Another night of Motown

Royal Caribbean really loves its Motown tribute bands, and since joining the Voyager last year I've played for my fair share of them. Its always the same songs, sometimes arranged by the same guys back in the states. This week we backed up Spectrum, a motown band with 4 guys (the average). They are really one of the better groups: entertaining, professional, and singing in tune (this doesn't always happen). They are also really easy to work with, and their charts make sense as far as we're concerned as horn players. The trick in writing for our size of band is to neither over nor underuse the horn section, a balance they've figured out pretty well. Another trick is not to write for the brass as if we were string players, with whole charts of long sustained whole notes that only serve to wear us out and don't use our punch capacity effectively. Treat us like a brass section please, and thank you! This motown show also goes by really quickly since Spectrum don't leave much downtime between charts, there are a lot of segues, and we are always on our toes. If you have to play a motown show, Spectrum is a good one to do. Tomorrow the rest of the band will back up an entertainer known as Bowzer, about whom I've heard all sorts of horror stories. Lucky for me, he doesn't use the trombone, so I only have to play the late big band set at the end of the night after the show. Another week in the life!