David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock returned to Atlanta yesterday after spending last weekend working our way up to Chicago and back, with stops in Louisville and Indianapolis.  Along the way we saw lots of family, friends, corn, and our phones. Thursday:  The longest drive of the trip--we drove from Atlanta to Indianapolis.  Nothing much to report.  The corn is tasseling nicely. We stopped in Louisville to meet up with Greg's old bandmate Peter Searcy and eat (at Ramsi's).  After dinner entertainment was provided by magician Manny Ehrlich.  88 years old and still going! We spent the night in Carmel, Indiana.  It was here that I discovered that I had failed to pack any underwear for this trip. Friday:   Underwear inside out day. We continued on to Chicago, passing through northwest Indiana's wind farms.  Still really cool to look at. Lunch at Don Pablo's in Lafayette.  Russian roulette with Mexican food. Our gig was in Chicago Ridge...

Yacht Rock played for a tennis tour event at Atlantic Station last night.  Another tennis stadium?  We played one in DC for the Fourth of July a few years ago and almost died from the heat (and lack of enthusiasm).  This one wasn't nearly as bad. We loaded in at 9:30, set up in a small tent perched in the corner of the stadium (kind of like a spot where ESPN would be set up to do their show in between matches).  A couple of hours to set up and soundcheck and then we were off until the evening. The match ended around 8:15 PM, and we hopped up on stage to play.  Sort of like when we played the Hawks game, the crowd mostly didn't seem very enthusiastic about sitting there some more, so the stadium emptied out at a steady pace during our seventy-five minute set except for maybe a hundred and fifty people.  That'd be my guess.  Tough to say. Not a bad, gig though.  Sounded fine (Kip on sound), help loading gear in and out, and one set...

The 2014 Yacht Rock Revival was this past Saturday at Park Tavern on the edge of Piedmont Park.  If you weren't there, you missed the best one yet!  The weather was terrible earlier in the day, but cleared off enough to make it a very special evening. This one was by far the easiest one for me.  Three contributing factors:  1.  We don't add much new material these days, so the band songs (without the original artists) were the same stuff we've been doing for a long time;  2.  we've played with most of the original artists before and most of their songs we repeats;  3.  the new songs that were added had no saxophone and almost no keyboard. Pablo Cruise opened for us with a seventy-five minute set.  Good stuff and great playing, with plenty of chopsy stuff in between their big hits!   Pretty cool guys, too, though  I wonder if there was some sort of contest among the four of them to see how many times they could insert the...

All of the special guests are in town for the big Yacht Rock Revival, and yesterday was our best opportunity to get together and play through everybody's songs. First up was Jeff Carlisi of .38 Special: Nice to see Monkeyboy's Les Paul, which doesn't make it out to very many gigs. After Jeff, we had a visit from Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss of Player: We've finally nailed down the arrangement of This Time I'm in it for Love . After lunch (Antico pizza!!!), we got together with Walter Egan to check his songs: Gary Wright arrived later in the afternoon, so we rehearsed his songs in the evening.  Bencuya got louder and louder throughout the day, and by the time we hit Gary's last song, I couldn't hear anything else. It's going to be a great show!