A Little Personal History

I started working on ships in an odd way. In 1979, I moved from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles. One of my friends was Tom Hill from Oroville, a superb bass player and quite a cut-up. We did several rehearsal bands at the union building, which is what you do in Los Angeles. 

One day, Tom mentioned that someone was putting together a band for a new ship that would be going out of LA Harbor called the Azure Seas. Tom already had the gig and suggested me for the saxophone chair. I auditioned, but I really didn't get on with the music director, so I wasn't offered the job.

After a couple years the job fell to a saxophone player from Santa Cruz named Ray. Sometime just after my son was born in 1983 the phone rang. It was Tom. Ray's dad was in bad shape and he wondered if I could fill in for him for a couple 3- and 4-night cruises to Ensenada. Ah, Ensendada! Half a day's ride from my house by car, 4 days round trip by ship. 

I took the gig, on an open-ended basis, because Ray had now idea if his dad would get better. You can't believe what the deal was back then: The ship would clear the harbor and haul ass out to the 20-mile limit and the casino would open, much to the relief of the passengers. Back then, there were two places on land in the states where you could gamble: Las Vegas and Atlantic City. So we had some gambling fools on the Azure Seas. 

The food was great, the band cabins smaller than any I've ever lived in, and the band pretty good. My cabin-mate was the stepbrother of a guy I went to UCSC with, a slightly demented piano player who killed himself a couple years later by self immolation when he was trying to convince a dancer that he loved her. Some of the acts were less than bad, most pretty good. Gary Mule Deer worked the Azure Seas. On the other hand, so did Judy Kolba. The cruise director was a putz, a gay fellow who had a cabin with the Assistant CD dominated by a huge bed.

I ended up doing several turns on the Azure Seas, the last of which my then-wife and always-son (who was 6 months old) made the trip. Somewhere I have a great picture of Tom Hill mugging with Brendan nose-to-nose.

Tom married a blackjack dealer from the ship, who was from England. They have a family, and Tom has a career as a voice-over artist and actor in England.

My next cruise ship gig was in 2005, on the Dawn Princess.