May 2024

Saturday, May 4, 2024: Columbia, SC. This gig was at a crawfish festival at the South Carolina state fair, closing out the day. My mom doesn't believe that there are enough crawfish in South Carolina to warrant a festival, but whatever.

The weather started out really nice, but an hour or so into it, a spot of rain found us, and it quickly got too wet to continue. Too bad, because it wasn't a bad gig!

The Great Bencuya finished up playing under a tarp that the ladies held up for him.

Friday, May 10, 2024: Atlanta, GA. Long time friend of the band Carrie Parker retired, and we played her party. The coolest thing about this was seeing lots of old friends from the earliest days of the band--people who actually saw us at the 10 High!

There were a few curveball requests from Carrie on the setlist, all of which we handled pretty well. Other than that, business as usual.

Monday-Wednesday, May 13-15, 2024: Atlanta, GA. The last of three blocks of summer rehearsals. I think we sorted some stuff out and learned some new songs, but we're basically taking a month off before we fully implement this stuff, so...hopefully it sticks!

In other exciting rehearsal news, the big ol' cyst on my index finger finally burst while we were playing, so hopefully it will begin healing and get out of my life.

Friday, May 17, 2024: Alpharetta, GA. This gig was a fundraiser for Hop on a Cure (John Hopkins' ALS charity), on an outdoor stage in someone's big backyard about an hour north of town.

Not my favorite gig! It had rained, so there was mud and thick humidity, and everybody entered the stage by walking through my gear, and we were the last of maybe four bands, and we were on some backline gear, and Monkeyboy's rental guitar amp died during the first song (so they swapped it out while we were playing), and probably some other stuff that I can't remember at this point. 

So the top keyboard was bigger than I usually get, and the bottom keyboard was smaller than I usually get. I would normally line up middle C on both keyboards as a visual reference, but I ended up pitching the piano on the bottom keyboard up an octave so I could do what I usually do with my left hand, but I kept the organ on the bottom keyboard where it would normally be...yeah, I was all over the place.

Saturday, May 18, 2024: Natick, MA. Hello early flight. I slept the whole way to Boston.

This gig was a birthday party in Natick, about a half hour west of Boston, in a brewery/taproom/vineyard place called Lookout Farm. Pretty cool! Our party was in an old greenhouse. 

I went for a run to kill some time, but no sidewalks. Kind of annoying.

This gig was pretty fun! We were supposed to play for an hour and a half, but they ended up cutting our part down to sixty minutes and a DJ did the rest. The rented gear was good, the sound was good, and our sub bass player (Tim Smith!) was good. Winner winner!

On our flight home the next day, there was a dog in the row in front of us. She was very well behaved.

Finger update: looks like it's healing.

Wednesday, May 22, 204: Isle of Palms, SC. Night one of three at The Windjammer. Has The Windjammer actually gotten better, or have we accepted our fate? Not sure. It was a nice gig, though, and the weather was pretty perfect. 

Thursday. Night two was sold out, and we had another good show. 

Friday. YRR is putting out another album of originals, and we had a special party for the Anchorheads to listen. I think they were more enthralled with hanging out with us than listening.

Here's the new jam.

Some passing storms forced us to start late, but nothing got wet. Another sold out crowd.

Saturday. Beth and I stopped for lunch in Charleston.

April 2024

Saturday, April 6, 2024: Savannah, GA. The helicopter gig (as we know it) again, on the driving range again, but with a better (covered) stage. I love the helicopters. The gig is whatever.

I was a little worried because the forecast said it was going to be a bit chilly/breezy, so I brought my heater and some hand warmers, and I was tucked into an enclosed corner of the stage.

Not much else to report. The vegetarian option for food was a grilled cheese sandwich.

I ran on the treadmill when we got to the hotel, as there was no time to squeeze it in before the gig.

Thursday, April 18, 2024: Atlanta, GA. Following three days of summer rehearsals, we played a private gig at the Buckhead Theatre. It's still a very stale room. 

We did immediately try several of our new cover songs out, and they went well--no train wrecks!

Thursday, April 25, 2024: Destin, FL. The first time we played here, I never thought we'd have to come back (it's a stage in a sandy field between some neighborhoods), but here we are for the first year in a row. I guess it's fine. The six hour van ride to get here really sucked the energy out of wanting to play the gig, though (even though a slept for most of the trip). Always a good crowd, though.

This show was shorter than usual (and started at 7 instead of 8 PM), so I ran before and after the gig.

Friday, April 26, 2024: Birmingham, AL. Another big van ride--this one was five hours, but our van left pretty early so that the production guys could get some setup stuff done before the instruments showed up.

This was our biggest crowd at Avondale Brewing--at least, it had the biggest ticket sales. No Charles Barkley on this night, though.

What else...my alto reed was very soft--probably time to swap it out for a new one.

I still haven't found a good running route here--it's one of those places where the sidewalks abruptly stop in random places, only to begin again in two blocks.

Following the show, we drove about halfway back to Atlanta (Pell City, AL), because we had a morning flight out of the Atlanta airport.

Saturday, April 27, 2024, Las Vegas, NV. Up early (7 AM) to drive back to Atlanta to jump on a plane to Vegas for a corporate gig. I slept pretty well on the flight, though I was awake over Oklahoma City long enough to eat the burrito I'd brought on board. Very tired.

The gig was the ol' corporate party in a big ballroom for a bunch of rich people. There was a duo set up on the opposite side of the room that did rat pack/Vegas show stuff, and when they finished, everybody turned around and partied on our side.

The backline company for this one was pretty good. The only had the cheap Guitar Center keyboard stands, so I had to stack two single stands (in the style of The Great Bencuya!), but this was a better move than having a foot wide gap between the two. 

The Fantom (top keyboard) that they brought had a loose memory card, so Eric, the backline guy, had to take the panel off the back, clean and reseat it to get it to work. Scary moment for a second there.

The Nord Five--the piano sounds were really bright and loud compared to the organ. Are these factory settings? I wonder. I guess I could've tried to reset it, but I didn't notice until the gig had started, so I just rode the volume knob all night.

The local audio crew was not ideal. There were three or four guys, but only one spoke English, so all requests had to be made through a translator. They also dispatched some stuff (which drove Zach crazy), and the process of sorting it out took a little extra time when we were all short on patience.

Anyway...we stayed in the same hotel. Check out this room!

We finished soundcheck around 4 PM and we didn't play until 9:30 PM (body clock says ouch!), so here are some pics from my run.

Monkeyboy was unavailable for this gig, so we had Cody Matlock filling in on guitar.

These were cool--they were video screens hung around the room to make it look like windows on a ship.

We finished at 11:30 PM, so by the time I had made it back to my room, packed everything, taken a shower, and fallen into bed it was around 1 AM. I was awake at 4:30 AM and sitting in the airport shuttle at 5 AM. 

The Sphere looked like the moon this morning. Kip had the great quote: "That's no moon."

Same gate as yesterday. Let's go home.