May 2022

The touring continues! Here's what happened in May.

Thursday, May 12: We flew to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, the vans picked us up, and we headed to Destin for our show.

off to a weird start

This place we played in Destin was sort of a community amphitheater kind of place, with a big sandy field in front of it and way too much direct sunlight. It was pretty nice once the sun went down and the people began creeping closer to the stage. 

After the show, we drove back to Fort Walton Beach (some lady after the show was trying the "So what are y'all doing after this?" bullshit, and I shut her down with the details of the following day's travel. There would be no hanging out in some bar with the band). The drive took, I don't know, forty-five minutes? We slept for four or five hours (I want to say there was a 5 AM lobby call), and headed to the airport.

We caught the 7 AM flight back to Atlanta, had a two hour layover (ugh), and then flew at 11 AM to Miami. Ouch. Meanwhile, the guys driving the vans had gotten up even earlier than us and drove the gear to Miami for the next thing.

Friday, May 13: We played a wedding in this strange room in this strange building in Miami. It was like a fake nightclub in the lobby of an office building that didn't have any occupants? Maybe it was apartments, and there was nobody coming and going. Anyway, interesting room. 

Dinner was pathetic. Here's my roasted potatoes,  roasted veggies, and quinoa. Yum! Also, that's not nearly enough food.

Ok, so we survived that one. After the show, we drove about an hour up the Florida Turnpike to get a jump on the next day's travel. This ozone air purifier thing was going in Greg and my room when we got there. What happened here? Greg thought maybe someone smoked in the room. We unplugged it, but other than that, we were too tired to care.

Saturday, May 14: The Amp in St. Augustine is really great. Cool venue, good backstage area, sounds good, holds plenty of people. Rock n roll.

After this show, we headed a little bit back down to the Turnpike, because the next gig was in...MIAMI!

Sunday, May 15: We played a private party for...hmm...maybe they were insurance people? I don't remember. Anyway, we were on the top deck of this massive party boat/mega yacht thing that goes out into Biscayne Bay for a couple of hours. We were pretty deliriously tired at this point, and the direct sunlight wasn't so great. Fortunately for us, the gear was backline (with a few exceptions), so SIR got to cry about all their electronics cooking in the sun.

...but also, it's Florida, so a shower seemed eminent. The gear was tarped. 

The food here was awful. I didn't grab a picture, but they set up some shitty buffet in our break room, and the only vegetarian things were rice and salad, and there was no salad dressing, so I ate a plate of white rice and a plate of lettuce. Damn, dude.

Ok, so we're off! Sailing away from Miami. Cue the Miami Vice theme. 

We did the lap around the bay. Pretty painless, and then we docked, and then it started to rain! Jeez! I got my horns back in the cases without too much of a problem, but the rented keyboards and stuff got pretty wet. If it'd been my gear...oooo, I would've been pissed. Of course, once everything was wet, it stopped raining, and the humidity skyrocketed to 300%. 

And the next day, we flew home. Yay!

Tuesday, May 17: I picked up a last minute jazz quartet gig at Chateau Elan. It was not so good. The contractor who hired us put together a weird combination of musicians that never jelled. It was bad...for three hours straight. 

the band is late for load in

The pianist on this private/corporate dinner reception gig thought it was completely acceptable to put out a big plastic tip bowl (holy shit that is tacky). In case your are wondering, the QR code inside is so you can send money to his PayPal account. Really?

In better news, Elliot Lurie (of the band Looking Glass, writer and singer of the mega hit Brandy) sent me an old unpublished track from 1975, asking if I would care to add saxophone to it. Uhh, hell yeah! 

The band is Elliot on vocals, Paul Griffin on keyboards, Bob Babbitt on bass, Rick Marotta on drums, Ralph MacDonald on percussion, and David Spinozza on guitar. Giants, all of them. What an honor!

my chart

It's out there on Spotify and Apple Music and iTunes. You can find it if you're looking. 

Wednesday, May 18: Yacht Rock did a video shoot for our Christmas collaboration with John Driskell Hopkins. A couple of hours of pantomiming.

Thursday, May 19: The following afternoon, we flew to Denver for a gig. The event wasn't until the following day, the time zones make it really tough to fly this far west and then play a show that night. This nice path was right near our hotel. Nice weather we're having!

However...temperatures were expected to plummet, and at the time of packing my suitcase, the gig was supposed to be outside (IN THE SNOW!!!!!!), so I packed a space heater. 'Cause I'm a wimp.

Friday, May 20: It started as rain, but before we even left the hotel, it was already snowing pretty hard.

Fortunately, the gig was officially moved indoors, saving me hours of frustration and misery.

We were going to be maybe out here? I'm not sure. Anyway, we ended up in the boathouse for the reservoir for the city of Denver. 

It was loud, it was packed, it was rich people. We got through it.

And it snowed the whole time we were playing! It's almost June! Why is this happening?

Saturday, May 21: We flew from Denver to Austin, TX for a birthday party gig. The high in Austin: 98 degrees.

Party time. At least we got to use our own gear on this one.

Birthday cake. I snagged a hunk on my way out the door at the end of the night. It was delicious.

And the next day, we flew home. Austin's airport had a massive line for security. It may be time to invest in Clear and skip all that bullshit.

Monday, May 23 to Friday, May 27: Yacht Rock set up in a big rehearsal room and started concentrated practice of the show for July and August, and I guess beyond that? Some medleys, some staging ideas--nothing too major. Hopefully, I can remember it all.

Saturday, May 28: Lexington, South Carolina. Another one of these community amphitheater places. Not too bad. Our first attempt at implementing some of the rehearsal stuff was successful.

Sunday, May 29: Night one of our two night stand at the Windjammer in Isle of Palms, SC.

Last year when we were here, I had an awful time with my wireless microphone--basically, I had tons of interference. I think I've solved that issue for the most part, but once again, my microphone was not working at soundcheck. Zach and I played with it, and I think we figured out that his antennas were too close to my antennas (and his were winning!), but Zach figured out that we could hook my receivers into his system, and then it worked pretty flawlessly. How about that! Go Zach!

the view out front

the view out back

The local crew guys were not at all excited about loading all of our gear back into the trailer, but there's no way we were leaving everything on stage overnight to get full of that ultra fine sand, and there was no security at all to keep it safe if we kept it in the building. Sorry! We like our stuff, and we like to work.

he will fetch with you for as long as you're willing to throw the ball

Monday, May 30: Night two at the Windjammer. Same stuff. When we jumped on stage to play, I discovered right off the bat that my sustain pedal no longer worked. I had an emergency pedal in one of my keyboard cases, so Zach dug it out really quickly and I got on with the gig. It's never fun to try and diagnose a gear failure in the middle of a show, FYI. I was rattled for four or five songs.

Tuesday, May 31: Travel day! We drove back to Atlanta and divided up the gear. The end!

Hartsfield Jackson's Favorite Band

Damnit! I once again failed to keep the blog up to date. My musical life jumped into hyperspeed, and I've just been trying to keep up. Here's a recap:

Thursday, April 21: Night one of a two night stand at Venkman's. This one was pretty good for me. We added Whenever I Call You Friend (as seen in the picture below), and it went pretty well. It's a relief that the sax solo was pretty easy to get into my head (unlike Cool Change, which I can never quite nail at the gig); the string part is pretty simple, too, but it's fun to play. I guess it doesn't take much brain power for me to make it happen, so it's almost like having a song off in the middle of the gig.

Friday, April 22: Night two at Venkman's. Cody Madlock subbed on guitar for Monkeyboy and did a good job. It's fun to have subs on this gig--they hear the music differently than the main guy does, so you hear some little cool part that you usually don't get. Other times, it's just that they phrase something differently, or they find some little thing that they think is important, so they kind of lean into that a little more. 

Venkman's is a fun gig.

 

Saturday, April 23: We played an anniversary party for a real estate company in the middle of Buckhead. It was a nice, easy gig, good weather, not far from home. All the stuff.

It was possibly tacos from this very food truck that upset Nick's delicate tummy, and he threatened to barf on everything, but was able to pull himself together for the show.

Load out was kind of like M*A*S*H--drive up on a busy road, turn your hazards on, throw your gear in the car as quickly as possible, and get the hell out of there. 

Friday, April 29: Just after lunch, we loaded up the vans and headed over to Birmingham, Alabama to play the Avondale Brewery. This place used to be just kind of ok; the stage was kind of small, there was too much direct sunlight during summer load-ins, the green room was far away (you had to walk through the crowd to get on and off the stage). It just wasn't particularly great. Well guess what...they improved everything!

As far as I'm concerned, this gig was fantastic. The crowd was over 2,000 strong, the weather was good, the stage is waaaaaaaaay bigger and better and permanent and blocks the sun, the green room is behind the stage, and whatever else I said. It's just way better in every way. Also, I played well--playing ebbs and flows for me, and this was a good spot for my chops.

In other news, Pretty Woman was on the TV in the green room, playing on repeat. It's even more stupid than I remember. Avoid it if you can.

Also, Nick had an upset stomach again, and made it through the gig before barfing in the green room. He did not make it back for the encore.

Saturday, April 30: We traveled to Memphis without Nick, who we left in a hotel room in Jasper, Alabama. The vans and trailer picked him up the following day on the way back to Atlanta.

This was a crazy, big money birthday party. I am told that we played the birthday girl's daughter's wedding. Seems plausible. Pretty crazy set up. We were one of two bands, plus an a cappella group from the University of Memphis.

Memphis! My home town! Other famous Memphis natives (besides me): Morgan Freeman (no relation), Justin Timberlake, Lisa Marie Presley, Kathy Bates, Issac Hayes, Aretha Franklin, Tim McCarver, everybody from Stax Records (Duck Dunn, Steve Cropper, Al Jackson, Booker T), and Cybil Sheppard.

Somehow, I managed to slip into and out of town without anyone noticing me.

Here's another shot of the place where we played. It fits the bill of "old southern country club," doesn't it?

It started a little slow for us (also, we had terrible trouble ordering food for dinner, and ended up with some crappy pizza), but this gig was pretty OK. We didn't have Nick, so we had to shuffle the set list and it took some time for the crowd to finally find up, but all in all, not too bad.

We flew home the next morning. Nobody at the airport recognized me.

Monday, May 2--Wednesday, May 4: Yacht Rock set aside some time to actually rehearse! Usually, we cram things in at soundcheck, but this was an opportunity to try stuff, talk about stuff, and take our time figuring some things out. We added Ventura Highway, Don't Bring Me Down, and Under Pressure, and changed the way we end She's Gone. 

In the evenings, I wrote my last three Christmas arrangements for the John Hopkins Christmas record and handed them in to the arranger (and if that sounds weird--that I wrote arrangements and sent them off to another arranger so that he could arrange them some more--it is weird). Anyway, my part's done! I wrote some good stuff that'll maybe make it onto the record, and at some point, I guess I'll get called in to help record the arrangements that the other guy wrote based on the arrangements that I wrote. Right?

Anyway, here a couple of highlights:

Thursday, May 5: I played a concert in Lawrenceville, GA with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra. Getting to Lawrenceville by 5 PM from my house was difficult. It took an hour and a half. Traffic was awful.

The gig was fun, though! I enjoyed hanging with other horn players and playing some different music.

Friday, May 6: Yacht Rock flew to Ft. Lauderdale to play a birthday party--our agent must be working really hard to make this our new niche!

We played at a club called Revolution, a venue we've hit a few times for public gigs. The rented gear was pretty decent.

This room is naturally pretty dark, and early on in the gig , the lighting guy hit some button and turned off all the stage lights, and then it took maybe two minutes before he could fix that, and we just kept chugging along through Somebody's Baby. 

The rest of the gig was standard fare. Nothing more to report.

They had pyrotechnics for the end of our set, and nobody told us. Monkeyboy was freaked out about it.

Saturday, May 7: We got up and flew back to Atlanta to play a wedding reception in town.

Again, no big deal. The usual stuff. Good crowd for this one--they were enthusiastic without being obnoxious (though one lady gave us the finger and refused to dance to a Steely Dan song).

Notable moments: Nick played bass at soundcheck (including a blues jam) because Greg was late doing family stuff; we played September by Earth, Wind, and Fire, punching yet another number on our cover-band-bingo-cards.

P.S. Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire is from Memphis. 

Sunday, May 8: We got up and flew back to Florida! Of course! This time, we landed in Orlando to play the House of Blues there.

Orlando, another home town of sorts. Here I am, prodigal son of Central Florida, and just like Memphis, nobody recognized me. My ego is bruised. Other Orlando people? N Sync; the Backstreet Boys; Zora Neale Hurston; Mandy Moore (same middle school as me); Shaq (for a while); Wayne Brady. Not as impressive a list.

Fun gig! I gave it my all, just in case any of my old friends were out there in the crowd judging me. 

This gig featured an impromptu version of Lovin', Touchin', Squeezin' after we got a little carried away by a blues jam while Nick was telling a story.

Monday, May 9: Off to Miami we go. It looks to be lovebug season.

Ahh, Miami, another former residence of mine as a youngster, though for a shorter time than Orlando or Memphis. How about famous people who went to the same high school (Miami Palmetto Senior High) that I attended? Jeff Bezos; Ketanji Brown Jackson; Tim Hardaway Jr.; a bunch of other people you've never heard of. Needless to say, I will not be in the Miami Palmetto Hall of Fame...probably because I'm not a graduate. No fond memories of this place.

Anyway, this gig was in Miami Beach, not Miami. I was thinking after The Beach Boys Cruise that when people think of Miami, in their minds they picture Miami Beach (Art Deco, pastels, the beach), whereas Miami really looks more like strip shopping centers, canals, and lots of beat up one story cinderblock houses with overgrown landscaping.

The gig was at the Fountainbleu (one fancy place), and then our hotel rooms were next door at another fancy place. Check out the view from my room!

The beach.

This gig was for an insurance company. Easy stuff, great weather, no big deal. I enjoyed it.

And then we flew home on Tuesday...but we fly back to Florida on Thursday...stay tuned!

Last, but not least, here's a new video demonstrating some of my Eb clarinet playing. Enjoy!