The End of 2021

Whoops! All of the sudden, a month's worth of gigs have gone by without a blog. Here's what you might have missed...and what I remember.

November 12: Huntington, New York.  Back on Long Island at The Paramount, one of the nicest places we play. Our flight was pretty early in the day, so we parked at the venue and then dispersed for lunch. Indian food right around the corner! I had lentil soup and vegetable biryani at House of India. Very good.

This place is great, and the crew was mercifully less "New York Bro" than usual. We've come a long way here (the first time we played, they wouldn't even put our name on the marquee--they just wrote "70s Cover Band"--so people would know what to expect). Tonight was a sellout! 

I had a good warmup before this one and played some really good stuff down at the loading dock, but I honestly remember nothing about playing this gig. Let's assume it was great. I'm sure it was fine.

When you sell out The Paramount, you get a brick! Here's ours! It's probably keeping the Schooner van from rolling down a hill right now.

This hotel room was really bad, mostly based on the fact that it had no hot water. I didn't feel like dealing with it after the gig, but the next morning when I tried to take a shower, it was NOT HAPPENING, so I showered across the hall in Kip's room.

I mentioned to the desk clerk at checkout that I had no hot water, and she said something to the effect that "when the building was built, the hot and cold got reversed in my room." It's labeled that way on the shower (with the hot on the right), but I waited a long time and the warm water never came, so fuck that shit. I told her "I don't want this room the next time I'm here!!!" and I hope that confused her enough to give me some sort of satisfaction.

November 13: Albany, New York. I'd never been to Albany. It wasn't too bad. It was cold and rainy by the time we'd finished soundcheck, so I did not walk the fifteen minutes to Indian food. Instead, I selected a Thai place around the corner. It was pretty average, but maybe better than trying to find a meatless hamburger at the bar up the street.

I remember that the venue was dark, and really cold here--the air conditioner next to the stage was set to 65 degrees--like they were expecting a thousand warm bodies to crowd in and offset it? I don't know. Maybe the people of Albany are just used to the cold. I am not.

I want to say we had somewhere around two hundred people in attendance. This gig was also probably fine (in other words, I remember nothing). I do recall that I found a warm place to play before the gig started, and got in an enjoyable forty-five minutes of saxophone.

November 14: We flew home. The Albany airport had no food. Lame.

November 20: Porterdale, Georgia. We played a wedding for some fans in Porterdale (which is a small mill town east of Atlanta on I-20). Hooray for local gigs where we can go home at the end of the night!

November 23: Atlanta, Georgia. Thus began a week of gigs at Venkman's, Nick and Pete's restaurant here in town. We loaded in and sound checked Monday night, and Tuesday, we came in and banged out a livestream for a corporate client (yay for more local gigs!).

This place got a pretty major reworking, with the stage moved to a different wall (it is now on a short wall in the rectangular room, where it was previously on one of the long side walls). It looks and sounds waaaaay better! Pretty exciting! I hope we are able to fit one or two gigs a month in here.

The other big change was to the menu. It's taco time here! There aren't a whole bunch of vegan/vegetarian options, but the mushroom and cauliflower tacos are now Dave's faves. 

November 24. We played our annual Turkey Eve show at Venkman's, and it was great! Maybe it was just the lingering excitement of the new Venkman's, but this show was really fun. The only bummer was that Pete was out with COVID.

November 26. Since Turkey Eve sold out, we added and extra show for Black Friday (which I want to say also sold out). Pete was back. Also big fun. Yay for Venkman's!

November 27. Keisha and Kourtney Jackson have a side project called Ladies of Soul, and they did a gig at Venkman's on Saturday, using the rhythm section of Yacht Rock as their band (plus our YRR crew guy Mike Mulholland on percussion). I was also asked to participate, and I pulled in a few friends to make a horn section (Neil Newcomb on bari sax and flute, Rob Opitz on trumpet, and Richard Sherrington on trombone). Big fun! I hope we can do more gigs like this--I love making horn arrangements and playing them with my friends.

December 10: Washington, DC. Yacht Rock was on the road again, this time playing a couple of private functions in the nation's capital. 

The pre-gig run was a mess! Just for fun, I was going to run to our hotel in Arlington and back, but my phone's GPS kept sending me to dead ends and reroutes to nowhere. I did grab these two shots, though.

The audience for tonight's show was really in the mood to party! Great crowd and an easy gig. They also dressed for the evening. Much appreciated!

December 11. We played a wedding in DC, so after sleeping for as long as I could I killed some time with another run to see some more monuments (I think I take the same pictures every time we're here).

M.L.K. August 28, 1963

After my run, I headed around the corner to Whole Foods, which had...Indian food! The bad news is that they measure it by weight, so a box of rice and chick peas cost me $24. Booooooooo.

Our gig for the evening was in The Willard Hotel, which is right across the street from The Hamilton (where we have played maybe twenty shows), and also a block over from The White House. Old school Washington DC! It was cool, but the because of its age and location, the load in was hellacious. From the loading dock, down one freight elevator, around the corner, into another freight elevator, and then diagonally across a kitchen. It doesn't sound bad, but it was AWFUL. I would've taken pictures, but we were so turned around from trying to figure out where everything was going that I never stopped long enough to think about it. At the end of the night, we had the added penalty of not being able to get into the loading dock, so we had to drag everything from the loading dock and pile it on the sidewalk while the trailer was loaded.

Anyway...the room was pretty!

And there was much time to waste hiding in the green room, as the ceremony was also on site. 

I killed time practicing in a phone booth around the corner from our green room. It was fine (but warm) for a while.

Once the cocktail hour began, however, the little kids found me, and it was more difficult to pay attention to what I was doing.

Not too bad of a gig, though. They were an enthusiastic crowd. And we played Shout, which Nick had never sung before (I am unfortunately a wedding band veteran and have performed it countless times). 

December 12. We flew home again.

December 13: Orlando, Florida. Hello airport! We flew to Central Florida for a corporate thing. I can't say that I remember anything about it, other than it was in the same convention center where we first encountered Eddie Money (you can read about all that here). 

This day had a lot of hanging around--we were here before lunch and didn't play the gig until 9:30 PM. I had it in my head that we played at 8:30, and then nobody else in the band showed up. By 9:30, I'd lost the will to gig. 

Pretty decent crowd for a corporate gig, though.

December 15: Dunwoody, Georgia. Ahh yes! The corporate jazz/holiday gig! This was super fun--seriously. We alternated playing standards and holiday tunes for an hour and a half. Lauren and Bill were a joy to play with, and such a funny coincidence that it was in the lobby of my Dad's old office!

Also, how does the Christmas Real Book not have lead sheets for The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) or Winter Wonderland? I guess I can't complain since I found it for free on the internet.

December 16: Atlanta, Georgia. Yacht Rock played a private gig in town for Covenant House, a charity that works with homeless youth. It was a pretty low key event. I was monumentally gassy. My wireless microphone gave me trouble. That's about it. Easy.

December 17: Columbia, South Carolina. Yacht Rock traveled to Columbia to play a party at The Senate, a room we have played once before. This one was a party for two sisters who were both cancer survivors (if I'm remembering correctly). Good stuff, and a good crowd. They had a screen up to hide us, and once the guests of honor arrived, they dropped it to surprise them.

Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums tonight

Good times here. I played pretty well.

I took a bow at the end of my solo on Step, and out of the bell of my horn fell another broken resonator--the same low C# that popped off in Denver a few months ago. I must be doing something wrong!

December 18: Atlanta, Georgia. We popped out of bed and drove back to Atlanta, which left us all enough time to go home and eat lunch before it was time to head to this evening's gig at The Roxy. Tonight was the Holiday Show--it's funny how this night used to need so much preparation and rehearsal, and now I go over for ten minutes the two or three songs that I can't remember, and we're good to go. 

Mostly good stuff--I remembered and accurately performed pretty much everything. My only hiccup was on Sailing, when I inexplicably skipped a note in the intro.

It's supposed to be this:

But for some reason, I skipped the G#, and then I was sort of stuck--only one of my hands messed up, and I didn't know how to get them back together! Here's what I played, and I was like, uhhhhhhhhhh....now what?

So I ended up just kind of moving on to the last chord (thank you sustain pedal). It was such a "wait, what's happening?" kind of mistake that I had to wait a second and figure out what was wrong before I could correct it. Anyway, that was dumb. Temporary brownout of my brain power.

The rest of the night went fine.

And that concludes the Yacht Rock gigs for the year! I have a few Christmas Eve/Christmas Day church gigs that I am doing, but otherwise...see you in January!

EDIT/PLOT TWIST! I GOT COVID AND HAD TO STAY HOME, SO NO CHURCH GIGS! BOOOOOOOOOOO.

Anyway...

One more thing--here are a couple of social media videos that I've made recently. Enjoy! I did the arrangements and played all the parts (and did the video part, too).

Skating involves two flutes, four clarinets, one bass clarinet, and a shaker.

Winter Wonderland is written as a big band sax soli, so there are two alto saxes, two tenor saxes, and a bari sax. I've never written anything in this style (the close voiced five saxes thing), so it was cool to watch some videos and learn how to do it!

As Fall Ends

A few more shows as fall ends...

October 23, we played Chastain again. This show was originally to be at the Roxy, but we moved it. Quite a bit chillier than our night here in August. I am a big wimp about being cold, so as soon as this show changed to outdoors, I started watching the weather.

 

Other than a few random gear malfunctions, there was nothing really to talk about for this show. This used to be our Thriller/Purple Rain show, but now everybody does that, so other than one song off each album, this was mostly our usual stuff. Can Chastain be just another night on stage? I guess so. I did play some nice stuff in the dressing room before we went on, so there's that.

October 28, we played the Georgia Theatre in Athens. Yay for this one! I do love playing this room, and we had a great crowd, especially for a Thursday night.

Unfortunately, I had another issue with my gear--this time with my effects pedal that I use for saxophone stuff. I first noticed at Chastain that one of my settings had randomly changed, and by the time we started this show, ALL of my settings were randomly changing. Basically, the thing went insane. We got through the gig ok, though. The main one was the two delay settings I use for Maneater: the first was too quick (I heard that at Chastain), and the second, usually set to repeat every four beats, would now repeat every three beats. It didn't take long before I decided to pull Nick aside and veto that song.

October 30, we played the Moo and Brew Festival in Charlotte. I think this is our fourth time? Maybe it's the third. It's usually scheduled in the summer, but it landed at the end of October this year for some reason. High of 60. Low of 40. I had concerns. 

This is Duke. I am familiar with his breed!

Soundcheck was early and the gig was late, so we had a few hours to kill at the hotel (the green room situation here is pretty terrible--usually the model apartment in a nearby building with a significant walk to the stage). I went for a run and then ordered some Indian food. Excellent refueling. 

Check out this guy, whose Halloween costume was...LEGO DAVE! Outstanding!

So...my move for this gig was to bring a space heater, and it worked pretty well! I wouldn't say that I was ever warm (even with the heater, three shirts, a vest, and a suit jacket), but I wasn't miserable, and we had a good time. Plus, I could occasionally lean down and warm my hands up, and that made all the difference.

So, yeah! Fun gig for a bajillion people. Excellent. That's pretty much all I want out of this gig these days.

The following weekend, Yacht Rock had no gigs, but I picked up a musical, playing the Reed 2 book for Chicago at the Cobb County Performing Arts High School (Pebblebrook, though the shows took place at South Cobb High School). I wonder when this became a thing?--paying a band of professional musicians to come and accompany the students. 

Who cares? I really enjoyed the challenge of playing all the parts (my book had piccolo, clarinet, soprano saxophone, and tenor saxophone), and I wish more of these made their way to me, even if they aren't as lucrative as playing Baker Street. 

Plus, this show was indoors!