shaker!"

Anyway, it's always good to have a paying gig during the week, and this one was fairly painless!  Also, it was an excellent hang with Michael Magno.  That dude is awesome.

Trio #3

So...Monday morning began with a rehearsal for the upcoming Purple Rain show in Piedmont Park.  Thank god I write charts for this stuff so that when we do something like this I don't have to start from scratch.  A few run throughs on Sunday night and I was ready to roll.  Rehearsal was no problem.

Monday evening I had one more trio gig (my first trio gig of the year was last Wednesday, and then in six days I've now had three).  This one had Kevin on bass and Tyrone Jackson on keyboard.  Once again, I took a feed off of the mixer, guessing on the levels.  The bass is a little hot on this one, until the last couple of tunes where the bass disappeared!  I think Kevin's amp got too hot and shut down.

This gig was in the mall.  Not the most exciting bandstand there among the housewares, overlooking the escalator.  Nonetheless, it was another opportunity to play some of my music!  

Dig Tyrone's shirt and check out the tunes: