Zig Zag

Two gigs last week--one in Santa Fe, and one in Martha's Vineyard. Lots of flying. Lots of pictures. Let's begin:

Friday: 9:50 AM flight to Albuquerque meant that I left home at 7 AM, which means I slept on the entire flight--I was passed out before they shut the door, and didn't wake up until they put down the landing gear. I slept so hard that as I walked past the pilot and flight attendant at the door, the attendant said to me, "Mr. Freeman! We were very impressed with how well you slept! Also, congratulations on your recent Gold Medallion status!" I was so confused that I didn't know what to say.

Anyway, we got to Albuquerque and then took a limo van to Santa Fe.

The scene for this birthday party was a private compound of sorts on a hill just outside of the city. Multiple buildings and spectacular views all the way around. The house manager even pointed out Carol Burnett's house on the adjacent lot. Good company!

The backline...was not very good on this one. Lots of weird stuff--a Nord Stage and a Nord Electro 5D (that I didn't quite know how to use), giant projector tables that served as percussion tables, and a guitar that Mark Dannells had to to solder back together before he could use it. Most importantly, the Roland Fantom X6 that they'd brought me had a problem with the card reader--even though it said "CARD PROTECTED!", the problem was not with the compact flash cards that had all my sounds and settings. This was mildly terrifying, though. because I couldn't be sure that it was their keyboard's fault until they brought another Fantom X to try out.

If I was wrong, it'd be a lot of synth programming in a short period of time!

Fortunately(?), they had one other X series Fantom at the shop, but unfortunately, it was a humungous weighted-key-X8, which dwarfed the little Nord like an Imperial Cruiser over the Millennium Falcon. It did recognize and read my compact flash card right away, so it'd have to do.

All set now, so back to the amazing scenery.

Around a half hour before our start time, a storm inched towards us, eventually coming close enough that we had to tear half the gear down and tarp the rest.

The storm subsided about forty-five minutes later, and we reset everything and played the gig.

Everything went ok. The combination of a long day and the bad combination of gear gradually wore me down, and I don't think I could've played much more than we had to. Not only was the giant top keyboard a hassle (the weighted keys, plus the fact that the thing was pitched slightly away from me, forcing me to stand up to read the screen and change sounds), but the unfamiliarity of the Nord 5 meant that I had to toss my sunglasses aside more than once to try and figure it out while I was playing something else. It was tough.

Saturday: Our travel day didn't begin until 11 AM (which felt like 1 PM to us), so I got up and early and squeezed in a run.

Back in the limo van, back to Albuquerque.

We flew from New Mexico to Salt Lake City, where we changed planes and headed to Boston (and picked up actor Scott Glenn! DUUUUUDE! That's cool.)

Other than that...the sky was so clear leaving SLC that we had incredible views of the ground for a couple of hours, and then the sun set, and it was even more beautiful.

I wonder if the two guys next to me were more weirded out by all the pictures I took, or the fact that I ate five bananas and an apple for dinner.

We landed in Boston after 11 PM, went to the hotel, and went straight to bed.

Sunday: Off to Martha's Vineyard. We drove for about an hour and a half down to the meet the ferry. Wet weather all around, and a choppy ride to the island.

Check out this tent!

Because of the bad weather, we were mostly confined to one of the tents on the beach volleyball court (next to the flooded out bocce ball court).

With a few hours to kill between soundcheck and the reception, I squeezed in a quick run to the beach and back.

Soooooo nice to see our own gear again (we had a friend drive it up to Boston while we were headed west). I played much better with this stuff. Some of the guys in the reception got a little too frat-boyish for me, though, and it gradually drained my enthusiasm for the evening.

We spent the night at the Summercamp Hotel, a really cool 19th century building right on the main drag. Three to a room!

Monday: Yesterday in reverse, but with exquisite weather! We loaded our suitcases into the trailer and walked down the street to the ferry.

From there, it was a van ride back to Boston, and then a flight home. We even managed to squeeze onto an earlier departure, delivering us back to Atlanta around seventy-five minutes earlier than we'd originally planned.

This week, we are headed to Texas. Thursday's show in Houston was cancelled, but we are in Dallas on Friday, Ft. Worth on Saturday (wedding reception), and Austin on Sunday. Our gear will be there, and it should be a great trip! You can see where we'll be by regularly checking out the Pleaserock website.

Revival, Greg Lee

The 2017 Yacht Rock Revival was Saturday. EPIC! This year's show was at the Tabernacle, a far superior location for us--better stage, better dressing rooms, adequate restrooms and bars for the audience, air conditioning, and an exceptionally good staff and crew. Maybe the attendance numbers weren't as huge, but the experience more than made up for it.

We're still in the midst of shooting (or being shot, I should say) a documentary, so this show had the extra pressure of cameras filming everything. I, for one, had a stationary camera staring me down all night. It's probably two hours of nerves and mouth breathing.

Some pictures from soundcheck. We also played five songs so that the cameras could do close ups.

Before the show, we took a ride around the block so that the film crew would have footage of us rolling out of a limousine and into the back door of the Tabernacle. The first try at this almost ended in disaster when the driver couldn't get the door open.

The gig was awesome in every way. A few scattered thoughts:

All my gear worked--replacing the MIDI cable between the EWI and the convertor seems to have solved my little glitches. I still had a few little things, but they were all operator error (missed the footswitch button for a patch change, etc).

That said, my tenor playing? Booooooo. I picked a fine time to overblow a couple of solo entrances that started in the palm keys. Instead of getting the right note, I got the "DUUUUUUHHH" under note sound. Also, reports from the horn section indicated that my solo on Taking it to the Streets was good, but it felt like four minutes of saxophone diarrhea.

We expanded the band with a horn section (Rob Opitz, trumpet; Gary Paulo, tenor sax; Richard Sherrington, trombone) and background singers (Keisha and Kourtney Jackson). All awesome people and killer musicians. They made us sound even better. The horn section was particularly forgiving as I kept emailing out reworked versions of the Kool and the Gang and Dazz Band songs, since the parts changed drastically from the studio recordings.

It was an fantastic night. Kudos to the Tabernacle, our crew (Kip, Zach, Kerry, and Matt), and Pleaserock (Nick, Pete, Kristen, and Rebecca) for pulling together another legendary event.

Sunday: Time for some original music! The Greg Lee Band (which includes everybody from Yacht Rock except Nick and Pete) followed Indianapolis Jones (Nick's original band, featuring Mark Cobb on drums) at the Grant Park Summer Shade Festival.

Really great weather, and great music! Indianapolis Jones sounded terrific, and Greg's band was good, too, as far as I could tell. Most of what I heard was the Marshall guitar amp behind me.

I went home and took a long nap. We made it through the weekend!

Two More

This past weekend's adventures:

Friday: Yacht Rock played a private show at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta. A little strange--we've played more than a dozen times in this room, but this was the first private/corporate party. Interesting. For us, it was a dress rehearsal for next week's big public show at The Tabernacle--this year's Yacht Rock Revival, so in addition to the band, we also had Keisha and Courtney on background vocals, and the mighty horn section of Rob Opitz, Gary Paulo, and Richard Sherrington.

Pretty good gig, all things considered. The horn section (directly over my left shoulder) mostly sounded fantastic, and I felt like I played pretty well doing my usual thing. My EWI rig continues to scare me, though--this gig's hiccup was in Peg, where it randomly decided to play a half step lower than my fingering for a couple of notes. Having updated the MainStage app and the OS, I've hopefully ruled out the possibility that my laptop is ready to die. The EWI itself seems ok, so my thinking is that the MIDI cable is going bad, and it's transmitting bad data to the computer. Saturday's gig is a fly date, meaning I will be on different cables, but the same laptop and EWI. If things are solid there, I'll try replacing the suspects in my regular gear.

Too much about that...the horns were great!

Saturday: 8 AM came much too quickly, and I was out the door and headed to the carpool. We flew (in costume as part of a promo for the Revival) to Boston, then piled into a Sprinter van and drove two hours north to New Hampshire for a birthday party.

First up, check this out--as you may know, carrying two saxophones and the EWI, and my backpack (total weight 44 pounds), is a point of high anxiety for me. I'm always only one cranky gate agent or one tiny regional jet away from having to check my instruments, which would most certainly result in damage, as the leather gig bags in which I carry them are not ATA approved. In anticipation of some big fly dates later in the year, I am trying to find a solution where I can check my saxophones (all the sax players say 'Woah! You're crazy', but so is tempting fate by using soft gig bags). Step one: for this trip, I checked the alto and the EWI in a Pelican (a 1615 Air, which is the largest Pelican that you can check without being charged overweight or oversized).

I'll just go ahead and say that this solution worked great! My instruments survived and life was grand. The end.

The rest of the story: New Hampshire on a lake. Our "stage" was a barge next to lake club. The occasion was a fiftieth birthday party. We showed up at 4:30, set up, ate, played basically 7-9 PM, watched the fireworks/packed up, and were on the road back to Boston by 9:30 PM. Easy gig. The backlined gear was good. The weather was nice. The barge was rocking all afternoon until the boat traffic finally died down. I have no complaints.

photo by Peter Olson

These little guys swarmed us once the sun went down. One came all the way back to Atlanta (still alive!) in my new alto/EWI Pelican!

My fly date EWI rig performed flawlessly (even after I accidentally knocked the EWI off the table), which hopefully means that my suspicions about the cable are correct. Too bad the next gig is FREAKIN' HUGE! I guess if the thing still messes up next weekend, I can throw myself in front of a bus or something.

Sunday: Homeward bound.

The kid behind me kept kicking my seat.

Luftballons

I have never seen this video until now. Cold war reminiscing!

Saturday night, we played a gig in Athens for a company that makes balloons. Check out the decorations! Amazing. How long did it take to make all of these?

The gig itself was no big deal--we had two and a half subs (Greg out front for Nick, Rob Henson on bass for Greg, and Dustin Cottrell for The Great Bencuya), and the set list accommodated the stuff with which they were most comfortable. Easy. Done at 10 PM, home by 2:30 AM.

Indiana Revival

A week ago, Yacht Rock returned to Indianapolis (again!) for a Revival show with Robbie Dupree, Matthew Wilder, Elliot Lurie, and Peter Beckett at the Indiana State Fair.

The travel and the soundcheck were fairly painless and the weather was great. Something about the show, though...I just felt really uncomfortable the entire time. Maybe it's the quicker pacing, the need to keep the energy up, and the less-well-known second and third songs by each of the artists, but I just couldn't get in the groove. All of this discomfort culminated in my failure to change the EWI to the correct sound for the Rosanna solo, the first half of which sounded like a middle school band falling down a flight of stairs.

I went through the setlist a few days ago, thinking that there would be bomb craters next to every song, and other than the Rosanna crash, a three measure faceplant in Arthur's Theme a flesh wound in Break My Stride, my injuries were all in the much less known follow up hits that we never play, so nobody probably even heard them anyway. I felt bad about all of it, though.

Here are some clips where I didn't blow it. Literally and figuratively.