David Freeman Music

Thursday: Ft. Wayne, Indiana. Did you know they have an international airport there? It was...not very crowded. We hopped in two Lyfts. One smelled of cigarettes, one smelled of poop. I ended up in the poop car. waiting for our ride This was a tough travel day. I was up at 5:30 AM and out the door at 6:15 to make an 8:30 AM flight, which put us in Ft. Wayne at 10:30 AM. Then, lots and lots of hanging around. Fortunately, we were at the Sweetwater Amphitheater (Sweetwater is a mostly online company that sells music gear), so we hung out, looked at instruments and accessories that we didn't really need, ate lunch, and looked at our phones. Finally, it was time to go--they even asked us to start early! A quick ride across the parking lot in their sprinter van. Surprisingly, not too bad of a crowd. Five or six hundred--something like that--but it was a nice stage, great weather, and this aircraft hanger looking thing sounded pretty decent. Too bad we were a little rust...

Thursday: Unplugged. Right as we were beginning the first song of the evening, Lovely Day , I decided that instead of playing my parts on keyboard, I would play flute. That was a stupid idea.  I played a gig's worth of wrong notes in the intro, verse, and chorus. Fortunately, things got better from there. The rest of the gig was fine. Monkeyboy didn't feel good about his playing, so Reeling in the Years  was a much slower shuffle, and felt like it should've been a bonus track on Eric Clapton's Unplugged record. Also, not actually part of the gig, but I took a decent organ solo on Heart to Heart  at soundcheck. Ganesh, holding it down on the drums We left all the gear set up for Friday, which meant no load out and no Friday soundcheck, which was...really nice! I packed up my horns and split.  Friday: It didn't occur to me until we'd already played the left hand column, but there wasn't much saxophone on Friday's gig. I...

Yacht Rock took to the road again July fifth, headed towards the Atlantic Ocean. This trip was the reverse of last year's ( read about that one right here ). Friday: We played a country club/beach club place in Sea Island. This is the same gig we did last year where they set up a stage in the dunes between the club and the beach. But first, saxophone repair! I put a new cork foot on the palm key D. No more wad of tape underneath it. dazzling work, if I do say so myself Ok, back to the gig. This one's a little annoying. The location isn't ideal, and sand gets in all our gear because the grounds crew is constantly driving tractors behind the stage, stirring everything up (and they don't care enough to go slow). There's also this thing where the crowd doesn't seem to know how to act at a show--are they supposed to clap like it's the symphony, or lose their minds like it's Beyonce, or is it somewhere in between? Or maybe they so rarely see...

I subbed with our friends the Yacht Rock Schooner for a daytime gig on Tuesday. This one was some sort of beach themed lunch party. Really hot. Nobody wanted to be outside. It appeared that most people came out, got their food, and then retreated to the air conditioning. pre-gig I did what I could. The Schooner uses a saxophonist in addition to the two keyboard players (on this gig, I was only playing saxophone), so I played some horn parts along with one of the keyboardists playing the horn parts...I think? It wasn't always easy to hear. Also, I was on my spare set of saxophones for this, and my tenor had not one but two loose screws that caused all sorts of chaos until I could get it back together. It was the arm that holds G# closed, and the arm over the upper F cup, in case you're wondering. Because of their close proximity, I'm betting I banged that part of my horn on something, probably months ago, and it's just now showing up. Anyway, except for the...

Three days in Florida is plenty. Wednesday: We flew to the Florida Panhandle to meet up with our gear for a cancer benefit show. This place we played was a little weird. The keg urinal, for instance. Nick wanted to know if it would turn his pee into beer. And the three giant Yamaha mixing consoles, one of which was in pieces behind the building. And we had an opener--an older guy with an acoustic guitar and a drum machine. He was pretty good, except that some of his chords were weird (he seemed to have a fear of diminished chords, among other things). The green room was so small/terrible that we ate dinner out in the main room, so the guy had to play at least half his set to seven judgmental musicians. Our set was ok. The room didn't sound too bad, but the crowd was a little weird--some people in the room seemed to be having too much fun, and some people looked at us like we were singing in a foreign language. The vibe didn't fit the nature of the event. Als...