Greetings! The music making continues to creep along through January. Here's what I've been up to.
Two weeks ago, Yacht Rock reconvened on stage at the Roxy to record our Valentine's Day Prom show. This one leaned into the 80s a bit more than we might normally go, and it was fun to play some different songs...hell, it was fun just to play a show with a band!
Also check out the light show that James did! This is from soundcheck. The disco ball was used to great effect.
The keyboard "division of labor" (dividing up the multitude of parts on the album) necessitated that I cover one of Mark Bencuya's synth solos on the song Can't Stop while he continued the main part running underneath it. To accomplish this, I chose to take a saxophone solo, but drastically alter the sound using my effects pedal. Here's an example of it:
That show will be broadcast on the Yacht Rock Revue Facebook page in February.
Around all of these livestream recordings, I was supposed to be preparing to play a concert of the musical Nine at the Lyric Theatre (no acting, just the singing). It was set up as safely as possible with everybody who could wear a mask wearing a mask, lots of distance between each of us, and plexiglass barriers to further separate us. You may recall that I did something similar with The Color Purple a year ago (you can reread it here). The music was a nice challenge, and I'd been working through the Reed III book for a couple of weeks when the musical director called with the news that the show had been cancelled/indefinitely postponed because too many of the actors had had positive COVID tests! Woah! I'm disappointed that I didn't get to play, but it feels like I dodged a bullet here.
Here are some fun musical moments from the book:
Next month? More of the same! By the looks of the calendar, things won't be headed back to normal until July. In the mean time, I'm trying to post things a little more consistently on my Instagram page and David Freeman Music Facebook page.
