At the Giving Kitchen event earlier this year, some folks with extremely deep pockets bid on a private shows with Yacht Rock, and the winning numbers were in the $26,000 range. We played one of those shows last night for one of the winners, US Foods.
There was a cajon...
...views of Atlanta on a beautiful day...
...and a giant check from US Foods for $50,000 to The Giving Kitchen, an organization who provides supplemental aide to those in the restaurant community.
How about that! Plus the gig was super easy--we played it in the "unplugged" style, so I brought a saxophone, a flute, a piccolo, and a bag of hand percussion. Easy load in/out, and home before 9 PM. Not too shabby.
Yacht Rock was invited (for the sixth year in a row) to perform as a musical guest on the Sail Across the Sun Cruise. For the past five years, the band Train has headlined this cruise, but they are stepping aside, leaving us a decent chance of not playing on this boat anymore. I think I've had enough of playing on the ships, so if this is the last one, so be it.
Wednesday: the ship leaves from New Orleans, but we flew into Baton Rouge to save some money. I slept the whole way--I'm an excellent sleeper.
The van we'd arranged to drive us to the port was more of a limo than a church van, so we were forced to pile most of our luggage up on the floor. Not very comfortable for the ninety miles to New Orleans.
The view from my cabin balcony.
We left New Orleans around 5:30 PM.
After a nap, a run, and dinner, we checked out Christopher Cross' set in the theatre. Great band--the sax player, Justin Vasquez, was fantastic. Also, Keith Carlock (of Steely Dan!) on drums. Wow!
Thursday: I slept for as long as I could because I like to sleep, and it helps to eat up some of the free time. Our first set was at noon on the pool deck.
This may have been our best set on the boat--the weather was good and the crowd was great. We played with a lot of enthusiasm. Also, all of the gear worked (foreshadowing!).
I caught some more music this night on the boat. First, the Easy Stars All-Stars played really slick arrangements of Beatles and Michael Jackson tunes. I couldn't get enough of these guys!
And they threw this in...
After that, we headed up to the pool deck to catch Jason Bonham playing Led Zeppelin. The guitarist, Jimmy Sakurai, was sooooo spot on in his Jimmy Page imitation. Imitation maybe isn't the right word--maybe obsession? Check out his website here. Freaky!
Other than that, nap, run, food, bed. The usual.
Friday: We reached our only foreign port--Cozumel, Mexico, today, and it was raining. $3 for a poncho.
We've eaten at La Choza just about every time we've ever been in Cozumel. You can't go wrong.
we're looking at a turtle (up against the wall between Monkeyboy and Pete) eating a piece of ham
the view from my balcony on this fine day
This evening's gig was in the atrium, and though we always hope for an epic show, tonight's gig was loud and sloppy, ending with my EWI refusing to stay transposed (which made the Rosanna solo a disaster). No pics. It was rough. I don't think any of us enjoyed being on stage.
Saturday: Woke up to the sound of thunder...we were pushing directly across the Gulf of Mexico through a thunderstorm. Thankfully the water and wind was calm--just rain and thunder and lightning.
This day began with a meet and greet/autograph session, an hour and a half of people walking by our table asking us to sign posters and pose for pictures. After that, nap, run, eat, and wait--our last show of the cruise wasn't scheduled to begin until 11:45 in the Atrium.
offshore oil wells in the Gulf
Our last show was packed! Unfortunately, this room doesn't sound good. We pushed ourselves through it. At the end of the night, the production guys wouldn't let us play an encore, they got booed when they began taking the PA apart, and Nick and one of the guys got into a shouting match.
Most of us did a lap around the boat before calling it a night--I'm not sure which band this was, but they were the guys with the djembe player who loved to yell "MAKE SOME NOISE!" into every open microphone. So obnoxious.
Sunday: Time to go home, and not a moment too soon.
Back to back Yacht Rock Revue gigs in Atlanta--a nice break from our now customary weekends away from home.
Friday: Buckhead Theatre. This place is starting to grow on me now that Live Nation has taken it over and tried to make it into a legitimate music venue. The sound is getting better, and they now have a local crew to drag your gear to and from the parking lot.
We added Say Say Say this week. Much like a few weeks ago when we added Fleetwood Mac's Little Lies, I was initially a bit disappointed. Ugh--another eighties song. When are we going to add You Make Loving Fun? However, just like Little Lies, this one is fun to play, so I'm cool with it. Plus, whenever we do a gig with horns, this one will make Rob giddy with delight.
I Just Wanna Stop by Gino Vanelli made a comeback. We played this one for a while in the first couple of years of the band, but it went away soon after I started playing keyboards. I never was able to do a good job on the string part, so I started over with a new chart this time. Getting the voicings correct took a lot of time to figure out and then get into my hands.
Ernie Watts played the sax solo. I'd show you my transcription of what he played, but I think it's a pretty lame solo, so I don't play that one note for note--I just follow the general idea of it.
This gig was pretty slammin'! It was sold out (yay!), and from what I could tell, they were generally an excellent crowd with good energy. I had a really good time on this one, and we played really well.
Mark Cobb nearly pulled off his most daring Africa drum fill ever, a phrase so devastatingly hip that it might have buckled every knee in the room...but he dropped a stick and we all survived.
At the end of the night, I pointed to my cases and said, "These are ready to go" and two crew guys brought them out to my truck. It never gets old!
Here's video of the show:
Here are some pictures by one of our favorite photographers, Emily Butler.
Home by 12:30 AM! Woo!
Saturday: We played a charity event in Duluth, GA--our second year doing this gig, a pretty vanilla two set show in a country club. Super nice people, but compared to the night before, not very exciting. We may have been watching Star Wars on the back half of the stage, and I may have quoted to cantina band theme in a flute solo, which I may have played during the cantina scene in the movie.
I did have a good solo on Turn Your Love Around, so I guess my night wasn't completely brain dead.
This past weekend's events: 2 Yacht Rock gigs (in two cities), and a Beatles birthday party.
Friday: We played some kind of private event for a bunch of good looking people (women) at Buckhead Theatre. Seriously--one of them (women) looked like George Clooney's wife, but with fake boobs. They got drunk, we played...it was fun!
Now that Buckhead Theatre is trying to be a real music venue, they have loaders to drag our gear in and out. If only they could solve the parking...
We had Jason Nackers on drums for this weekend. Excellent job. I thought he nailed it tonight.
Saturday: On a couple of hours of sleep, we flew to Indianapolis for a benefit for a private school.
photo by Zach!
This one was backlined, and the gear was good. The production...not so good. The lighting...not good at all. Light bars and zip ties is not a lighting rig!
I tried to go for a run after soundcheck--there's a nice path that follows the path of the river.
Unfortunately, it was mostly blocked with water. I eventually quit this idea and ran to downtown Indianapolis and back. The rain held off until three quarters of the way through, which means that I got pretty wet.
I think that we should include a color chip in our rider so that we get bananas that are currently edible. These still have a week to go.
The gig was dark (thank you lighting person) and kind of boring. Not much energy from the crowd, and the in ear system didn't sound very good. We dragged our way through it, and felt fortunate at the end of the night to be able to get up and walk away from the gear.
Sunday: We flew back early Sunday. Much like the day before, I slept for the entire flight.
This evening's show was a version of our Beatles band, this time celebrating the music of George Harrison on what would have been his seventy-fifth birthday. Mostly it Nick and Tim Smith, and then the rest of the Yacht Rock guys filled in around them at different points of the night. On top of that, we had Peter Stroud and Benji Shanks on guitar, and Gaurav Malhotra on percussion, and Lauren Staley and Jason Morrow of Whiskey Gentry singing and playing.
This gig was the most fun and relaxed out of the weekend. I sure do miss playing our Beatles shows.
Here's video if you want to check us out:
Since you can't hear any of my keyboard parts and can only sometimes pick out my sax stuff, let me assure you that everything I played was perfect, and I knew all the words to My Sweet Lord.
I played another Dave Matthews Band cover gig Tuesday night with Dustin Cottrell and The Laymen--though I guess it wasn't really the Laymen since the other half of the duo was unable to play either DMB gig. Anyway...Dustin on guitar and vocals, Marla Feeney on violin, Billy Gewin on bass, Sam Owens on drums, and me on saxes.
Velvet Caviar opening the show
Once again, the attendance was terrible (fewer than ten people in the room the whole night), which is too bad, because we kind of killed it. This was a much better combination of players (especially Sam on drums, who grabbed much more of the right vibe and parts--splash cymbals? yes! playing the form? yes!), and overall, we were just a bit more confident having survived the first gig. Billy did a great job playing bass and contributing harmony vocals, and I could hear Marla this time. I'm not a DMB fan, but this was fun.
