The Yacht Rock Revue conquered the 10 High last night. Even though it's our regular Thursday night gig, all seven of us haven't been on stage together there since mid December.
It was a great gig--the most fun you can have at the 10 High. We never got bored, the crowd was responsive (even though it looked from the outset like we'd be smothered in douchebaggery), Heart Attack didn't have one (she did eat a bowl of fries in between cigarettes), and everybody played pretty well. There were some rough moments (I sucked real bad on the stupid Wham song), but nothing to kill the vibe. Good show.
We had a couple of guests…a guy named Adam Johnson (friend of Dannells') sang Hold the Line, and Jeremy Stacey (of Sheryl Crow and Noel Gallagher fame) got up and played Hey Nineteen with us. Both were really good.
Soooooo…Yacht Rock played a benefit for the Atlanta Humane Society, held (just like last year) at the SweetWater Brewery. I like dogs, so yay--fun gig. There were several ladies walking around with dogs. I got lots of weird looks for encouraging their animals to "quick! go get in my truck!"
Things were fine. We loaded in, set up, soundchecked. We ate their food (they had chips and salsa=yay!). We played a set--sounded good. We played another set, and you could see lightning off in the distance. Hmm. We decided not to play the last forty minutes of the gig because the weather was closing in on us. The Humane Society was cool with that.
A couple of drops and we started to pack up. Before we could get much further along than that, it started pouring! Aggh! The stage is covered, so we had protection, but the rain was blowing in from the front of the stage. We moved everything as quickly as we could to the back of the stage. Our cases, which had been stacked outside of the stage, were pretty wet, but we got everything on stage was quickly as possible.
It looked like we were managing ok, and then the roof began to leak! A pretty good stream of water started, almost directly on my keyboards. It managed to soak all of my cables and pedals. I got my horns put away and my laptop covered, and Pete scrambled to get both my Fantom and Nord into their cases. It was chaos for a few minutes.
The rain eventually let up, and I got everything in the truck. When I got over on the interstate, the roads were totally dry, but a few miles down the road I got another blast of thunderstorm.
All of my equipment is laid out on the dining room floor. Tomorrow I get to see what's working and what's not. Fun!
My AM church gig is beginning to make sense. Maybe I'm getting used to the new format, but the big horn section songs don't feel as weird as they did. It also makes it easier for me with instruments--I know it's just going to be tenor and clarinet, so I'm not going to drag my other stuff to the gig.
One thing that was a drag yesterday morning: getting off the elevator and hearing the band already playing. It turns out that the band leader wanted to start at 8 instead of 8:30 (when I showed up), but he didn't tell anybody, so as people started filtering in, they had to dive into rehearsal. Nice.
We're off the "all black" clothing thing, which is totally cool with me. I'm not a fan of that look, especially when fewer than half the musicians are actually doing it!
From my church gig, I drove to Dallas, GA for a quick recording session. Some guys had recorded the Rolling Stones' Can't You Hear Me Knockin', and they needed someone to provide the saxophone solo. No sweat. Time to drive out there: 40 minutes; time in the studio (from the "Hi, I'm Dave" handshake to the "Thanks for having me" handshake: 15 minutes.
It was a home recording set up--two rooms in a guy's basement. I was in one room with an expensive mic, the control room was on the other side of the wall. There must have been some kind of limiter on the headphones, because the mic was so hot, I could hear my stomach gurgling, and when they'd talk to me, I could hear well, but when I played, there was no sax in my ears, and the overall mix was really low. I guess it wasn't a big deal--I could still keep in time, but it just sounded kind of weird. Anyway, I blew through it and that was that.
My PM church gig was the normal thing. Palm Sunday! Every time someone would mention Judas Iscariot, all I could think of was the Branford tune.
The vocals sounded good, and no complaints from anybody.
Yacht Rock played a wedding at Rhodes Hall in Atlanta last night for a couple of . If you've ever been there, you know there's no room for a seven piece band. Fortunately, the weather was perfect…almost everybody ate supper on the front lawn, and the band was set up on the porch. Nice!
This was a super easy gig. Two sets…we played from about 7:30 til 10, with a break in the middle. Everybody played well. We're getting the hang of it!
Here's last night's attempt at Maneater. I almost got it right.
The Yacht Rock Revue played a mixer at the Piedmont Driving Club last night. Expensive pussy. Lots of hot, ultra rich women as far as the eye could see. There was also a crazy lady who terrorized Mark Dannells for a while (much to my enjoyment).
So guess who played a wrong note in the fuckin' Maneater solo? What the hell is wrong with me?
In my defense, I will say that the sound on stage was kind of strange, and when I went up to play the solo, almost the only thing I could hear was Bencuya's synth (but not really the rhodes) and some drums, and I felt like I might be in the wrong place and maybe my mic wasn't on.
Everything else was cool and they loved us. Easy gig!
The Yacht Rock Revue played our final show at The Ivy Buckhead last night. We did our Dazed and Confused stuff, so lots of two guitar/one keyboard stuff. I spent a lot of time doing nothing. For the first couple of nothing songs, I turned the volume all the way down on my keyboard and just pretended, but even that got kind of lame. I watched a lot of Sportscenter…I saw Trent Richardson and Ryan Tannehill's pro day workouts multiple times.
In the second set, I played on four of the songs--one was just tambourine, and one was a wurly part that isn't on the original (so that I would have something to do!). So…lots of time watching the band. We did play Whatever Gets You Through the Night. That was cool. My other great highlight was sneaking in the intro to Amoreena before the second set. Thanks to Mark Bencuya to launching my obsession with this song.
I did my two church gigs this Sunday. It was kind of nice getting home earlier last night--I wasn't as tired (or grumpy) at church gig number one.
My AM gig is changing…I'm not sure where it's headed. For the past year and a half, we've been half traditional hymn based stuff, and half more contemporary stuff with a heavy gospel vibe (which was cool because it left me some room to blow). Now we're going between the traditional stuff and things that I don't know how to describe…here's the one we played this week:
I'm not sure how it's going over--this and the one we did a few weeks ago have a lot of production in the recording. We did a horn section thing, but that big velvety wall of strings and stuff isn't there. I'm not sure what it sounds like in the audience. I do know that the horn section against the sound on stage feels really weird--there's pretty much no audible guitar, bass, or drums, so it's us trying to get something going with the acoustic piano. Maybe it works out front…I don't know.
Whatever's happening does feel like a bit of an identity crisis.
The PM church gig was pretty low key. I did bite my tongue when one of the singers started bitching about her microphone not being on. It was on and it was coming out of the speakers, and I did check the input level several times. I get the feeling she's trying to do something to round out her voice, and it's not not cutting through the way it used to. This week, I'll let it slide. If I hear more about it next week, I might be persuaded to do bad things…not immoral (we're in a church!), but there are lots of knobs on the mixer.
Another good week of gigs is coming up.
Also, for those of you who are not Facebook people, you might want to take a look at my YouTube channel, which has several recent additions.
The Yacht Rock Revue played an early evening wedding yesterday…geez! why don't more people do that? It was great. We loaded in (supposedly) at 1:30 PM and finished at 9 PM. I was home shortly after 10 PM.
The reception was at 103 West, home of the first gig I ever played in Atlanta. I hadn't been in there in a few years (the downstairs), but they've totally redone it--it's no longer dark and cramped.
We played a set of Beatles stuff and two sets of Yacht Rock. The playing part moved really quickly. Easy gig!
The Yacht Rock Revue played an event for the Junior League of Atlanta last night. We were in a tent at some high end kitchen place on the west side of town. It was us, some food, and a pack of good looking women.
The gig went pretty well. No issues. My Nord was back to normal.
We finished at 11, and I was home shortly after midnight--it's a quick load out when you can back up to the door of the tent.
The 10 High was pretty blah last night. The whole night was a grind.
1. I turned on my Nord, and half the sounds were missing. Pianos, yes; upright piano, yes; rhodes, no; wurly, no; clav, no; mellotron, yes. What the hell? All you could hear was what sounded like the return on the effects, so it was just a small amount of rhodes with a lot of reverb (the fundamental sound was not there). Why? Don't know. I was able to work around it with the other keyboard. Glad it didn't happen at a monster gig where I would have been closer to suicidal.
2. Egnater pointed at me. Why? Don't know.
3. A constant stream of cigarette smoke from the pack of over 50s swingers. I know they're harmless, but they creep me out (and no, I will not hug you) and they chain smoke right in front of me the entire night. Why can't they go bug Bencuya for a while?
4. Annoying middle aged women who think they're MILFs because they've given birth. No, you can't wear my hat. No, you can't have the tambourine. No.
The stripper hanging out with a local radio personality: "I love your sax playing. I play alto saxophone."
Me: "Cool! Thanks for coming out tonight." I never know what to say to that…what you did in middle school band and what I do now are veeeerrrry far apart.
Stripper: "Why are you standing alone in the dark?"
Me: "There's no one in here that I want to talk to."
Stripper: "Oh. Sorry."
That's the way it went.
I plugged in the Nord today and everything works fine, which leads me to believe that even my equipment hates the 10 High.
I played a really fun gig with two of my faves--Tyrone Jackson and Wayne Viar. We were booked as background noise for a corporate dinner, and the client asked that we play something "ethereal," so no jazz trio stuff.
It was really cool. We didn't plan anything--no songs or keys or grooves. When the gig started, Tyrone started playing, and Wayne and I did our best to follow him. It kind of turned into the Tyrone Jackson show because his creativity made the gig happen. We couldn't have done it without him.
