Last night was my debut voyage with my yacht rock cover band, the Sunset Grooves. I joined them sometime in April (?) as my originals band was breaking up. We've had a good amount of rehearsals to get geared up for last night, a private booking at a swanky golf club a few miles away from the University of Washington campus in Seattle.
I don't golf, and I am not swanky, so I was out of my element x 2, but I was plenty impressed with the sights.
The BL and LS, who are also partners, had the lion's share of the work. They had to haul out his drums, as well as the PA, sub, mixer, lights and all sorts of cables. The rest of us loaded up and got set up in an hour or so.
I was able to see how the other half of the other half lives at this golf club. Lots of beautiful people with their swanky gear on. Lots of food, and you'd think they'd be able to give us some. Don't get me wrong, they did, but it was not as great as we thought it would be. No pictures, so use your imagination: piece of halibut, piece of steak, asparagus, salad, tomatoes. At least they got us some food.
We were doing two sets of tunes, 26 songs in all. I neglected to take a picture of the set list, but for me, it was the most songs I'd ever played live. Not only that, I was using IEMs for the first time live, as well as my bass rig for some thump. The sub was adjacent to me, so having that reinforcement was pretty cool too.
We all put on our yacht rock garb and took the floor right around 8pm. We started with Steal Away (Robbie Dupree) and into Baby Come Back (Player). I get the pleasure/torture of singing the high backing vox on BCB and I had a hard time hitting them. Don't know if it was not being warmed up, nerves, being outside, or what, but it's at the tippity top of my range and even on a good day, it's pretty thin sounding.
However, for those that know the song, it's the $$$ note on the harmonies, and we gotta have them. And remember the IEMs I mentioned? They worked great, but there's something about hearing yourself super clear and not the other vocals that throws me off. Something about the mental aural math isn't clicking just yet, but I did settle in throughout the set.
We had a guy running sound for us and he was great. We did have one little trainwreck in Rich Girl (Hall and Oates) where half of us transitioned to one part and the other half kept trucking along. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but somehow we made it out alive.
People were on the floor dancing and really having a good time. The dance floor was sort of small so they were right up on us, but for the most part, we were there to provide a vehicle for their movement; we weren't there to be watched.
After 13 songs, we took a quick break and enjoyed the ambiance for a bit, and then dove back in with the rest of the set. It all went really well until Do Ya Think I'm Sexy (Rod Stewart). I can play it, but the repeated octave disco riff for the nearly 5 minute song is quite the challenge. My hand was aching at the end of it.
At the end of the set, we got the "one more song" chant, but sadly, we don't have other tunes dialed in yet. Due to schedule conflicts and travel, our practices have been sporadic and only based on running our set. The crowd wanted us to play some requests (we don't) or have someone sing with us (no thanks), so we played a song we had done already. We also busted out a hack version of Freebird, of all things, which the drunk crowd enjoyed.
Finally, at the end of the night, we tore everything down. The poor BL/LS combo not only had to take two carloads of gear home, they had to move it into the house to keep it all secure. I, on the other hand, drove in the garage and went to bed. I don't envy them.
All in all, a fun night for me. Tiring, but had a great time playing songs everyone knows and loves.
