Jamaica and Jazz

If you missed Yacht Rock's Steal Away trip to Jamaica, you really missed a good time. The weather was wonderful, the scenery was sublime, the gigs were good...and my wife was happy. What more could you want?

Ok, so getting there was a little bit tough--for some reason, Delta didn't give us our usual medallion status perks (multiple free checked bags, in this case), so all the gear had to be shuffled around between people so that we didn't have to pay a fortune (my three music cases plus a suitcase would've cost $390 because the cost per bag raises exponentially). 

Also, the customs process for bringing in a bunch of musical equipment was also a major hassle--basically, each of us had to show the customs officer each item we had listed on a manifest. I had a page of stuff all by myself, so you can imagine how fun it was when we got down to her asking me to show her saxophone reeds.

But we made it! Several naps later, we reached the resort, ate something, and explored the premises. Friday afternoon looked like this:

Our room for the duration...

I also went for a run, which was basically me running along a two lane highway, stopping periodically to love on (adopt/steal) all dogs that I encountered. This guy was just one of four I talked to on this night.

The sunset from our room...

The next day, we set up for our first show. Epic views! The gear was pretty ragged though. Obviously, the rental company is not sending their finest stuff to live in a tent on a Caribbean beach for two months! We made do, though. I had a Nord Electro 2 (remember when everybody thought those sounded great? Ouch!) and a Fantom that I thought had some sort of computer failure--it would randomly sustain notes. At first I though it was a bad sustain pedal, but I tried several pedals (all with the same problem), and then it still sustained with no pedal at all.  Hmmm. Interesting.

I guess I thought there'd be more people, but then I heard from Pete that there were only something like 180 rooms and we'd sold maybe 150 of them, so this thing was going to max out around 350 people. In my mind, I imagined us playing to 2,000 people on the beach. So anyway, our numbers were good!

Pretty solid first gig! The sustain thing only happened once, and I was able to kill the sustain by immediately changing sounds. Otherwise, we were all maybe a bit disoriented by the on stage sound (especially Monkeyboy, who had a miserable time trying to get his monitor mix set to his liking), but everybody rolled with it.

Day three! The morning view from our balcony. Nothing but sharks.

Behind the stage was a building housing the spa and the gym, and also a secure (24 hr guards!) air conditioned office where we could leave our personal equipment. I used it as a practice room for a few hours every day (sorry Beth!). Here's the view from my practice room!

Gig number two of the trip was all 80s stuff--another easy night of work. The lighting guy really blasted the stage with haze, though.

Day four--I guess it's Monday. More dogs. Hello fren. 

No gig today, but tomorrow's setlist was all request, so I had to set up a keyboard and go over a few songs that I haven't thought about in a few years (mainly You Are by Lionel Richie). Outside, Ambrosia played their entire set at soundcheck, just like they always do.

In an exciting practice room development, I solved the sustain issue! The stage, the keyboard stand, and the keyboard were vibrating a lot while we were playing, and the release knob was moving! I usually put all of these knobs as counterclockwise as they'll go, but I figured out that if I put the release as clockwise as it could go, it couldn't "open" anymore when it vibrated. Salvation! Jah will provide!

Release, by the way, is a synth term which is basically how much of a tail is on a note. If you play a note and let go and it goes "Ah" and it abruptly ends, that's no release, if on the other hand, you play a note and let go of it and it goes "Ahhhhhhhhhhh," that's a long release. So the problem I had was that the knob would make sounds have an infinitely long release, as in "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh." Not what I want.

When I first got my Fantom, the "RESO" (resonance) knob would randomly do this, and so I'd be playing, and all of the sudden it would sound like Star Wars blasters. Very embarrassing. The long term fix is to replace the circuit board on this part of the keyboard. You can buy it for $75 here: https://www.keyboardkountry.com/roland-fantom-x6-7-8-left-panel-board/. You're welcome. No soldering. Easy installation.

Anyway, after dinner, Beth and I watched Nick's solo show (with guest Elliot Lurie!). Excellent setlist and performance.

And then we watched Ambrosia (with Greg Lee on bass and Mark Bencuya on organ). Kip had a wonderfully clear mix, and it sounded really good where we were standing.

On our last full day, I went for one last run (no dogs would pose for photographs, though), passed a COVID test (so we could go home!), ate a bunch, paddle boarded, kayaked, and it rained, and I spent some time in the practice room. Here's the view after the rain.

My flute pretty much fell apart during this session--I thought it was a pad that maybe got wet with all the humidity and condensation, but it turned out that a screw had worked its way loose, and several keys became misaligned. Damn! I guess, though, that I am somewhat relieved to find out that my embouchure wasn't going to hell over the course of an hour and a half. All of this travel is tough on my instruments.

This was the picture on the door to our room by the way. Is it a joke, or stupidity? That's the guys from the Yacht Rock Schooner. Close, but no cigar.

So...the last night. Maybe our best show of this trip? It was a fun time for sure, and the all request aspect gave us some different songs to think about. I only played flute on four measures of Afternoon Delight, so that wasn't really an issue. I got You Are mostly right.

Thursday morning, we got up and ate at the buffet one more time before making our way to the airport. We ate almost every meal here. It was loud, and ordering food was difficult with plexiglass shields and masks and Jamaican accents. I could (eventually) get enough fruit and salad and rice and beans and potatoes to satisfy me, though.

At the airport, those of us with the piles of gear (guitars, pedalboards, saxophones, etc) dealt with the customs lady again (making sure we didn't sell of it on the black market while we were here "on vacation"). 

We stood next to the bus for a while and waited for customs...

...and then walked to the customs office, where they counted our gear back in. The officer then escorted us to the terminal and stood by while we checked in...slowly. The whole process took over an hour, and cost plenty of money because Delta didn't give us any love. Shouldn't it be like this? We're all Platinum Medallion people. I don't get it.

When it was time to board the plane, I was one of the people randomly selected for extra screening (they said it was TSA, but we were in Jamaica, so...how does that work?). I had to take everything out of my backpack, lay it on the table, and they checked it for explosives. They also checked my shoes and socks. The lady also yelled at me for taking this picture, so I blamed my wife.

Then we sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half before taking off because of some kind of maintenance log thing that Delta needed to sign off on, but whatever--I was already asleep by then, and I continued sleeping like a dead guy for the first two hours of the flight.

Look! Atlanta traffic!

We landed, made it through US Customs (the officer was very nice--sometimes they can seem a bit intimidating), collected all my gear, bungee corded it all together, took the shuttle back to the parking deck, wheeled it out to our car...and the key fob was dead! Holy shit! Now what? I thought we'd have to haul everything back to the terminal and hope that a shop would have one of those strange little batteries, or sit and wait for someone to drive our spare car keys down to the airport, but Beth did an internet search and found out that inside the key fob was a small key so that we could open the car. A second internet search said that if you hold the dead fob next to the power button on the dash board, the car will read it and you can start the car. Who'd a thunk it!

That was Thursday...on Saturday, I had a little jazz quintet (sax, keyboard, bass, drums, and a vocalist) at a birthday party. This Civil War era house was in a rough part of town on the south side of Atlanta, but check out how super cool the interior is!

You can see more about it on the house's website here:  https://www.the1043.com

This gig, though...all these jazz gigs are just casuals, and you never know who you're playing with until you get the email with the details. In this case, I knew the bass player and the drummer from other jazz gigs around town, but I was not familiar with the vocalist and keyboardist (who are husband and wife). The keyboardist was not at all a jazz guy--not only was he not familiar with the material, but we didn't really have a leader, so he would just start playing the next song on the setlist his wife created without any kind of plan about how to arrange the performance--like, "hey, let's play the last eight measures as an introduction before the vocals," or "let's vamp in G until she starts singing."

And then the tunes, the chords...oof. It'd be like dropping your neighborhood piano teacher into a jazz gig. It was just too much, so we had to very aggressively ignore whatever he was doing. In all fairness, I think he was a last second sub for somebody who backed out of the gig, but it was ROUGH. He was in waaaaaay over his head. And on the inside, I was just howling with laughter because I love gigs like this were things go totally berserk and it doesn't matter (and it's not my fault or responsibility). To make matters worse, I was playing like "I might not play another jazz gig for the rest of the year, so I'd better make the most of it by playing a million notes and playing as fast and as complicated as I can while also trying to clearly outline every chord and also constantly suggesting the melody so that the three of us who know this song can keep our place" on every song.

The people at the party thought we were great anyway. No harm, no foul, I guess. And I had a great time--I mean, jazz gig! I'm on it! Here comes all the notes! Here's everything I've been practicing!

Also--this might be my favorite story from the gig--the keyboardist read on the email with the details that he needed to bring his own keyboard, so he did--but no amp! And the vocalist--brought a microphone, brought a microphone stand--but nothing to plug it into! Holy cow! Fortunately the bass player lived close enough that he could race home and grab a powered speaker so that we could all hear them. 

Quick load out, though. One saxophone. Didn't have to go through US Customs on the front porch or anything, and I was sitting on the couch in my pajamas eating crap forty-five minutes later. Gotta love that! And my car started!

Corner Number Three

We got home Monday afternoon, and Thursday, January 20, we were back in the van, this time headed to Columbia, South Carolina. Remember the gig we played here a month ago? (it's in here) This is the followup to that gig. Here's the show poster.

This place we played didn't seem like much from the outside, and it held the generic name of "township auditorium," but wow! What a room!

Our gear was still making its way home from the Pacific Northwest, so we used backline (rented) gear for this one (and I brought my spare saxophones, flutes, etc). 

When I first tried to install my settings on the Fantom (top keyboard), the drive didn't work, so I tried to do it using a USB cable from my laptop. Still no luck, and then it looked like ALL the sounds on the keyboard were gone. HOLY SHIT! MASSIVE PANIC! I was freaking out. The backline guy was like, "I can make it happen!"...whatever. I tried the USB cable upload one more time, and the keyboard burped and came to life! Disaster averted! I guess that it had been sitting in storage for a few years and it needed to reset before it was ready for action.

Anyway, it took me ten minutes or so to calm down. Jeez. 

This place had lots of places downstairs to hide, so I got in a good warmup, and the show was a piece of cake. As you might imagine, we did not fill the place up, but the floor had a good amount of people and the vibes were excellent, and the gear was just fine (and my "fly date" wireless microphone stuff was, as usual, flawless!).

We drove home the next day. Twenty-four hours later, we were at the airport, headed to Ft. Lauderdale for a pair of gigs--it was some kind of a wine festival (rosé) combined with a breast cancer benefit. At least, that's what it seemed like. Lots of pink.

We arrived right around lunch, so after checking into our hotel, I headed off in search of food, eventually landing at a Mexican place. It was awful (loud Pitbull-ish music, annoying South Florida people), but the food was ok. It's surprising to me that with so many superficial people in the neighborhood, there are very few vegetarian/vegan options. The veggie fajitas option was not on the menu--I had to ask as a special order.

On the other hand, our hotel was really cool, and only two blocks from the gig, so it was a quick walk back and forth. I'm guessing that at some point, these were Art Deco studio apartments, and now it's a boutique hotel? I dig it.

This gear was also backlined, this time from SIR in Miami. Everything worked fine--no crazy Fantom shit. Small stage, though, which was a drag, and I've probably got a good amount of the beach in my computer and saxophone mechanisms. 

Pre gig dinner was catered. Gnocchi!

The first show was underwhelming, to say the least. My in ear monitors kept dropping out, we didn't have much of an audience, and it felt like we were just something else in this little circus that they'd built on the edge of the beach. We also don't have much notoriety in the area, so we were just "some band playing 70s music."

As is often the case in Florida, we finished about fifteen minutes before a rainstorm was going to clobber the stage, so I had to sprint to get everything of mine packed up and headed back to the hotel, and the SIR guys were panicked to get their tarps on everything.

The following day's show didn't begin until 1:30 PM, so after sleeping late, drinking a gallon of coffee, and going for a run, we sound checked, ate lunch (the same gnocchi as the night before!) and hit it again, this time to a much more energetic crowd. Plenty of strange stuff happening in front of the stage, but whatever.

At 3 PM, we finished, and by 4 PM, we were in the shuttle to the airport--home in time to see the end of the day's football games.

No Yacht Rock gigs for the following week, but I did sub for a friend on a local high school production of the musical All Shook Up, which uses a lot of Elvis songs, but doesn't directly have anything to do with Elvis. It borrows a few elements from the Elvis movie Roustabout, though (the outsider, the motorcycle, the conflicts with the locals, the forbidden love interest). It's pretty bad.

Anyway, as I'm learning, the orchestra was all local pro musicians, so it was a pretty good hang.

The storyline for this musical is pretty stupid, but I really enjoyed watching the high school kids give it their all! I played bari sax and bass clarinet on this one. It dawned on me at the end of my last day that I've been playing on the same bari reeds for almost two years. It might be time to switch them out.

Corner Pockets

January 7, 2022: And we're off! Yacht Rock met up at the airport for a morning flight to Boston, only to have the flight cancel within thirty minutes of taking off due to bad weather in the northeast. We were rescheduled on early afternoon flights, so...four hours of hanging around the airport started with lunch at TGI Fridays.

Our plane from Atlanta was further delayed--we sat on the runway for a half hour before taking off (which was fine, because I was already asleep), and then we had to do a few loops off the Massachusetts coast before the runway opened for us to land.

 

It looks there were no sharks close to Boston (in case we had to ditch and swim to shore). Three great whites and one mako.

We finally got in around 5 PM, collected most of our luggage (neither Mark Cobb's nor my suitcase made it!), and made our way to the Boston House of Blues for a very quick set up and soundcheck before they opened the doors.

The gig was kind of a blur. We were tired and stressed out about the travel and the frantic setup. I don't remember much about it. Kind of a smallish crowd, too--700 tickets sold, but there were lots of no-shows.

After the gig, I wandered around to several convenience stores before I finally found one that was open and could sell me a contacts case and a bottle of saline solution. It took about a half hour. I hugged someone's golden retriever who was out for a short walk at midnight, and it made me feel better about my situation.

Long, cold day.

January 8: Still no suitcase, but I felt a lot better after a good night's sleep. I headed over to the closest Indian restaurant, happy that it was open.

The hotel we stayed at, The Verb, was on the opposite side of Fenway Park from the House of Blues, and its rock and roll vibe was greatly appreciated!

The best thing about this room was the record player--you could swap records out in the lobby, but I never did. My room had Sgt. Pepper's, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (there was also a copy of Carlos Santana's greatest hits, but I passed on that). It was a really nice way to spend the afternoon, and also the wind down time after the gigs.

Knowing that I'd have lots of down time, I brought my clarinet and practiced some in the room as well.

Our missing suitcases showed up around 4:30 PM, so I was able to squeeze in a run before soundcheck.

Night two was waaaay easier, obviously, and we had a significantly larger crowd.

The next morning, we got cars to the airport and flew home, as the gear headed west to another corner of the country.

New Year's Eve 2021

A New Year's Eve gig never materialized for the Yacht Rock Revue, but I ended up working anyway, subbing for my friend Bryan Lopes in the Rupert's Orchestra. They had a NYE wedding in Alabama that night, and Lopes tested positive for COVID earlier in the week and had to sit it out. The horns and rhythm section in the band have been the same for the last twenty-five years, so this was also a great opportunity to catch up with several colleagues with whom I hadn't played in five or six years.

Look at this feast! Obviously their rider is not on the same level as the YRR demands. I peeled the turkey off a few of those sandwiches and ate lettuce, bread, and tomato. I also had a bag of cheetos and two cookies. And a water. It was sad.

Kevin kept an eye the Georgia game from behind the stage on songs with no horns. 

I've subbed in Rupert's since the mid-ninties, and at this point, I think I've seen every chart they play with any frequency. This Dancing Queen chart, I'm sure I've read it sixty times at this point. We also played several other Rupert's regulars (September, Get Down Tonight, Respect, Midnight Train to Georgia) as well as some newer stuff that I haven't encountered in the last ten years (the Taylor Swift stuff, the Maroon 5 stuff, the Bruno Mars stuff). All good! I really enjoyed getting back to my roots, so to speak, playing saxophone, reading charts in a horn section.

Anyway, it was fun, and I crushed it, if I do say so myself! At midnight, I FaceTimed my wife as we played Auld Lang Sine, the gig ended, and I was on the road back to Atlanta ten minutes later.

One last Christmas video I made is my arrangement of John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over). Check out the bari duet, but also, enjoy that organ playing! Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh.