Thrilled

Saturday began early for me (after a very late night coming home from Athens) with a wedding ceremony in Smyrna.  I picked this one up after one of my Sunday church gigs--my friend Graham played piano and sang, and I filled in the spaces around him.  It was fun!  Always a good hang with Graham.

From there, I had just barely enough time to run home, change clothes, eat lunch and head to the Variety Playhouse for Yacht Rock's annual Thriller show.  This was also the day of the Little 5 Points Halloween Parade, so everybody came screaming in right before the road was closed.

This turned out to be a very difficult gig.  For one thing, I'd definitely crammed too much stuff in a week (I ended up with 10 gigs in 9 days, plus 2 rehearsals).  There was pressure because it sold out.  Also, the Thriller show has never settled--every year we change some things (adding solos, etc) and shift harmony vocals.  Whereas the Purple Rain show feels consistent from year to year, this one always feels like we're doing it for the first time.  The cumulative effect is focused apprehension in front of a giant audience.

Also, we had a camera crew filming, and a pro photographer planted in front of Pete.  The camera shooting from behind me was a reminder of the post-gig scrutiny that would be happening.  The photographer in front made me extremely self-conscious of everything I did.

I think the crowd really enjoyed it, but if you asked anybody in the band (particularly in between sets), you'd have gotten a different story.  It was not fun experience.  I, for one, had pretty much given up on my career in music by the end;  mentally, I had finished drafting my resignation to the band.

Looking over the first set now, I'm not sure why I felt like that.  The only song that got the best of me was The Girl is Mine, and that was only because I totally blew my background vocal parts.  Playing-wise, it was fine.  There was definitely a heavy vibe between all of us, though.  We didn't enjoy any of the music.

photo cred:  Emily Butler Photography

The second set was a good bit more relaxed;  we all laughed a little bit more and played a little more.  The only song that bit me in the ass was Take On Me;  it's always the same chords, but a different order depending on where we are in the song.  It a Russian Roulette of A, C#minor, D, and F# minor.  I also played a great big wrong chord in Maniac, come to think of it.  I can live with all of that, though, because we had more fun.  First set, not so much.  By the time we'd finished the encore, I was more than ready to go home.

Georgia Theatre

It's been several months since Yacht Rock made the trip to Athens to play the Georgia Theatre.  It's good to be back!  What was already a good sounding room has improved for us over the years with the addition of our own sound crew (yay Kip and Zach) and in ear monitors.

It's homecoming weekend in Athens, and we just barely beat the street closure and the UGA marching band.  It would've been a long uphill push of the gear if we'd missed it.

This was a pretty decent gig.  Nick tried to shake up the set list a little bit, so there were a few second set tunes in the first set, which felt kind of weird.   The set list also had a few previews of songs for Saturday night's Thriller show at the Variety Playhouse.

Joining us for the evening were two background singers, Keisha Jackson and Slick Barnes.  We met them earlier in the year on a big corporate gig in Las Vegas, and then they sang on our Purple Rain show.  Since they'll also be on the Variety Playhouse gig, we brought them along.

No clunkers on this gig.  With the exception of Arthur's Theme, I think I got everything right.  Monkey was screwing that one up, and I'm still not sure whether I was also making mistakes (independent of his mistakes), hearing his mistakes and thinking they were mine, or making mistakes because of his mistakes.  Any way you hear it, there was some bad shit in there.

Great crowd at the Georgia Theatre (50 people short of a sellout)--probably the best, least douchiest we've had, with the exception of the two people directly in front of me at the corner of the stage who were on their phones the entire time.  I wanted to kick them in the faces.  I actually spent a few songs in the second set mentally kicking them in the faces.  It was fun.  I hope their hangovers require hospitalization, and I hope they get charged for data roaming for the entire night.

Thursday

Yacht Rock played our first gig at Nick and Pete's new room, Venkman's.  Pretty easy show, though it almost felt like we played twice because we loaded in at noon, sound checked, and didn't perform until after 9:30 PM.  

The show was pretty middle of the road for us--nothing unusual on the set list, except for maybe Everything She Wants.  I had a few better than average sax solos, which was nice.  Things got slightly 10 High-ish during our set, a nod to our old Thursday steady years back.  

We played one set, so it was over before I got bored.

Trio

The gigs roll on...Wednesday night was a trio in the World Congress Center, in one of their giant exhibit halls.  We were way off in a corner, supplying the tunes for tractor distributors who wanted a little jazz with their buffet dinners.  Twas a strange setting for sure.

Here are the tunes.  Kevin's bass pick up died at the Kind of Blue gig, so he used a mic on a stand, and after about five tunes he got off the mic and is thus difficult to hear.  It's his fault, not mine.

Cheddar, Beef, Etc.

Yacht Rock played a private party Tuesday night at, of all places, Park Tavern.  Pretty regular corporate gig.  No fruit in the green room.  Boo.

In between sets, several people asked to have their pictures taken with us.

Then a dude with a pink phone totally moved in on my shot, oblivious to my existence.

More people.

Starting to get a little weird.

Is that a Blackberry?

Here's one of a bunch of frickin' dudes.  One of these fuckers kept yelling for Freebird all night like 1.  We've never heard that joke before;  2.  We might seriously play Freebird.  

Back to the action.  We have the meats.  Not much of a gig, though they danced enough to get us through the night, but just barely.  Definitely not one for the books.

The good gigs are coming up next.  Stay tuned.

Kind of Blue

Last night was the inaugural performance of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album by the Pleaserock Horns (Rob Opitz, Richard Sherrington, and myself) at Venkman's.  Nick (dude from Yacht Rock and co-owner of Venkman's) had asked me to put a band together to perform the record, and I thought it would be a cool idea to tie in the horn section that we use for the Beatles gigs and other shows where we expand the band.

I think we played really well!  No rehearsal and a ten minute soundcheck, so it was very much a show and blow situation.  I'd been writing out the arrangements over the past few weeks, and thankfully there were no huge errors in the charts.

The second set was mostly comprised of songs and arrangements from one of my favorite albums of that period, '58 Sessions (now reissued as Jazz at the Plaza).

You Know You Make Me Wanna

Saturday night's gig was a wedding with Yacht Rock.  The big, um, thrill was playing Shout from the Animal House soundtrack.  I even wrote a chart for it.

Some attendees were a little more excited than others--some extreme air guitar and shaker playing.  It seemed like there was more than alcohol in his system.  Monkeyboy was freaked out by him, but he was pretty entertaining, I thought.  Then again, he wasn't three feet in front of me all night.

On our end, we were short a few of our regular guys--Nick was on vacation (we had Dude from The Shadowboxers covering for him), and The Great Bencuya had his sinus cavities mined/vacuumed/decontaminated/reamed this week (Dustin from the Yacht Rock Schooner performed his parts).  It remains to be seen how this will affect his texting.

Big MVP of the night was Mark Cobb, who began the day playing a gig in the Bahamas, jumped on a plane, flew to Atlanta, zipped over to Buckhead, and played a gig with us.  Probably some kind of record.  I don't know.

Anyway...big week ahead.  Stay tuned.

Northeastern Tour + TX

Alright goddamnit...I've put this off for as long as I could.  I've done enough stuff since I got home that I don't hardly remember anything anyway, but here it goes...

Thursday:  We (Yacht Rock) flew to Boston to begin our run of shows in the northeast.  The van and trailer (and our crew of Kip and Zach) picked us up.

Boston:  still under construction

Boston Common--oldest park in the country (yes, I looked that up)

Remarkably, we were kind of early for load in, which afforded us time for lunch.  An exotic place in Chinatown was selected.   Good food, but you had to work for it.  A large bowl of broth was set to boil on the burner in the middle of the table, and each of us was given our own ingredients to cook.  Probably easier when five guys aren't trying to fish their food out at once.

Our show in Boston was at The Royale.  It was a beautiful room with a nice sized stage.

Great show!  Somewhere around 500 people showed up, which I would say is a major victory for our third time in the city.  Other than that...I don't remember anything.  That probably means it was good.

Ahhh...we changed the end of Africa, so now we go into a sax solo over the groove to Flashlight by Parliament (instead of an EWI solo over the accelerating Africa groove).  Make sense?  You can watch it here:  https://www.facebook.com/fenderp/videos/vb.1438865258/10207740065926499/?type=2&theater

Yacht Rock Revue plays Toto's Africa...damn cool
Posted by Don Mangels on Saturday, October 3, 2015

photo cred: Kip Conner

Post gig, we walked down the street to grab some pizza, only to discover that the area we were in was populated by hundreds of young, drunk girls dressed as cheap prostitutes.  Maybe I'm getting old, but it was kind of depressing.  Kind of...as we left the scene, Mark Cobb coined the term "slut lap:"  to drive around the block once just to check out the skanky chicks.

Friday:  we drove from Boston to NYC for our first show at the Bowery Ballroom.

No rain in Boston, but by the time we hit Manhattan, the rain was pretty steady.

I stole The Great Rencuya's hat.

In spite of the weather, we sold out the Bowery Ballroom.  Yay!  575 people.

Robbie Dupree came down from Woodstock and we played his three songs (I'm No Stranger, Hot Rod Hearts, and Steal Away).   Another good night of playing.  New York City is always a great gig.

photo cred:  Kip Conner

stolen from Instagram

Post gig...not as exciting.  Some bimbo who had been invited into our dressing room by a friend of a friend asked me as I was finishing changing clothes if I was in the band.  As you might expect, I said no, and then asked her if she was in the band.  I guess that makes us even.

Load out in the rain on a Friday night in Manhattan.  Not fun.

Saturday:  We spent the night at a hotel on Long Island.  With most of the day to kill, a few guys went to the movies.  I stayed in my room and wrote charts for an upcoming gig.  Kip, Zach, and I also had lunch at Wendy's.  Spine tingling levels of excitement.

Saturday night's show was at The Paramount in Huntington, NY.  It might just be the best venue we play.  The stage is great, the crew is great, the backstage is great, the food is great (enough), the post-gig hang in the speakeasy in the basement is pretty great.

The last time (first time) we played here, the marque said something like "70s Soft Rock."  They didn't even use our name.  This time, we made it.

 Rock star warm up: a mirror and a red solo cup full of vodka.

Yet another great show!  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 showed up.  The floor looked comfortably full.  Interestingly, the crowd skewed noticeably older, especially compared to the two nights before.  They dug it though, and we looooooove playing The Paramount.

photo cred:  Don Mangels

Sunday:  we headed on down to Washington, DC.  The rain had dissipated.  Lunch was somewhere at a sandwich shop in Delaware.  Eagles fans.  It felt like a suburb of Philadelphia.

Try and guess what Pete ordered...

So...The Hamilton in DC!  Another really nice room.  We played nothing but really excellent venues on this trip.  We had around 500 people at this one, which was almost a letdown because we sold it out in the early afternoon the last time we came through.  Then again, it was a Sunday night and the weather was a little shaky.

I can't remember anything about our playing on this one, other than I was a little shaky/distracted at the beginning of the night.  It took a few songs for me to get into the gig.

We stayed at a hotel right near the Pentagon to facilitate Monday's fly date.

Monday:  ouch.  6:15 AM lobby call.  I went to bed around 3 AM after showering.  Not so good.  We flew out of Reagan National to San Antonio, TX, with a connection in (of all places) Atlanta.

I was awake enough to work on charts on the flight to Atlanta, but then I slept pretty much from the moment I sat down until we landed in Texas.

The Great Bencuya sleeps

 San Antonio was not too bad for a Monday.  I'd never been here before.  We were early enough (and close enough) to run over to the Alamo and check it out.  Not as big as I expected.

This was some kind of private event.  I really have no idea who we were playing for (though somebody said it was medical related).

Here's how Monkeyboy got through it.

Kind of a small stage.  Mostly the same backlined gear we'd played a month or so earlier in Austin.

It was a snoozer of a gig at first, but the crowd finally came around when we played Islands in the Stream, and from then on the dance floor was pretty solidly packed.  Not a bad gig for a Monday.

Tuesday:  we were able to sleep late (10:30 lobby call) before heading home.  More charts were created on the plane.

Charts, charts, charts...what the hell for?  These are for a gig next Monday, October 12, at Venkman's.    The Pleaserock Horns (Rob Opitz, Richard Sherrington, and myself), along with David Ellington (piano), Kevin Smith (bass), and Marlon Patton (drums), are performing Miles Davis' Kind of Blue.  The second set will be other tunes of the period performed by Miles' sextet at the time.