David Freeman Music

This weekend was all about the movies.
Thursday morning, we (Yacht Rock) had our first U2 rehearsal.  We're playing (under the name Uno Dos Tres Catorce) a couple of shows in March.  It's a pretty easy set for me--I'm mostly percussion, and a few little keyboard parts to help out Bencuya.  The bulk of the music is guitar with delay!
In going back and studying the stuff, I was really impressed by how much The Joshua Tree impacted me.  I wouldn't have said I was a huge U2 fan, but checking out that album made me realize how deep I really was into it in the late 80s.  Very powerful stuff, now and then.  
Thursday afternoon, I got an email from Ben Lovett asking if I would like to be part of a movie.  He's doing the score for an independent feature film called The Proxy, and they were looking for a street musician to play bass clarinet (huh?).  I said yes, I 'd do it.  A lady from the movie emailed saying she'd be in touch with more info.
Thursday night, Yacht Rock…

Tuesday morning, I got up on very little sleep and made the trek down to the radio station to play with the Main Street Exiles.  We were promoting Fake Fest at Park Tavern this Saturday (The REMakes, Ill-Eagles, Main St. Exiles, and The Mighty Dan Halen).  We played Miss You.  It went pretty well.  I didn't play the solo exactly right, but I got most of it.  Here's the video:



You can't see me (except for a slice of the back of my head), but I'm there.

I guess we should have checked the gain on the sax mic BEFORE we started--geez, it was loud.  The first two notes startled me.  I kind of tiptoed through the rest of it because of the volume in the headphones (and it sounds like it).  Too bad, because that's a solo that needs to be a little more crazy than I could make it.

Here's a live version from December 1, 2010 at Smith's Olde Bar.  The sax solo is at 3:11.  I screwed up differently on this one!

09 Miss You (live 12-01-10) by David B Freeman

Tuesday night…

I haven't been doing much--I had the weekend off.

Thursday night was our 10 High gig.  It went pretty well.  Nick was on vacation and Cobb was on hiatus for the month, so we played the super safe set list for Kevin and Ganesh.  Kind of a drag--I wish the Schooner guys would pick up a few more of our tunes so they could sub in with us on some of our current stuff--but it made for an easy night.

It was a pretty crappy crowd.  Not a whole lot of people, and almost no turn over, so we didn't make much money out of it.  Bummer.

Dannells was on fire in the first set--he could do no wrong.  In the second set, he cooled significantly.  I played pretty well, especially in the first set with Dannells breathing down my neck.  I felt like I had to rise to the challenge.

Friday, I cleaned gutters.  Tell me why I need gutters?  Houses in Florida don't have gutters.  They don't need gutters.  I don't need gutters.  They catch more pine needles and sweet gum balls than rain.

Satu…

Yacht Rock played a private gig for IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group).  Some kind of private party at the InterContinental.  I have no idea what they were celebrating.  Maybe they were celebrating the really crappy labyrinth of a load in?  I was quickly reminded of why I usually avoid the freight elevator here.

Nick called Mark Dannells right before soundcheck to get his ETA.  Dannells did not know we had a gig.  He went from underwear to the stage in forty-five minutes.  Oops.

The gig was pretty good.  Full production was provided for the nice big stage.  I think we all played well, though nobody in the crowd seemed that interested in hearing us.  The room thinned out really quickly, and  we took on the energy and enthusiasm of a good rehearsal.  Not much of a party.  On break, we talked to a bunch of people who loved us, but I think they all stayed out in the prefunction area.  Greg and I took a photo and did a flip book.


Oh well.  The gig ended a half hour early.  We had fajitas …

I got paid (in theory) big money this weekend for all my cartage.  Not really, but it was a weekend of many, many horns (and my "bag o' crap" percussion).

Friday:  I had two gigs.  The first was a quick quartet gig downtown at Ventanas, so I hired Louis Heriveaux, Kevin Smith, and Marlon Patton.  Awesome gig!  Those guys make my stuff sound like we play together all the time.  It was very relaxed, but focused at the same time.


I was particularly impressed with Marlon.  I do way more trio gigs than quartets, so I really noticed his input the most.  He was super creative and read everything down without any problems.  Could he be the Mark Cobb of my jazz world?  I'm thinkin' yes.  Listen to his stuff.  Fantastic.



The jazz gig was two horns--tenor and soprano.

The second gig was Beatles (Please Pleaserock Me) vs. Rolling Stones (Main Street Exiles) at Smith's.  I played on both.  The Stones went first.  We used the full horn section for what we could, and it sou…

This past Wednesday, we (Yacht Rock/Please Pleaserock Me) had a big rehearsal--5 Beatles tunes (I Want to Hold Your Hand, Back in the USSR, Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da, Taxman, and Revolution) and 2 Yacht Rock tunes (My Life by Billy Joel and Thunder Island by Jay Ferguson).  The Beatles stuff was easy--I make charts and play them, plus it's lots of tambourine and clapping.  I was really pumped about playing My Life--not only is it a big song for me personally, but once I started listening to it, it sounded like piano PLUS rhodes (and synth on the main riff).  So…Bencuya plays piano, but I double him on the rhodes, which turned out to be a terrific challenge.  I have to BE Bencuya for a couple of minutes there.



Anyway, I practiced it like crazy.  We played a couple of times at rehearsal.  I was fine.

We weren't going to play it last night at the 10 High gig because Mark Cobb was not there, but Ganesh said he wanted a shot at it, so we did do it.  Awesome.  I did well.  Plus, it went ove…

I did my two church gigs.

The first church gig was a circus.  The usual sound guy was not there, and we had all kinds of trouble with the headphone mix (except for me, of course, because I do not wear them).  Static, instruments disappearing, screaming acoustic guitar.  All there.

We were asked to stay and play half of the next service, which featured the adult choir, the children's choir, and the "orchestra" (which was really the church's community band).  It was chaos.  We had so many tunes stuck in the music books, and some were for the second service and some were for the first, and nobody was sure what belonged to what.  We rehearsed everything (but without the adult choir, children's choir, or "orchestra") that morning, but not in any kind of order--more of "Hey, can we play through this one?" kind of thing.

My second church gig began a half hour after the Super Bowl.  From my position, I counted sixty-eight people in attendance.  The b…

Yacht Rock played the Taste of Dunwoody party at the W Perimeter last night.  It was probably not the best venue for us and the event--we were jammed into a pretty tiny ballroom (I guess it's the only one in the hotel, come to think of it).  They had tables with local food samples lining the walls all the way around.

Everybody was back for this gig--Nick was fronting the band, and Mark Cobb was kicking it in the ass!  It was a really relaxed event--we were loaded in plenty early, soundchecked, and then hung out in a suite on the top floor until it was time to eat.  We ate, we played, we drank.  Gradually, we took over the party.  I don't think the local food people were too thrilled that we sucked all the attention away from them.  Before the end of the first set, it had become a concert.  In fact, it seemed like most of the vendors bailed before the end of the night.

I played really well.  I'm (thankfully) still in a good groove.  We did most of the same stuff as we did T…

Last night's Yacht Rock gig was a little different from the past month--no Nick (Kevin Spencer in his place) and no Mark Cobb (Ganesh in his place).  It was still pretty smooth, but the banter is not of the same quality!

Just like last week, I prepared for the gig like it was some kind of exam.  This week's big addition to my performance was playing all of my parts to Baby Come Back on keyboard.  Impressive, non?  Mais oui.  Bencuya's over there having a good time with the rhodes part, so I'm playing strings.  On the verse, I'm playing piano;  on the choruses, I'm playing clav (with the strings).  Then on the bridge, I'm playing the synth part, complete with the big pitch two octave pitch bend.  Who's the man!  I mentioned my newfound keyboard prowess at the end of the first set, and Bencuya mentioned that he heard everything I played, and it sounded great.  I think he was trying to make up for the fact that he repeatedly mentioned how bad I (and he) su…

Mark Dannells and I are unveiling our new flute and guitar demo!  You can hear it on my website.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Here are a few videos from the Variety Playhouse show a few Fridays ago:





Here are a few videos of me from last night:





davidfreemanmusic.net