David Freeman Music

Super Bowl Sunday

2012-02-06T02:29:00.002-05:00

I dragged myself out of bed this morning and played my church gig. No gig last night, but I still found enough stuff to keep me up past midnight.

Church gig number one was fairly straight forward. I ended up using every instrument I'd brought-flute, clarinet, soprano, and tenor. When we were excused for the sermon I was able to carry everything but the clarinet off stage, so I didn't spend ten minutes packing up afterwards.

We had some "road map" issues on one song. It's funny to me how differently some musicians hear music than others. In this case, a couple of guys had trouble figuring out how to get to the last page--lots of measure numbers going back and forth--when it seemed obvious to my ears that we were playing the chorus again, and then taking the outro.

The other thing that stuck out to me about the morning service was the way the drummer was playing. He's a college student who probably hasn't played a bunch of gigs at this point, I'd guess. On several songs, he was wandering back and forth between the hi hat and the ride every couple of measures, like he was trying out several different approaches within the song. It got me thinking again about how drummers are very responsible for shaping the arrangement of the song we are playing. I think some of the younger guys I have played with in the last couple of years don't realize that what they're doing and when they're doing it changes how the guys around them play. This guy would open up the groove to the ride and then come back down to the hi hat, and then we'd go into the chorus and he would realize it needed to be bigger again and he'd go back, and probably didn't think about how that was forcing the intensity of the music up and down. It's a lot like a driver who stomps on the gas and then takes his foot off, then floors again, then coasts again. We're moving along, but you're making me sick!

My second gig began a half hour after the Super Bowl began. At that point, it was 9-0 Giants. Not too many people there! I'd bet there were fewer than a hundred in the congregation.

My newly overhauled flute felt awesome--that thing is playing better than ever. My soprano felt good and sounded good, but I had all kinds of trouble playing in tune. My left hand and my right hand were very far apart. Not too fun. I didn't do anything really noteworthy. We finished about fifteen minutes early.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Taste of Dunwoody

2012-02-05T00:28:00.002-05:00

Yacht Rock played the Taste of Dunwoody last night (Friday). We did it last year; I bet we'll play it again next year. It sold out, and I think we have a lot to do with it. A good number of our fans turn up, and I know they're not there for the food!

The weird thing about this gig is that it was held in the W Hotel, or whatever it's now called--it's the hotel on the north side of Perimeter Mall. The room is kind of small for a seven piece band, especially when it's lined with vendors trying to talk up their specialty foods. I'm curious as to why the event is not held at the Crown Plaza at Ravinia across the street, or even at Villa Christina, both of which have significantly larger spaces.

The gig itself was pretty good. Our stash of alcohol was inconveniently located in a room on the tenth floor, so I think everybody stayed pretty sober. Good thing, too, because the ballroom lighting options were either overhead florescent lights, or almost total darkness.

Another crappy feature of this venue was the thermostat, which evidently didn't care that there were several hundred people and several little cooking stations and a band dressed in plastic clothes. It was super hot--like outdoor hot. The EWI did not care for this; my solo on Hey Nineteen was a little slippery because the heat and humidity in the room caused it to react strangely (until I could adjust the sensors).

I screwed up part of my Dannells duet on Still the One. I'm finally off my chart, and I can play the thing perfectly at soundcheck, but I can't quite do it on the gig. I've got no good excuse.

We played Whatever Gets You Through the Night again--a fun song for me and one that goes over very well, but I'm worried it's going to disappear again because Nick hates it. I like it a lot. Figures.

The gig ended promptly at 10:30, which was so very nice. I was home by 12:30. It probably would've been earlier if the load out wasn't such a rat maze.

So it goes! Big week next week. Stay tuned.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Booby Night

2012-02-03T15:09:00.002-05:00

Yacht Rock played the 10 High last night (the usual guys except Ganesh in for Pete and Daniel on drums). Pretty good night! We did kind of a greatest hits set list because of the subs, but I was much more on it than last week when I couldn't remember anything.

We had a big crowd last night--I heard it was a bunch of lobbyists. They paid, we played. Some of them had nice chests.

Tenor reed=good. Alto reed=bad. Therefore, alto reed=dumpster behind the 10 High.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Weekend

2012-01-30T02:29:00.000-05:00

Another busy weekend…

Thursday: Yacht Rock was back at our regular gig, the 10 High, for the first time this year! It was just the way we left it--dark, stinky, and dirty. Too bad. We had everybody there except Mark Cobb, who is out on paternity leave. Daniel Morrison filled in for him. He was solid.

Mark Dannells played really well. I, on the other hand, just kind of spaced on a lot of stuff. For instance, we were playing What a Fool Believes for probably the five thousandth time, and I couldn't remember whether I pedal on an F or a Bb, so I guessed (correctly). I had lots of stuff like that--I felt confused.

I'd spent most of the day rebuilding my rack. UPS was a bit rough in getting it to Miami last week, and broke both rack rails loose. I took everything out, put new screws in the rails, and put it all back together. I also strapped my power supplies to the power strip in there, since UPS had helped them get out and bounce around. Big fun! I got it all back together, and then had to set up my entire Yacht Rock rig so I could test everything and make sure all my connections worked. Success on my first try.

Friday: Yacht Rock played our second gig at the Georgia Theatre in Athens. It's sooooooo cool in there. We sold it out again.

This time the on stage sound was much better. I could hear things very well. I played pretty well--fewer brain farts than the previous night. It took a while, but at some point I was able to forget that we were recording and just play. Dave Barbe brought his mobile recording unit over to capture our sounds. Hope we get something good! Short of that, I hope we can fix it!

Mark Bencuya played a couple of good solos. His spot on Peg had this cool start-stop thing that I liked, and he got off a really screaming synth thing on I Wanna be Your Lover. Really good stuff.

The second set featured a couple of our Dazed and Confused tunes, so I didn't really do much after the break.

Saturday: we rode up to Nashville to play the Mercy Lounge. Good news in Tennessee! Not only did we sell it out; the club got so many calls about tickets after we'd sold it out, they turned their phones off that afternoon to avoid it! The next time we go up there, we'll be in the Cannery Ballroom--much bigger.

This was a fun gig. Walter Egan sat in with us. In addition to Magnet and Steel, he played on Go Your Own Way (he and Dannells played the guitar solo in unison). He was very generous in hanging out with us, swapping stories and putting up with our silliness. He spent the entire second set sitting right behind me on the corner of the stage.

Ganesh Giri Jaya played drums with us. He was really great. It makes me wonder if he wouldn't be better off on a smaller kit like the one he used in Nashville--he was so relaxed and smooth. I really dug it. He looked like he was having a blast, too.

Sunday: we got up and drove home.

I played my church gig that night. I guess the only noteworthy thing was a vaguely latin sounding song that I played flute on. It was short form--just a verse and refrain. I came in the second time around playing vaguely latin flute, and there was never a good spot to get out of the way of the vocals, so I ended up kind of smothering the song. Oops. It wasn't on purpose…I just couldn't find a logical place in the arrangement--the intensity never changed, and if I'd stopped it would've sounded wrong.

I know what else happened…I was messing around with the band mix, and I couldn't get the piano to come through the mix, so I swept the mid EQ around and it suddenly jumped out! I think I laughed out loud. I ended up pulling the fader down quite a bit once I found that bump. It was kind of funny how that worked. I did the same thing to the acoustic guitar. Every week I get a little better at it.

This week is kind of slow. It'll be a good chance to catch up on some other things.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Weezer Cruise

2012-01-24T14:04:00.002-05:00

photo courtesy of Julia Wallace

As I write this, I can still feel the boat moving, even though I'm at home. Here's everything I can remember…

Thursday: we got on the boat later than we usually do. I think, in fact, that most people were already on there--we went straight through registration and hopped aboard. A late morning flight and a stop for lunch got us there just in time for the lifeboat drill.

The rooms were bigger than usual. We even had room for a couch!

The bathroom had a countertop, which I like a lot better than the usual glass shelf above the sink.

We played pretty early on in the cruise--something like 8 PM--on the stage in the Criterion Lounge. Much bigger stage than the Candlelight, and they gave us an hour to set up and and hour to soundcheck. I like that. Sometimes it's a real "throw and go" thing, and there's no time to hear what things sound like until you're into the gig.

The first set went pretty well. Things sounded fine (lots of low end out towards the front line--possibly a hollow stage?). I had my own monitor, so I could hear my stuff.

We're used to the way these boats work, so it was no surprise that there weren't many people in there with us, but the ones who came saw and believed.

We finished around 9:30. Some guys went to bed. I wandered the ship with a large cup of whiskey. It was a REALLY slow night--not a lot people out, and not much partying going on. What do you expect with a boatload of hipsters?

I saw the first half of the first song by song by Dinosaur Jr. Too loud and not my thing (i.e. I didn't like it). Check out the guitar set up (left side of the pic) and the bass set up (right side). A bit much.

Back to the Criterion Lounge to see who had followed us. There was some band--a guy with a DJ set up who also played guitar, a bass player, and a drummer. The DJ guy would get a groove rolling, and then the trio would play along with it--like chords and the bass line. I was sitting next to the front of house guy and I said "Wow! A song with no hook! How about a melody?" At that moment, the song ended and I exploded with drunken cackling laughter and several people turned around and looked at me, so I removed myself. Oops.

I went up on the Lido deck, sat in a lounge chair, and listened to some indie rock band. Nothing memorable, so I gave up and went to bed.

Friday: we got up and started preparing for our big show on the Lido deck. Unfortunately, it was uncovered! NOOOOOOOOO! Neither my electronics nor my acoustic instruments like direct sunlight. That sucked. The gig was good, though, and we had (as usual) a significantly larger audience. Reports from out front said that Baker Street sounded huge. The Caribbean has been alerted to my presence!

Here's a cool article about our Friday performance.

The rest of the day was easy. More sleeping and more eating of copious amounts of fruit, but I took a day off from drinking. I hung out a little at the end of the night at the mid-ship bar waiting to see if a party materialized, but no avail. Instead I had the experience of listening to Nick tell people I was the biggest asshole in the band, and then later on some girl got in my face because I wouldn't dance with her (I was leaning against a pole watching the band). That's how Friday's fun ended.

Saturday: Cozumel! We got off the boat around 10 AM. The original plan was that we would rent scooters and not wreck, but the cheaper option turned out to be hiring Jose to drive us around. $80 for the day for four of us (Mark Dannells, Greg Lee, Ganesh Giri Jaya, and me).

The first place we went was the Mayan ruins. Not much to look at--a stone pyramid and an old Catholic church. They did have some dogs.

We met up with some fans in a stretch Lincoln Navigator--totally homemade! There was a weird air conditioner unit built on the top, and the windows were smeared with silicon caulk. We started drinking with them, passing around a bottle of tequila.

From there, the four of us moved on to the tequila tour, where our tour guide, Gabriel, got us drunk on more tequila shots. He was loud and sweaty. Dannells bought an $80 bottle of tequila.

Jose! get us out of here!

From there we moved on to another restaurant.

They also had a dog.

I had a margarita and some kind of cheezy chicken and peppers thing. The Navigator crew showed up shortly thereafter.

Once everybody was finished eating, we ditched Jose and got in the Navigator with the crew. Our next stop was some tourist trap place called Carlos and Charlie's on the main drag. More alcohol. I danced; I was part of the conga line. Other highlights included doing the dance along with Y.M.C.A., except the DJ would kill the music and say "Why are you gay" in the chorus. The servers also opened a tank of compressed air and shot it at the dance floor while pouring tequila into the stream. That looked cool. I got sticky.

We got back on the boat, sat in the hot tub and listened to Dinosaur Jr (from behind the stage, which was still WAAAAAAAAAAAAYY too loud, but tequila and beer got me through it). I ate and got back to my cabin.

The next thing I knew, it was 4:30 AM and I was still in my swimsuit, still in my room. I changed and went back to bed.

Sunday: thanks to a TV in my cabin, I saw a lot of football stuff. That ate up a good amount of time. All the bands on the boat took a photo, and we met a couple of significant people: Brian Ray, who plays guitar with Paul McCartney and also worked with Etta James, and Josh Freese, who plays drums with everybody. I never know what to say to those people, other than thanks for checking us out. They're not any different than any other high caliber musicians I know, they just happen to be on bigger gigs.

So…football football football. Dannells told his fitness joke at the Weezer Q and A.

We played our final show of the cruise at 10 PM back in the Criterion Lounge. This show was the best attended, but sounded the worst--speaking specifically of the sound (not the playing). The production was all digital so all the settings were saved from our previous show, but it seemed like the bass was all over the place, and Dannells was EXTREMELY UNHAPPY with the amp he borrowed. In spite of that (and this one happened to be a "throw and go" with a thirty minute change over from the previous band), I think we performed really well and the crowd was extremely enthusiastic. Ganesh played his ass off.

Josh Freese (with a fake mustache) sat in with us on Peg. No big deal for us…just another performance of a song we've played hundreds of times. He had fun--how often do you get to play a Steely Dan song with a band who can really nail it?

It reinforces my feeling that the difference between that guys with whom I play locally and a guy like that is more about the opportunity than some giant leap in talent. I think we can hang just fine.

Some more drinking…I was doing my best to plow through the remainder of the whiskey we'd smuggled on the boat. I gave up pretty early (2 AM, maybe?).

Monday: we didn't have to get off the boat until 9 AM (usually it's an hour earlier). Nice. Not so nice was that our flight wasn't until 7 PM, so we tried to kill off the day in Miami. The cruise organizers helped us leave our gear at their hotel, so we caught a shuttle to the airport and then city bus to South Beach. Hours later, we arrived! Pretty cool--I'd never been there before. We ate at an awesome restaurant (I had 4 steak tacos and a side order of rice--for my homies!) We took a stroll on the beach.

Finally we ended up drinking mojitos at some lounge (called "The Mojito Lounge"). A real stick of sugarcane jammed in there. Nice.

At the end of the day we cabbed it back to the hotel (our cab driver's name was "Louis XVI"!), shuttled it to the airport, and flew home! The end!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Variety Playhouse show

2012-01-16T01:07:00.000-05:00

We made it! Another big show has come and gone. There were some rough spots, but we all got through it. Thanks to the crowd for the great turn out, and thanks to Farrell for making it look so good.

Not much for me to do on this gig…I played on about two thirds of the first set (things like cowbell on the outro of one song), two minor things on the middle set, and most of the last set. At least it made loading out quick and easy. I also ate half a bag of Cheetos on stage and drank enough of a martini to make my lips numb.

I got up and did my two church gigs (with a big nap in between). I've got nothing to say about either one. Actually, I will say that my soprano sound was good tonight--I have a reed in just the perfect point in its life. Also, my flute is still in the shop from the beer spill incident, so I used a different flute with much better results. It really shows how messed up my instrument was. Not cool, beer spill girl! You owe me a frickin' boatload of money for the repadding of my flute!

Here are a few recents YouTube additions…Dick in a Box has a good sax solo at the end (2:15 until the end).

My Old School…utilizing my sax effects pedal to set to play in octaves. I could afford to be louder in the mix, but damn everybody sounds good on this one.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Ivy

2012-01-14T00:30:00.000-05:00

Yacht Rock played a show at The Ivy in Buckhead last night. Where's that? It used to be Carbo's, and then it burned. Now it looks like a two story Buckhead bar, complete with asshole parking attendant.

It was a strange gig. I can't really say why we were there. It was the beginning of their "Thursday Night Concert Series" (what the hell is that?), which is obviously so huge and important and worth the money that they failed to mention it on their EVENTS PAGE on their website. I guess they made up for it with multiple Facebook posts.

I think we played alright. The place was packed in spite of the aforementioned ineptitude. We tested out a few of the songs from our upcoming Dazed and Confused show, which gave me a chance to sit back and do nothing.

Anyway, no big deal…

Friday was an all day mega rehearsal for the Variety Playhouse show. A week ago, I thought we were screwed and it wouldn't come together in a week. Now I think the show's going to be really good. Fear and charts!

I managed to watch almost all of Top Gun while Led Zep 4 was rehearsed. I still can't believe Kelly McGillis is a lesbian.

Big show Saturday night!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Old Friends, New Year

2012-01-10T11:24:00.002-05:00

I'm back!

I started the year by attending a friend's wedding. Will Scruggs played in the band (Kingsized) at the reception. Yay! I've known Will since he was still in college at Emory, and he sounds better than ever. Will has done really well at creating his own gigs and finding his own "thing." Very cool! He's also a really nice, dependable guy. You can see what he's up to by checking out his website. Yay Will!

Will Scruggs!

My family took a week long trip to Disney World during the first week of the year. Along the way, we had a little time to take the David Freeman: This is Your Life! tour, visiting all my old schools, homes, ex-girlfriend's homes, and hangouts in Orlando. It looks just the way I left it twenty years ago. Has it really been twenty years since I graduated from high school?

my old house

my old school

Being back gave me a chance to reconnect with a few of the most important people in my life. First was my old saxophone teacher, Artie Almeida. She (and her husband John) have been on the music scene forever in Orlando, and they're still playing and teaching a lot. Amazing people! I love that they've stayed in central Florida and made the most of their opportunities (she got her doctorate in education and flies around the GLOBE giving seminars about teaching elementary music; he is now the trumpet professor at UCF). Aside from my family, they were the most influential people for me as an aspiring musician.

After that, we zoomed by my old neighborhood to check in with the Mr. and Mrs. Dougherty. They are parents to my best friend in high school, Neil, and they often served as surrogate parents when mine weren't available! Mrs. Dougherty has been one of my biggest fans FOREVER. They are wonderful people--I wish they were still a bike ride away.

On Sunday, it was back to work. Church gig number one…usual stuff. I got a little solo on one of the songs.

Even Now (sax) by David B Freeman

I didn't bother bringing my flute to church gig number two--just played soprano through the whole thing. I think most of the pads in the right hand are ruined from the beer spill a few weeks ago. Time to go see Bryan Lopes!

davidfreemanmusic.net

NYE on Ice

2012-01-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

The Yacht Rock Revue closed out our spectacular year by playing our New Year's Eve show at the Park Tavern. Just like last year, they put carpet and a stage on top of the skating rink…we were the greatest show on ice?

We played a really good show, I thought. I can't think of anything that didn't sound good--it was just a really solid, even show to a sold out (1,500 people) crowd. It was also shown on a webcast, so anybody could tune in. How cool is that? Very hip--I hope that continues with next year's Park Tavern summer concert series.

I played pretty well. I had a couple of spots where I was really killing it, immediately followed by brain farts and corresponding wipeouts. Oops. Tim Smith was standing behind me offstage for the entire second set--maybe he wasn't listening to me? On the whole, I think I was good, though. Hopefully this erases my abomination of a performance the last time we were here.

As far as New Year's goes…I've never been a fan. I think because my parents treated it like it was any other night, I've never felt like the world was crossing some imaginary boundary. After the show, I couldn't get away from the Park Tavern quickly enough, past the puke puddles and the girls so drunk they were crying. Some lady stopped her car in the middle of 10th Street for several minutes because her passenger had his door open, throwing up again and again (I know because I got stuck behind them).

At the next light, I looked in my rearview mirror, and guess who was behind me, hazards on, passenger side door open. Not impressive.

davidfreemanmusic.net

A Wedding? On a Thursday?

2011-12-31T01:06:00.003-05:00

Yacht Rock played a wedding Thursday night. Weird, huh? I guess they were cashing in on every discount you could find. Fine with me, though…instead of coming home at 2:30 AM smelling of smoke (and possibly having to wipe spilled beer off my flute), I was home at midnight. Plus, we made more money. So ha! A win all around.

The gig was pretty fun. I mean, especially for a wedding, it was a relaxed, nobody's bugging us kind of thing. We hadn't played together in ten days--it felt pretty good compared to the previous wedding where we were all committed to getting out of there ASAP. Mark Cobb seemed pretty refreshed, like he was enjoying himself. Bencuya slipped Rockit into his I Want to Be Your Lover solo again. Good stuff.

We played Give a Little Bit again. I screwed up the sax solo the last time we played it. And then I heard it in the grocery store a few days before Christmas, and as soon as it started I knew I would be standing there listening to the spot where I bit it. My shame, conveniently located in aisle six at Publix. Anyway…the solo came back to me. I played it fine. I need to stop thinking about it so much.

We also hit Biggest Part of Me for the first time in a long time. I had a pretty good solo going on that one, but the weird thing was that I was kind of doing little bunny hops and kind of moving around a bit--almost uncontrollably. Not like a seizure; but I the part of my brain that was not involved in the head-to-hands chain that makes the music was saying "Why do you keep doing that? What the hell is wrong with you?" but I just kept kind of using a little body language to pound out my solo. I don't do too much of that--there's always some "for the show," but this was more of the involuntary, electricity-running-through-me kind of thing.

Last gig of the year…Yacht Rock is playing at the Park Tavern Saturday night. Get your tickets now!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Duo Dave

2011-12-29T11:28:00.002-05:00

I played a GREAT duo gig last night with the one and only David Ellington.

Driving up Main Street in Woodstock, I thought "Man, it's dark here!" My directions told me I was in the right place, but all the shops and restaurants looked closed. I pulled into the parking lot, met up with Ellington, and we investigated on foot. It turned out that a car had plowed into a transformer and knocked everything out! I sent Ellington home and agreed to play the gig solo.

Right before I was to begin, the power kicked back on, so I called Dave and told him to turn around and come back. In the mean time, I went ahead and played solo sax for about twenty minutes. Once he was set up, we played a couple of normal length sets.

Part of it was that I was having a great night--I felt good and I had a good reed and I could hear myself--but Ellington really made me play better. We hadn't played a gig together in over a year, and it felt like we picked right back up. He played really well and made every tune comfortable. It was a good gig and good hang with one of my favorite people.

Some guy tipped us a dollar for playing Giant Steps. I think it worked out to be a penny for each of us per chorus.

Fun stuff! I hope to see Dave again soon.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Christmas Eve Gigs

2011-12-26T00:15:00.000-05:00

I ended up with three Christmas Eve gigs last night…two at church gig number 2, and one at church gig number 1.

The first two were in the parish hall, and turned out to be pretty easy. I think the most challenging thing about being in there is mixing, as we plug into the wall and use the speakers in the ceiling. From our spot in the corner, it's impossible to hear what we sound like--I had to walk out a half dozen times and check it out, usually right down the center aisle because of the Christmas Eve overcrowding.

I did help myself right from the start by unplugging all the XLRs from the mixer and zeroing out the board. No point dealing with all the crap. I did figure out how to use the onboard effects, so the second service got to hear us with reverb. Yippee!

Playing-wise, things were ok. I felt ok on flute, and my soprano felt really good (Lopes just finished putting it back together about a week ago). Christmas carols are pretty straight forward.

I raced out of Buckhead at 7, headed to church gig number 1. Driving and changing my shirt at the same time...what other profession does stuff like this on a regular basis? I thought, what am I going to say when I wreck with one arm in my shirt and my pants wide open?

I made it in plenty of time. No sweat. I could have changed my shirt in the parking lot.

The gig went pretty well. I did catch an audible--play Oh Little Town of Bethlehem on flute. I was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY out of tune on that one, and fumbling the melody a couple of times made me sweat, which my flute slide around on my lip, which made me sound worse, which made me sweat more. Turn up the suck! I was really bad on that. Good thing only about a thousand people heard me.

They did this really cool thing last year, so I was ready with my camera this time. Lights out, and then they pass candles out. It looks awesome.

No church gigs on Christmas Day.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Frampton Proclaims my Brilliance!

2011-12-23T14:09:00.000-05:00

I played my final Thursday Yacht Rock show at the 10 High for the year. Due to the holidays, it was mostly Schooner guys (just Greg and me from the Revue), with the mighty Eric Frampton on the other keyboard. That means different keyboard parts for me on a few things (Peg, Reminiscing, Hey 19, Lonely Boy, Somebody's Baby, Silly Love Songs, Takin' it to the Streets, Lido Shuffle, Doctor My Eyes, and Thunder Island). It's fun, but I kind of flinch because I'm used to playing the other part. Anyway, Frampton said afterwards that I was brilliant! Quite an endorsement, though I really did play really well if I do say so myself. I'd played all of those except for Thunder Island before, and once I got through the opening octave thing where the piano enters, it was easy. I did have one small disaster--in Lido, I was banging out the piano part, thinking about how great I was doing, and then I drove off the cliff at the synth build up. First synth thing was fine, but when I added my other hand, boom. I think I tried to start it outlining an F major triad instead of a G major triad. I had to stop for a second and reset. Stoooooopid.

Let's get back to the brilliant part…so yeah, I was brilliant. Let's remember that.

It was not all smoochy lovefest stuff, though. Some chick knocked a beer off the speaker in front of me, and it splashed beer all over my saxophones and flutes. Raise your hand if you're guilty (and get poked in the left boob).

Thanks a lot. Particularly irritating was that she heard the bottle hit the stage, looked to see where it was, shrugged, and went back to trying to take a picture of her friends. I should have had Nate throw her out. Now my horns are sticky and smell like beer, and my flute has sticky keys (flute took the worst of it). Fortunately there were no dents and everything seems to play. I worked on cleaning flute pads through the entire break. I tore a dollar bill in half in the process. Federal offense?

Side note: Yuengling is really shitty beer.

At some point in the second set, and second drink (in a cup) came off the speaker. Not cool at all!

Other than that, it was really good crowd. I went into the gig thinking that the 10 High would either be pretty packed or totally empty. It was the former. Yay for that! Lots of good looking people (women) across the front row. Thanks for that.

davidfreemanmusic.net

We Made It!

2011-12-19T13:12:00.000-05:00

Yacht Rock finished off a tough stretch of gigs by playing a wedding Sunday night at Puritan Mill. I'd never played a wedding gig there with a stage--always on the concrete floor. I wonder if it's permanent?

I think it was probably the best gig of the weekend. The crowd was into it (and really good looking), the load in was easy, the stage was big, we had someone else running sound for us, we only played two sets…piece of cake! And the band played pretty well.

Not much to report, other than that. Pete's wife Alyssa was the wedding coordinator (from Sashay Events with Mark Cobb's wife Katy) and she sat in with us on five songs, some of which we hadn't played in a year. In particular, we hit You're So Vain again, and I finally got through it without choking (like last time). Yay for me!

Bencuya slipped Rockit into I Wanna Be Your Lover. Very cool, though it got no reaction from the band. Not listening? I tucked three Christmas carols into my Reminiscing solo Friday night and got no reaction either. It makes me wonder what everybody's doing. Dannells was standing right next to me and didn't hear any of them. Kind of like last night at the Buckhead Theatre--I was pumped up about my solo on Dick in a Box, and when I said something to Bencuya about it, he said, "Was it good?"

Anyway…we finished at midnight. In bed by two. We made it!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Tacky Christmas Party

2011-12-18T12:48:00.002-05:00

Yacht Rock spent Saturday night at the Buckhead Theatre for the Tacky Christmas Party--a benefit for Toys for Tots.

This event was not well attended. I believe the ticket prices were pretty steep (I heard $75), and we were advertised as Please Pleaserock Me instead of Yacht Rock. I wonder if we'd been booked as the latter if they crowd would have been stronger. I think there were only a couple of hundred people there. It looked pretty empty.

No problems, though. We played right through it. There were some great moments (Cobb's drum fill in With a Little Help from my Friends) and some keyboard issues (I switched keyboard patches while playing the drum pads on my Fantom, and the first keyboard note I hit sounded like a police siren! Holy shit!).

I played a really good solo on Dick in a Box. I hope somebody got video of it! I don't know why--just a combination of luck and being able to hear myself well. I could have kept going--everything I was playing worked great. Wish I'd played that well the week before!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Rave Against the (YRR) Machine

2011-12-17T11:51:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played a marathon of a gig last night--4 sets!

The party was at Ventanas…never a good place for a band this size. Loading in is difficult (to say the least) and the room is acoustically difficult--all glass and concrete.

The most difficult part of this gig, however, was the music in between the sets. The client played their iPods during the breaks, and it was all euro disco kinda stuff. I don't even know the genre. It was what I imagine a rave sounds like, except this was a corporate holiday party. They loved that stuff, too, which made me wonder why we were there. I guess they liked us too, but it was really tough to come back from spin-class music and do our thing.

I had a good night playing--better than last night. My hands felt quick. Dannells and I did really well on Still the One (me playing the second guitar). I'm still reading my chart (the concert pitch to alto thing kills me).

We finished at 1 AM. In bed at 3!
davidfreemanmusic.net

Sax Heavy

2011-12-16T12:20:00.001-05:00

Thursday means Yacht Rock at the 10 High! This gig was pretty good. We played pretty well and the crowd was more responsive than they've been in the past few weeks.

The set list was pretty sax heavy, especially compared to what we did all fall. On some of those gigs, I probably picked up a horn once or twice a set, and the rest was keyboards. Last night, seven of the thirteen songs in the first set had saxophone (only two of ten in the second set). It was fun, though I I was back to playing some dumb stuff on a couple of songs, and I tried to play Your Momma Don't Dance a fourth away again (like I was playing bari…opposite problem from last week when I WAS playing bari!).

Towards the end of the night, my brain gave out or something. I played like I was drunk, but I hadn't been drinking. Some boneheaded mistakes…

We've got a busy couple of days…the last big gig weekend of the year!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Salsa!

2011-12-15T10:43:00.002-05:00

I had a fun little salsa gig with Salpicon last night at Kat's Cafe in midtown. I hadn't done a Latin gig in years; it was fun to try and keep up with it again.

The circumstances of the gig were a bit insane. I got called for the gig just before noon Monday. I went and hung out at a rehearsal Monday night--didn't play hardly anything because there weren't any charts. I went home, and in the next twenty-four hours charted out ten tunes. (Along with sleeping and doing a Yacht Rock rehearsal). Then, boom! There we are on the gig. I think it went pretty well. I played flute as well as saxophone.

In other news, here are two clips from last week's Yacht Rock Holiday Special.

And you can hear me in the mix! Yay!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Church Stuff

2011-12-12T17:01:00.002-05:00

I made it to both my church gigs yesterday…

Church gig number one had a different drummer again. I'm not sure if the usual guy has not been available, or if the church is shopping for a new guy. This week's guy was pretty good.

We had Tommy Dodd, steel guitarist extraordinaire, once again. It didn't appear to be a special occasion…I'm guessing they'll bring him in whenever they feel like it. Evidently the budget can handle it.

Other than that, it was pretty ho-hum. We had a piece with a children's choir and a couple of pieces with an adult choir. Not much for me to do.

Last week was the big holiday show. I was not invited to participate. The rest of the band wanted to know where I was. I said, "At home." They said, "Your name was in the program."

Church gig number two was ok. I was informed that the ushers complained of multiple instances during the past few weeks of distortion when the band was playing. Maybe that was happening when I wasn't there, but we've never had distortion when I was running the board. Once the band got up and running, and walked to the back of the church. One of the ushers was there. I said, "Is it distorting?" "No." "Right. So go to hell."

davidfreemanmusic.net

House Live

2011-12-11T17:03:00.001-05:00

I would have thought that this Saturday (December 10) would be a big date on the calendar--one of those Saturdays when everybody in the world would be working and I would get a couple of calls. Maybe I'm so up to my eyebrows with Yacht Rock stuff that people assume I'm unavailable; I don't know…maybe there just aren't that many gigs to go around right now. Anyway, I had this prime date on my calendar wide open, and I was fortunate to pick up a House Live gig (sax/flute, percussionist, DJ playing house music).

It was a long gig--5 hours--but the money was good, and it was coming at a good time. Not only did I want to work, but these sort of gigs are a good chance for me to play a lot of sax and flute. I get to practice, more or less the whole night, because the gig is so open--I can take an idea or a pattern or an interval and play it over and over; put in on different parts of the beat; flip it around.

Last night was a good exercise for the first three hours…the problem was that the gig went for five! It got even more difficult when the DJ stuff changed from house music to pop music--what am I supposed to play over PYT, Don't Stop Believin', Let's Groove Tonight, or You Give Love a Bad Name?

Just when I thought we were done, they extended the gig a half hour. I limped through that. Eighteen drunk people on the dance floor held us hostage. At 12:30, the lights came on and I started packing up. They extended the gig ANOTHER half hour. It was brutal. My bottom lip felt like hamburger.

By 1 AM, we were a wreck. They were drunk, we were tired. People were auditioning for the percussion part. The client was WASTED…she was talking to the DJ and the percussionist at one point, and she said, "I like that long thing with the ridges that you pull the stick across…hey look he's got a cowbell…have you ever seen that SNL skit with the cowbell?" Ugh.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Holiday Show

2011-12-10T16:09:00.001-05:00

We did it! The Third Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special was a huge success!

This year we did it at the Buckhead Theatre. It's really nice! Much better than the Roxy was. I liked the stage size, and the sound seemed good to me (at least where I was, though Greg mentioned that the slap off the wall was really bugging him). All my stuff went well--no problems. The different alto mouthpiece worked much better, and my sax solos in general were better than usual. I think my biggest problem (other than showing up an hour late for load in) was that I kept trying to play Your Momma Don't Dance in F instead of C…played it too many times on tenor and not enough on bari!

Yay for us and congratulations to Pleaserock (Nick, Pete, Esther, and Kristen) for once again organizing an awesome event!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Christmas Show Dress Rehearsal

2011-12-09T13:33:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played our 10 High gig last night--it happened to be the big dress rehearsal for the Big Christmas Show We're Not Quite Ready to Play. Traditionally, we've kind of sucked real bad at the 10 High the night before a big show, and then we play the big show and nail it. Last night was kind of…fine? No disasters…I for one am just not comfortable with the everything yet. I kind of know my stuff, but it feels like I need another week or two to digest it--my brain's not there yet. Like, I can't spot anything on the set list that scares me (except for hearing my voice on We Are the World--I can't wait for that to be over), but I don't feel like I know what I'm doing. The past month has been such a blur that this show feels like something else to get through.

So…my alto was wildly out of tune. I don't know if it's a good idea or not, but I'm going back to an older mouthpiece (a Chinese copy of a Guardala). It's more comfortable. I feel like I've been fighting the ARB for a while, and the pitch thing is driving me crazy…left hand is flat, right hand is sharp. I think I probably just need to aim my pitch better, but I recorded a few things last night and I sound BAAAAAD…like so bad that I'm not posting them here! You know that's bad, since I love to share my latest failures.

My tenor had a great reed--it's a great reed that's still new, so it has a little resistance that you can blow through and then the sound is there. I love it. Too bad my tenor solos were both so damn vanilla…no horrible wrong notes, just boring boring boring boring boring. Felt great, played bleah.

Tonight will be better…or else!

If you're looking for something to do, the Third Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special is tonight at 9 PM at the Buckhead Theatre. It only happens once a year…

davidfreemanmusic.net

Too Much Too Early

2011-12-06T08:17:00.001-05:00

I think it's a sign of how busy things are that I have to look at my blog to see the last time I checked in.

Thursday night, I got home around 2:30 AM. I got up at 8 to play a Yacht Rock rehearsal for the upcoming show (this coming Friday at the Buckhead Theatre). It was a little rough. Nick had (I think) fifteen songs that we were learning or reviewing. I had charts for stuff, but I hadn't played any of it (except for the review tunes, which I hadn't played in six months--since Christmas in July). We hacked through stuff until we ran out of time. It wasn't terrible, but I didn't feel adequately prepared.

Friday afternoon was spent catching up on things at home--laundry, cleaning, bills, computer stuff. I got in a little practice on the YR stuff.

Saturday morning, Yacht Rock was up early to drive to Greensboro, NC to play a corporate party. That took all day. It was a relatively painless gig, though the crowd obviously didn't quite get what we were doing--multiple requests for Brick House. One lady yanked on my suit jacket while I was playing to make a request. Not cool!

Sunday, we got up early and drove home. When I got home, I ate, put my stuff away, and it was just about time to go to my evening church gig. That went fine.

Monday morning we were up early to play on CBS Better Mornings. No big deal--I don't think we even bothered to take pictures in front of the weather or anything.

The gig itself was a little rocky. There were some wrong notes floated over the airwaves! After the morning show, we had a rehearsal at the studio. Once again, it was pretty rough--I didn't feel like I was prepared, and I wasn't sure what songs we were working on. I had charts and I thoughts about how I wanted to play things, but I hadn't actually practiced stuff for the rehearsal. Not good!

I got home, exercised, picked up my repaired horns from Lopes, did laundry, vacuumed the house, bought a Christmas tree...

It is now Tuesday morning…woke up in my clothes. Time to go to another rehearsal. Guess what…I'm not sure what we're playing, and I'm not really prepared. There's just too much going on.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Thursday 5 and 7

2011-12-03T01:36:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played a weird, pieced together gig last night at the 10 High. Nick, Pete, and Cobb were off somewhere else playing a non-Yacht Rock gig, so we had Ganesh and Kevin Spencer up front and Daniel Morrison in the back. Ganesh and Kevin were off somewhere else playing a non-Yacht Rock gig until 10:30, so the other five of us (Bencuya, Greg, Daniel, Dannells, and myself) played about half of the first set without them. No big deal, but it was strange, mostly I think because there wasn't the usual volume coming out of the center and right monitors.

Once we got going…it never really got going. The crowd was indifferent and we were indifferent. Dannells played his ass off, though, and I enjoyed playing a few tunes (Kiss You All Over and Lonely Boy) we never touch with Nick and Pete up front.

davidfreemanmusic.net

More Recording

2011-12-01T18:39:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock spent two days in Athens at David Barbe's studio, recording two of our original songs. I'd never done any kind of recording where I sat through the creation of all the parts before. For me, it involved a couple of days of sitting in the control room and about thirty minutes of playing. Normally when I get hired to play on a session, I walk in and the song is waiting on me.

I played flute on one song and sax on the other. Neither solo was really worth a damn. As much as I wanted to summon something really awesome--something spellbinding and hip, I just couldn't do it. We ended up with some pretty safe/average stuff. I don't know if it was because I'd just been sitting there too long or what, but I had no magic. The rest of the song sounds good, though!

I got home Wednesday night/Thursday morning at 1 AM. I was up at 8, headed across town to a studio in Snellville for a 10 AM session. This one was more of the usual thing--the guy asked me to add some "80s tenor" to a couple of songs he's producing for a chick singer. It went quickly. For some reason I was more comfortable on this stuff--I felt a little better about it.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Usual

2011-11-28T12:22:00.001-05:00

I did my two Sunday church gigs. The first one was kind of a special show, with lots of extra stuff while they decorated the church and lit the trees. It was the usual kind of frenetic rehearsal and a pretty good performance. No sweat. The second gig was not too bad until the last song--the leader decided that the beginning verse and refrain should be a cappella (on a really lukewarm gospel song). By the time the band entered, all the energy had gone out of it. We did another verse and refrain (and no tag!) and it ended. It was a really weird way to end the service. So much for that!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Black Friday

2011-11-26T11:19:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played Atlantic Station last night. We were set up on a stage in between the Rosa Mexicano and the movie theatre.

It was kind of a strange gig. We showed up while the band before us was playing--an Atlanta wedding band string of songs: Cupid Shuffle, Electric Slide/I'll Take You There, the PG version of Cee-Lo's Fuck You, and then It's Tricky/Funky Cold Medina/Oye Como Va. It's hard for me to say whether or not they were even any good. Those kind of lowest-common-denominator set lists are such a turn off, and it's not like they were trying to get close to the sounds--it was the same acoustic piano/guitar/bass thing for all of it. I walked away.

While we were setting up, Georgia Tech held their pep rally. That was kind of odd. We kind of worked around Buzz while he was throwing out free t shirts. The cheerleaders and a smaller version of the band were also in attendance. When that finished, the crowd dispersed.

Our sets were pretty good. We had three subs from the Schooner: Kevin Spencer out front, Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums, and Tom Young out front on bass. We got to play a few tunes we'd never touch with Nick and Pete leading--Love is Alive, Lonely Boy, and Thunder Island, so that was cool. Other than that, it was business as usual.

We played two sets beginning at 8 PM…we were cold and there was nothing to do and the crowd seemed confused, so we were finished by 10:15. The advance for the gig said we had to stop no later than 11 PM. I guess that was ok? I was home by 11:15. Not bad!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Turkey Eve

2011-11-24T12:29:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played our now annual Turkey Eve show. This year's event was at the Park Tavern in the room upstairs (not in the tent, which now holds the ice rink!).

We played two shows. I think both went pretty well. The first one was just about sold out; the second was not quite there, but still maybe five hundred people.

I really don't like playing that room very much. Acoustically, it's a big glass shoebox; once the sound starts bouncing around, the only thing you can do to hear yourself is to push your own volume up above the natural reverb. It's funny that it feels the opposite downstairs--there's not enough reflection in the tent, and so I NEVER feel like I'm in the PA.

The stage has also been an issue in the past when we have played this room--the never make it deep enough and instead try and make these worthless one-stage-square wings. When we played our Christmas show last year, all of my gear was crammed up against me, and then in the course of trying to hear myself over the room noise, my sax started feeding back. This time, they gave us the same stage we have downstairs--much better. I was pretty comfortable.

Anyway, I could hear OK, considering the situation. The sound guys were pretty miserable, though. One told me that while we were soundchecking, they pulled all the faders down and couldn't hardly hear any difference. Ouch. Mix that!

We debuted Your Momma Don't Dance tonight, so I brought out my bari. I'll bring it to the Christmas show, and then do it on tenor from there on out.

We're off tonight (no 10 High!), but back on at Atlantic Station on Friday night, 8-11 PM. Come check us out!

Here's a little clip of Rosanna from last Friday's show at the Strand. Worth watching for Pete's dancing.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sundaze

2011-11-21T11:11:00.001-05:00

After the fun of this weekend's stand at The Strand, I was up early Sunday morning.

My first stop was church gig number one. Not too much happened…I don't if it was because I'd played a lot the day before, but it didn't feel like I contributed much. I think part of the problem is that the on stage sound is pretty poor, so it's difficult to cut loose--if I play too much or too loud, I can't hear what else is happening.

When I was putting my clarinet together, the cork in the center joint disintegrated. Great...

While we were on break we were served with a big packet of papers. Beginning next year, we will be considered employees of the church; taxes will be taken! I asked if we'd get health care, but they said we were part timers, so no. We do get background checks and drug tests. It seems like a lot for a hundred bucks a week.

There must be some angle that benefits the church (though they made it sound like this was something they "had" to do). My other church gig isn't doing this; Yacht Rock/Pleaserock isn't doing this, and I make way more money with them. Guess we'll have to wait and see.

When I was packing up, I knocked over my sax stand and messed up my tenor. It still played, but the side of the bell was bent. Ouch and nice going, idiot.

My second stop was at Wonderdog Sounds in Marietta for a recording session for Moontower. Super cool place, super cool music, super cool guys. I played on two tunes--one on soprano and one on alto.

I really suck at recording. I don't know if it's because I'm alone or can't get the headphones quite right or what, but I just can't seem to make it happen by myself. At this session I started fixating on my intonation problems, and it got harder and harder to hear anything else. Then I started screwing up the form and missing landmarks I was trying to hit, and then I had to go in after I'd not quite gotten stuff right and hear it again...I don't know…things I played sounded fine--it wasn't like I played a bunch of wrong notes, but I didn't nail it...it's just difficult for me to kick ass in a studio setting. I feel better about live stuff.

I got to church gig number two a little early, so I fell asleep in my truck for a half hour.

Number two was another non-commital performance by me. It felt like there was no room for me to play, so I laid back a lot and played whole notes. In a related story, my flute playing sucked real bad--another reason to take it easy!

I crashed on the couch.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Seattle to the Strand

2011-11-20T12:03:00.001-05:00

Here's the news:

hey Grand Forks!

Wednesday: Yacht Rock flew to Seattle for a gig for Brooks Running Company. What a cool opportunity! I'd never been that far west before.

We arrived early in the afternoon, checked into our hotel (the W downtown),

and headed out to the Pike Place Market in search of food.

the place where they throw fish

Eventually, we landed at Steelhead Diner. It was really good! I'm not really a fish eater, so I was worried that I might end up with a meal of french fries and water. The menu had a variety of things; I ended up with some kind of pork sandwich.

We went back to our rooms after that. I went and worked out, and then decided to wait in my room for the half hour until we were going to go out.

Thursday: I woke up in my clothes with the lights and the TV on at 5:45 AM local time--I'd fallen asleep and missed going out. Since I was pretty well rested, I went downstairs and got coffee, and then poked around on the internet while watching the sunrise.

When Seattle finally woke up, I made my way over to the Space Needle. Pretty cool. I went up in the first elevator of the day--me and some weird British indie band.

Next, I explored the Experience Music Project museum. Lots of cool stuff about Jimi Hendrix and Nirvana. Mostly a collection of broken guitars! It was neat, though Nirvana never had much of an effect on me--for almost all of the nineties, I was on a pretty exclusive diet of John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins.

MJ glove

strat from Woodstock

a perfectly good Rhodes stuck on there!

Seattle's really hip. I walked down along the waterfront on the way back to the hotel, and I couldn't help but notice how hip the architecture was and how well all the buildings fit together--nothing stuck out, and but none of the buildings was simply a nondescript box. The people were quiet and polite--I didn't notice any obnoxious cell phone conversations on the street. People waited patiently on street corners for the crosswalk signs to change, and when they stepped into traffic, the cars all waited. I liked it--everybody followed the rules and it worked. The entire city felt really well laid out.

I worked out again, showered, warmed up, and met up with everybody in the lobby for the gig.

The event was held at the Fremont Studios--kind of a big soundstage. When we walked in, all of our rented gear was set up and in place--some minor adjustments and we were ready to go! Usually when we do fly dates, we have to wait while everything gets set up (and we end up doing half the work ourselves). Very nice to have it all there.

For food, we had a pork chop, a hunk of salmon, and some weird sort of slaw-like thing. I was so hungry, I even ate the fish.

The gig was pretty good. The crowd was decent, though they ended up so far away from us that it was tough to get any energy from them. We played well, though. Towards the end (around 10:30 PM) I started to get really tired since I'd been up and active all day. That last half hour, I was watching the clock.

We got back to the hotel around midnight. Our lobby call was 4 AM. Ouch.

Friday: from the Atlanta airport, we drove straight to the Strand Theatre in Marietta for the first of a two night stand there. Our equipment arrived around the same time we did.

This one was pretty smooth. The place was packed (530 people-over sold out!), and they were really into it right from the start. We did our usual stuff, and they loved it.

I like playing the Strand a lot, and not just because it's ten minutes from my house. It's a cool little venue and the size of the stage feels right. They don't really have enough of a PA for our show, but we made do. We had good energy from the crowd, and I think everybody was pretty comfortable. Hans came and ran sound for both nights; having him there gave me peace of mind.

Saturday: for our second night, we played Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Dark Side of the Moon, and our friends The REMakes played all of Document. Good stuff! I'd never played Fireplace before; I wonder how I'd overlooked that in the past?

Sgt. Pepper's was good. Paul Poovey played trumpet with us, and we had a good night--the tuning and phrasing were tight.

Dark Side went well. I was hoping I'd have all my stuff memorized so I could walk out front and play, but I never could get it all in my head. I bet I could have played three quarters of it without my charts, but one mistake would have screwed me up--I would have had to play my own stuff from there on. Anyway, I used my charts--probably my best attempt at this stuff ever.

We played Dark Side synced up to The Wizard of Oz. If you've never heard of it, there's a myth that all kinds of things line up. The Strand had a big screen that they lowered. It worked great. Here's a picture of us making noises during On the Run.

I hope we include the Strand in our future plans. It was a really good week for the band.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Trio at the Aquarium

2011-11-16T00:31:00.001-05:00

I had the great pleasure of playing a trio gig at the Aquarium yesterday evening. Easy gig…an hour and a half of music for V.I.P.s. This gig was Tyrone Jackson on keyboard and Kevin Smith on bass.

Here's the audio. Kevin was really playing his butt off:

I hope you'll check it out. Good stuff.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday

2011-11-14T22:55:00.001-05:00

The gigs continue!

Sunday morning was my regular church gig. Not much to report. We had a special guest: steel guitarist Tommy Dodd. Really impressive. I have no idea how that thing works…it's like ten strings, eight pedals, the knee bend thing…plus the nifty seat, the amp, the cart. That thing's a commitment. Sure sounds cool, though.

That being said, I have no idea why he was there. There was no special feature, no big solo, no songs yearning to be caressed by a pedal steel. How about bringing him in on a week when I'm out of town? Odd.

Other than that, it was the usual stuff. Fire drill of a rehearsal, no biggie for the service. We're wearing all black now (before it was jeans and a shirt with a collar). Again, I'm wondering why the change fifteen months into us playing this gig. It seems pretty random. And I hate the all black thing--it's like wearing a tux these days at a wedding gig. It says "we have no style, so we're wearing all black to hide it."

It also says "lint brush?"

Sunday night, Yacht Rock played a benefit at the Capital City Club. This time we were out in the tent on the back patio instead of inside that room. It was pretty dead. The sound guys were in a little over the heads, but we helped them out/took over, and everything worked out fine.

I'm not sure how many people were there, but there wasn't much dancing. Lots of standing around staring at us. It was easy, though, and over at 10!

We've got a couple of big gigs this weekend! Yacht Rock is playing the Strand Theatre in Marietta on Friday night. Saturday night, we are also there, but this time playing all of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Dark Side of the Moon. It should be damn fine. There's a link on our page if you want tickets.

We had the Dark Side rehearsal today (Monday). Following the stoner myth, we are synched up to The Wizard of Oz. I watched it while I wasn't playing. It really looks like they filmed a play--it doesn't look like a movie. Also, the scarecrow is awesome. My favorite part is when he falls over the fence and Dorothy puts the stuffing back in him. He's really good.

davidfreemanmusic.net

House Gig #2 (BACON!)

2011-11-13T13:55:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played another gig at somebody's house; two nights, two houses. This one is the same party we've played the past couple of years (the one where my EWI froze!), in a tent in a guy's backyard in North Druid Hills.

Kip

This year's gig was the best yet. For starters, they had a crew to carry all of our equipment from the driveway, through the garage, and up the steps. Secondly, we had Kip Conner running sound, which meant better quality and less gear to move! Lastly, the stage was significantly larger--no jigsaw puzzle set ups like we've done in the past.

This gig (for me) is also known for its bacon. They order forty(!) pounds of sugary bacon--that's the dessert after everybody's eaten supper. Every year I try (and fail) to eat none. It's too good.

davidfreemanmusic.net

House Gig #1

2011-11-12T13:32:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played a gig last night at a house--a surprise birthday party for a local golf pro. The local golf pro's good friend is Stewart Cink (he of PGA fame), and the party was at Cink's house.

Unbelievable house! With the exception of a house in Buckhead where I once did a solo sax gig, this was the most insanely extravagant house I've ever been inside. Let's just say, does your basement have enough space for a stage?

Here are some pictures (keep in mind that this is all basement!)

Stewart Cink's office

The gig was one of our better performances. Bencuya was back; his solo on Hey Nineteen made my previous night's effort seem really really bad. I was embarrassed just watching him play.

The rest of the band played well. It was a low pressure gig, but nobody blew it off. Good stuff all around.

PS. Stewart Cink is 6 foot 4. Really really tall.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Two Solos!

2011-11-11T12:57:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played the 10 High last night without the one and only Mark Bencuya, who was on vacation. Eric Frampton covered his role. Much like my exciting outing with the Schooner at the Dixie Tavern, some of the keyboard parts were flipped--super cool because I got to play some different parts! It was really fun, and I only sucked real bad occasionally.

I took TWO keyboard solos! One on Hey Nineteen (that's me on rhodes),

Hey Nineteen by David B Freeman

and one on The Biggest Part of Me (me on organ and then saxophone).

The Biggest Part of Me by David B Freeman

Oh well. It was fun anyway. I mean, when else do I get a chance to go for it?

Just for fun, here's my organ part and sax solo on Takin' it to the Streets. It kind of strays from the original:

Takin' it to the Streets by David B Freeman

Fun! Bencuya's back tonight, so we're back to normal. The end of my vacation, too!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Duo Gig!

2011-11-10T01:16:00.000-05:00

Tyrone Jackson and I played a duo gig last night at the Hyatt downtown. Since it was just the two of us, I plopped a Real Book on the music stand in front of us and away we went.

I looked pretty good, but didn't play well. Some of it was that I just didn't have it…I just couldn't get going. I think the bigger issue was that I had a couple of uninspiring reeds. I am listening to the recording as I type this and the sound is fine--sounds like me!--but it was hard work. I had to put to much effort into playing the gig. Sometimes it just flows. Tonight--nope!

Anyway, I settled on a reed that was like a 2x4. I made it through the night, but that reed wore me out. Looks like a trip to the store tomorrow to buy another box.

Here's the audio:

A few thoughts:

1. The first note of El Gaucho is an E, not a G like the book says. I made this mistake the last time I played this tune out the book.

2. Tyrone suggested Half Nelson, a tune I haven't given much thought to about fifteen years! The chords came back to me; the melody did not.

3. I'd never played The Night has a Thousand Eyes. It's hard not hear Coltrane on that one.

4. I had set up my tenor and soprano, but had only played the former. One of the techie dorks came over while were playing Voyage and said, "Are you going to play your soprano? I'm a sax player too. I play soprano, alto, and tenor." Then I kicked him in the teeth. Just kidding. That's the reason I played soprano on Out of Nowhere, though. The techie dork came around again later to see what were playing--I avoided eye contact.

Not bad for a Wednesday night!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Saturday/Sunday

2011-11-07T07:09:00.001-05:00

Yacht Rock played a wedding at the Capital City Club in Brookhaven Saturday night. Weddings can be fun--it can be another gig you play, and there might be half a dozen really cool moments. On the other hand, a wedding reception can drag on forever--you're playing a gig (usually in a four hour block) in a room with poor acoustics in front of an audience who isn't there to see you. It can become a drag really early.

This particular reception was the latter…we pushed on through it, but everybody was checking the clock.

When we started, I noticed that'd left the volume on my amplifier really low, so as a challenge, I backed it down--in fact, I played just about all of the second and third sets with the volume completely off (independent of my signal going to the PA, so it didn't effect what I sounded like in the room…presumably). Even though the volume knob was at zero, I could still hear the sounds in my head--pretty cool.

It was kind of curious that nobody else in the band mentioned my lack of on stage sound. Was it acoustics or indifference?

My two Sunday church gigs were pretty regular. Looking back, I can't think of anything significant about either one. Both sounded good. Easy stuff.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Watts and Watts of Power

2011-11-05T14:33:00.001-04:00

Yacht Rock played the 40 Watt in Athens last night. Another terrific gig!

I think we've got our thing in Athens down. We know how to navigate, where to eat, where the record store is. The crowds are really good now--last night was not as packed as the Georgia Theatre gig, but it was solid--maybe three quarters full. They loved us, we loved them; we played two encores!

The first set went really well for me until the very end. The last tune was Easy Lover, and when we started I noticed that my bell sound didn't have any delay on it. Weird, I thought. Then when I went to the main synth lick, it DID have delay on it. Somehow I've managed to switch the effects routing. I tried to do my best playing the marimba parts on the verse with my left hand while scrolling with my right. Difficult! What I eventually ended up doing was bringing up that synth sound in the patch category and flipping back and forth between the performance (with the keyboard split) and the patch to get through the set.

Shortly into the second set, the batteries on my EWI went down, and so I stole the four AA batteries from my sax transmitters to power it (it happened in Hey Nineteen, so I played my opening lick and then had two verses/choruses to get the thing back up and running before the solo!). I spent the remainder of the gig trying to mentally plan if I needed batteries in a saxophone where they would come from. This came true on Caribbean Queen--I play EWI on the intro, and then I had the first verse to steal batteries from my MIDI transmitter (also AA batteries), stick them in my tenor, and be ready to play at the chorus on the keyboard. It's a lot to think about.

Hopefully my gear will settle down tonight.

We had a really good time! The sound at the 40 Watt is really good. I wish they were all like that.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Nothing too Unusual

2011-11-04T12:10:00.001-04:00

Fully recovered from last week's excitement, Yacht Rock returned (most of us) to the 10 High for our usual Thursday night gig. Nick is still on vacation and Dannells is still in California.

Nothing too unusual about this one. We were a little worried because the wet weather had knocked out power in a few spots around town, but things were fine and the crowd was decent.

Mark Cobb was on fire. I miss Dannells.

davidfreemanmusic.net

November 2 Quartet

2011-11-03T02:33:00.002-04:00

I had the pleasure of playing a nice quartet gig at CNN Center Wednesday night. The band this time was Louis Heriveaux on keyboard, Kevin Smith on bass, and Marlon Patton on drums. Great playing! It was a real pleasure to have these guys play with me--each one has a strong personality on his instrument. There were lots of creative moments…and I tried to keep up!

Here's audio from the gig:

For the most part, we played to an empty room (it was more like a canyon). The first set was supposed to be a cocktail hour, so the crowd was off to the side. The second set was a buffet dinner, but even then it was only a couple of hundred people spread out. It didn't feel like much.

They ignored us; we ignored them. A lady who got on the elevator with me after the gig asked where I was playing, and her friend said "He was playing the whole night!" The first lady replied, "I must have missed it." Yep.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Northeast Tour/The Unhappy Van/Snow Going

2011-11-01T12:19:00.002-04:00

Yacht Rock returned to Atlanta after a tour up to the northeast. Along the way we dealt with technical difficulties, tension conventions, and the silliness of being in a van all day.

Wednesday: we met up at the office, loaded the van and headed to North Carolina. Our first gig was in Greensboro (or as we came to find out, Greensboring) at the Blind Tiger. The room looked great; I think the capacity was something like four hundred. The PA was bigger than the Variety Playhouse's (capacity of 1,100). The stage was a good size.

So…guess how many people showed up? Maybe twenty over the course of the entire evening. Actually, make that nineteen plus a dog. Ouch!

the last cigarette machine in the universe

From what I understood, the Blind Tiger used to be located in the midst of a bar scene with lots of foot traffic, but they moved to this bigger/better location. Plus, it was Wednesday night…anyway, not the most exciting gig of our lives (though everybody held it together and played well when we could have blown it off).

Thursday: we got up and drove to Washington DC to play at the Mason Inn.

Just south of Richmond (in Petersburg), we stopped at a BBQ joint called Saucy's that had been constructed out of a steel shipping container. It was crazy good (just for the record: me=Memphis guy, so pork or chicken please, and none of that North Carolina vinegar BS). I had a third of a rack of ribs. Dannells did too. It turns out that the guys who run/own it are musicians too, so we hung out for a minute and traded stories. The ribs were so good, I licked the sauce out of the aluminum foil when I was finished.

We were supposed to play here last time (when it was called the Gin and Tonic), but they were renovating so we were moved to Saloun (you can read about that here). Just like last time, we snagged a parking spot right outside the front door. Nice.

That was the last sane thing that happened.

We walked in, and immediately noticed that they'd just painted the stage, maybe the night before, and it was still a bit sticky (and wet in some places!). Hmm. We let it dry for another hour, then came back and loaded in. Still sticky.

I was not able to set up much because the guy with the PA (we'll call him Vincent) showed up with his PA to set up. Vincent set up gear like the gig was happening in twelve hours instead of three. I'm not sure if he was trying to be thorough, or maybe he'd only set it up once before, but he was not swift. Mentally, I murdered him at a much quicker pace.

Vincent, steadily impeding progress

my gear, not on the stage

hurry up Vincent!

So, the gig was supposed to start at 9:30 PM. Vincent started loading in at 6…at 9 he still hadn't run microphone lines. At 9:40 we were crammed on stage (Cobb in the corner, Greg in front of him, Bencuya next to me, Dannells in front of us--facing me--and Nick and Ganesh back to back with him). Nick finally flipped out on Vincent at 9:55. Ten minutes later (after Nick had pushed Vincent out of the way and taken over the line check/level set) we were up and running.

This gig went great. It was super loud and the set up was totally weird, but people loved it and we played well. The capacity of the room was somewhere above two hundred, but the door guys (we'll call them security) kept sending people in. They admitted later that there were over four hundred people in there. Some of them were insanely hot women.

Cool! Awesome gig! We loaded out like there was some kind of time limit, with cases on the sidewalk and gear coming out one piece at a time. At one point I was loading the back of the van while a drunk guy was peeing on the street-side front corner of the trailer. I'll leave that to your imagination--no photos.

We drove off into Maryland to spend the night and nearly hit a deer that was standing in the middle of the highway.

Friday: we piled into the van and drove to New York City for a gig at Brooklyn's Knitting Factory. Kind of a big deal…we got to the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn early in the afternoon, parked the van under the BQE in an unattended lot, and wandered off to find pizza (Dannells' choice). We ended up at some hipster pizza place. The pizza was ok. It did get great reviews on Yelp!

After a quick check on the van, we did another loop through the neighborhood. It was a hipster paradise.

We loaded in, set up, soundchecked. Every club should be like this! They had a direct hallway from the room to the street, so no dragging gear through the crowd. Nice. The whole place was like a nicer, slightly larger version of Smith's Olde Bar (without the stairs).

After some food, we got dressed and played. I think this might have been one of our best gigs ever. Everybody played well. Everything sounded good. We were something like eleven people shy of selling out the club. Hell yeah!

Nick on bass!

Here's a taste (sax solos at 2:36 and 3:23):

I Can't Go for That by David B Freeman

We finished right at 11:30 PM. The room was cleared, we loaded out (again in record time), and the DJ began (and presumably the room filled again, but we were long gone). We got a spot on the street right in front, so we loaded the everything in the trailer and walked across the street to the Fat Sow to celebrate. We drank, we ate (more insanely good BBQ). Dannells got crazy.

ordering whiskey

the execusion

Back to the van! We grabbed our suitcases (Dear van, please be here tomorrow with all of your doors and windows intact, and a trailer still attached to your hitch) and headed to our hotel across Brooklyn.

Saturday: we woke up around noon to heavy, wet snow falling. Uh oh. As quickly as we could, we cabbed/car'ed it back to the van to begin making our way to Massachusetts for the big private gig that was supposed to fund the bulk of this tour.

Video!

We got in the van and headed north out of the city. At our first pit stop for gas, urine, and coffee, the van would not restart. Uh oh. We sat there for about ten minutes, and then it started. Back in business!

The snow got heavier and the roads got worse. In the NYC suburbs, Nick made the call to the client to inform him that we would not be able to make it. We got off the interstate at Bedford, NY. The van got stuck in the snow. We got unstuck, tried to get up the entrance ramp southbound, and got stuck. We backed up and headed off on a secondary road, where we once again got stuck. We backed down to a gas station and waited it out for a few hours (the whole time with the engine running out of fear that it might never start again).

At dusk, the decision was made to try it again. We headed off on the same road and made it over the first hump. About a mile down the road, we got stuck on an incline in a curve. Traffic at this spot (probably a little two lane country road in real life) was crazy--some people blew past us with no problems; some got stuck and then got unstuck. Some nearly slid into us; some slid into the ditch. We tried to pay off private snowplowers with cash, but nobody would do much to help us. Eventually we got unstuck; made it down the street a little bit and got stuck again. Firetrucks blew past us. Ambulances streaked by. We got unstuck again. We made it another mile or two, then got stuck. We got unstuck and trudged on, only to take a wrong turn! Uh oh. Finally, the interstate! Yay! I think it took us about six hours to go five miles.

The main roads weren't too bad, so we made our way back to Manhattan and unloaded Mark Cobb, Nick, and his wife, Elliott in Tribeca.

The remaining five of us slept in Secaucus, NJ. None slept harder than our heroic driver Greg Lee.

Sunday: we woke to clear skies and melting snow. The van would not start--it appeared that we might have run out of gas (perhaps the gauge wasn't working?). Ganesh and I walked to a gas station and purchased a can and three gallons worth of fuel. We got back, started the van, and away we went!

First order of business: get Mark Dannells to the Newark airport. Done. The remaining four of us (Mark Bencuya, Greg Lee, Ganesh, and myself drove to Charlotte (with a lunch/fuel stop south of Baltimore). The van began behaving normally. We even shut it off! How about that!

By Sunday night we were going insane. At one point Greg was expounding on the virtues of trail mix ("M & Ms…peanuts…raisins…genius!").

Monday: we did the four hour trip to Atlanta without any problems. A quick stop at the office to unload gear, and we went our separate ways.

davidfreemanmusic.net

King of Pops

2011-10-25T07:18:00.001-04:00

Please Pleaserock Me (the Yacht Rock guys playing the Beatles) played a set of music at the King of Pops Field Day. I guess it was a show of appreciation for KoP fans. The event was in the backyard of the Masquerade (who knew there was such a thing?).

The venue was kind of cool…easy load in right off the street, big stage, room for lots of people.

Our set was really flat. It surely didn't help that it was Sunday night right after the sun had gone down, or the massive amount of dead air in between us and the band before (the Mike Geier/Monkey Zuma thing was a bust). We'd also spent all of our energy the previous two nights. Fortunately, it was only a forty-five minute set, most of which I spent taking pictures and playing percussion. No big deal. I was home and asleep on the couch at the usual time!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sellouts

2011-10-23T16:05:00.001-04:00

Friday, Yacht Rock traveled to Nashville to play the Mercy Lounge. This has become somewhat of a regular gig for us. It's nicely predictable--we know how to get there, where to eat, what the sound will be like. The sound guys no longer treat us like we're morons--they actually seem happy to see us!

The Mercy Lounge gig sold out. Yay! Second time we've done that. They really pack 'em in there, too, so it feels like a lot of people (even though it's just a couple of hundred).

I sat down to play the first song of the night (Greatest American Hero), and had no sound coming out of my rig. SHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT! Multiple small heart attacks. I tried to be systematic in my thinking. Keyboards have power, speaker has power, rack has power…what the hell? Then I noticed that my mixer had no power. Great…no mixer and we'd have to stop and run separate lines and DIs for each keyboard and the EWI, and then send it through the monitor. I checked the connection on the back of the mixer, and it was good. When I smacked the transformer in my rack, I bumped the plug and the power came back. It turns out that the plug had worked its way ever so slightly out of the power strip. I plugged it back in and away we went.

The adrenaline and all that meant that I did not play particularly well for the first few songs. My head was a little messed up for a while. I finally settled down and things were fine.

The Mercy is LOUD. Brutally loud. I wore ear plugs--I didn't enjoy the gig as much, but my ears were better for it. There's something about that stage (resonating low end notes, it seems to me), that makes the stage sound really loud.

Before we hit the stage, we went and checked out a studio in Nashville where we might do some recording of our originals. Really cool old-school equipment: Chet Atkins' personal mixing console from the 70s, a big 24 track 2 inch tape machine, massive clear Vistalite drum kit, B 3, nice Wurly, a 50s Les Paul that Dannells drooled on. It could be cool. The guy (Dave Cobb) talked to us…lots of recording stuff that was over my head.

Saturday, we rolled back into Atlanta early in the afternoon and went to the Variety Playhouse for the big Thriller/Purple Rain show. This show also sold out. Holy cow! We sold out the Variety!

I did pretty well on this stuff. It really was our first attempt to play Purple Rain (the album) all the way through without stopping. We made it with a few small hiccups. My only cuss-out-loud disaster was that I forgot to play a double chorus in Baby I'm a Star. Other than that, I was pretty solid.

We came back out and played Thriller in storm trooper costumes. I mean, why not?

Thriller was a little rougher for me. Maybe it was because I devoted so much time and energy to Purple Rain; maybe I just couldn't concentrate for that long. I had some flubs along the way. The only real thing that I bit the dust on was Lady in My Life. Bencuya and I realized that we'd left a pretty essential synth part out. I tried to learn it after soundcheck. When we got to that song, I played the part I'd learned pretty well (I got most of it), but the pads that I was supposed to play along with it? No way. I couldn't get my hands to do it. Dropped the pad, played the synth line. Next year, we probably need to restructure that tune between me and Bencuya so that we handle it better.

Since it is Yacht Rock, we had to put a sax solo in there…I walked out front, big adrenaline rush, and I proceed to play massive amounts of bullshit (with delay). Bad, bad, bad. Not wrong notes, bad, but I couldn't connect any ideas…it was diarrhea of the horn.

So…that sucked. The rest of the gig was fine. Our encore was Man in the Mirror…just me and Nick on the intro. I wondered a few weeks ago if I would choke the way I did on Sailing a few years back (that was a fine blog entry). No problems this year.

One cool thing we had this year was a twenty-four person choir. It ended up that they were right next to me, but I honestly never knew they were there. The sound was such (and I was so glued to to what was happening instrumentally) that I never gave them a thought. I bet it sounded good, though.

Bencuya and I were set up in the middle of the stage--the choir outside of me, Mark Cobb outside of him. I was really looking forward to this set up because we'd be able to hear each other well, and honestly I wanted to prove to him that I could play this stuff! I think I hung in there really well.

Putting Cobb in the corner (nobody puts Cobb in a corner!) made it hard to hear him clearly, and I couldn't make any eye contact with him at all. Sometimes when the songs were just loops and a little drums, I really had to hang onto every little thing to make sure I was in time.

Anyway…great gig! I'm getting the hang of it!

Special thanks to Nick, Pete, Esther, and Kristen for putting this show together--it made it really easy for the rest of us to just show up and play.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Thriller/Purple Rain Preparations

2011-10-21T10:00:00.002-04:00

It's been a rough month…lots of gigs and lots of rehearsals, all culminating in this weekend's big Thriller/Purple Rain show at the Variety Playhouse. This week began with rehearsals Monday morning and Tuesday night. Since then I have been working on my parts and tweaking sounds to the point of insanity, sleeping in my clothes and trying to work the knot out of my shoulder. After this, I don't want to hear any synthesizers for a while.

I think we're ready, though! I'm certainly sick of practicing--let's play the thing!

Thursday night was the 10 High. It was a really dragging gig. Maybe it was the setlist, or maybe it was the fact that our minds have been elsewhere, but we weren't particularly into it, and the whole thing kind of wandered around until we finished the last song. The crowd seemed really ambivalent too, but there were enough people to make it a good night money-wise.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday/Monday

2011-10-18T01:48:00.001-04:00

I rolled into my church gig this morning. After the usual rehearsal, they started passing out music for the concert tonight. Huh? The band leader had mentioned a few MONTHS ago playing on some Sunday night show…I guess tonight's the night! The only problem was that I had a gig already scheduled for that night. There'd never been a single email with a date, a time…nothing. I guess that started talking about it last Sunday when I wasn't there and never got around to saying anything to me about it. Nice.

Anyway…I got a sub to cover it. Before I left, I took a quick glance through the book and noticed that all the charts were for alto, not tenor. Good thing I'd looked--they never have me play alto at this gig. I would have sent a tenor sub.

What a mess!

My gig was a little jazz trio thing--me, Tyrone Jackson, and Kevin Smith. We were supposed to be down at the Omni at 4:30 for a 5:30 start. Unfortunately, the Falcons game let out after 4…traffic was insanely bad. Kevin and I finally got in the room around 5:15. We still managed to be ready for the opening of the doors, but we were both pretty fried from the stress of the gridlock.

The gig was two hours. The first set ended up being a handful of Monk tunes and a few other standards. The second set was originals. I think we all played really well; listening to it today, I'm pleased with my performance.

Here's the audio:

Monday morning was a rehearsal for the big show coming up at the end of the week. Yacht Rock played through all of Purple Rain. I was pumped, feeling really good about it. We then played Thriller, and I sucked real bad. More practice needed!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Jazzoo 2011

2011-10-16T13:11:00.002-04:00

Yacht Rock played at Jazzoo last night. We were at the zoo. I walked around before we started. It appeared to be jazz free.

Actually, that's not true. I heard a really bad trio parked right at the front entrance, and I ran into Randy Hunter who had been there playing with Kayla Taylor earlier in the evening, and Grant Green Jr was there.

I don't have any good stories about this gig, so how about this: I played about twenty gigs with Kayla Taylor a few years ago, and she used to get on me for playing too many notes in my solos. "I bet you fuck like that, too. Just like a jackhammer" she once said to me.

Back to Yacht Rock…we played two sets, 9-11 PM. While we were searching for the jazz in the zoo, we sampled lots and lots of good (free) food. Yeah! It sure beat the Boston Market stuff that was in our dressing room.

Our gig was incredibly loud…just insanely loud, and it seemed like it got louder later in the evening.

I played sax on one song in the first set and two in the second. The other twenty songs were keyboard and EWI.

We started the last song of the night and the cops came to shut us down (noise ordinance). They shut off the main speakers and left the monitors on for us to finish, and nobody on stage could tell the difference. It was that loud. It hurt.

Load out was easy and I was home at midnight. Can't beat that!

davidfreemanmusic.net

10 High

2011-10-14T12:17:00.004-04:00

Yacht Rock played the 10 High last night. Not much to speak of…we ripped through our usual tunes at brisk tempi. Mark Cobb was playing drums last night with particular fire (and a strange mullet--see the above picture). We were playing very well. Dannells in on a good streak right now.

I don't know why I'd never done it before, but last night I made a keyboard split and added the flugelhorn part in Lovely Day. I've always played the whole thing on strings…I guess it dawned on me that I could put the horn part down at the bottom of the synth and still have enough room to play the string part. Anyway, I was very pleased with myself for doing that.

In the first set, I failed to turn off the transmitter on my tenor microphone, and when I tried to take an alto solo, the signals cancelled each other out. That was stupid. I know that when the mic isn't working I should stop and fix it (nobody's hearing what I'm doing anyway), but I can never bring myself to do it. I'm always hoping that somehow it will fix itself. Dumb mistake.

In the second set, my EWI ran out of batteries, and I had to take all the batteries out of both sax microphone transmitters to get through the gig. When I then had to play sax, I took the batteries back out and put them on the horn I was playing. Confusing? Way too much thinking. Time to swap out all my batteries so I don't have to do this for a while.

On the second to last tune, we paused to work out a problem with the percussion.

When the gig ended I was happy to get away from them.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Lake Oconee

2011-10-13T16:31:00.000-04:00

Yacht Rock played some kind of corporate party at Lake Oconee last night. Easy, easy gig. We played two sets between 7 and 10 PM, and then the noise ordinance prohibited anything further. Yay! The best part is that we spent the night at the Ritz. Can't go wrong there!

We played this gig last year (you can read about it here). This time we set up where we ended up last year (covered), which was good because just like last year, there were passing showers. It seemed like most of the people were off to our right at the bar and maybe couldn't hear us, but there were a fair number of people sitting at tables watching us.

Dannells played great stuff, and very different from his usual ideas.

The place where Greg's bass cabinet was really liked A=440, and his side of the stage rang the whole night like there was some kind of feedback. On our side, it sounded like the bass wasn't even on. Weird acoustics.

We rolled back into town this morning, ate a really good breakfast at some cat place down the street from the office,

and went straight into rehearsals for next week's Thriller/Purple Rain show. I think it went pretty well--my stuff worked. Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I was up til 5 AM working on my keyboard parts, and I think the practice helped more than I thought it would. Now I have this weekend to really get comfortable with it--the show's right around the corner!

10 High tonight if you want to come out…

davidfreemanmusic.net

I Was Thinkin' That

2011-10-11T02:52:00.000-04:00

I played a trio gig for Arby's last night. Imagine a hotel ballroom that smelled like fast food, occupied by five hundred people trying to talk over each other, and me.

The gig was pretty good; it was my usual guys: Tyrone Jackson and Kevin Smith. It didn't seem like we really clicked until about three hours into the gig. Not that we weren't trying, but around the last four songs it felt like we'd all gotten comfortable (finally!)--the groove got better, and the pacing of the solos was a bit more relaxed.

Here's the audio. If you listen to the first tune (Wheeler) and the last tune (Monk's Dream), and then listen to something in the middle (Beth Ann), you can maybe get an idea of how loud the crowd was. It was like jazz with a sledgehammer.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Wilmington, NC

2011-10-09T17:39:00.000-04:00

After my Friday night meltdown, I had just a few hours to sober up and head to the airport. I picked Nick up at 5:30 AM (ouch) and met up with everybody for a flight to North Carolina for a gig.

Most of the day was pretty foggy. Fortunately, we got there pretty early, checked into our rooms, and crashed. By the time we left for the venue, I felt pretty good! We each had a room to ourselves. Check mine out.

Yacht Rock played a wedding reception in an old church that had been converted into an event facility. It was a really pretty room. Sound-wise, maybe not so great, but it was cool looking.

I had my gear, so I was happy. I finally played I'd Really Love to See You Tonight without any mistakes.

Bencuya deals with crappy gear

The only blemish on the evening was that Nick got food poisoning and missed about half the gig. Even after he'd puked his guts out a couple of times, he was still too beaten up to do anything more than wait for the gig to end.

Before the third set, we all went outside and watched the fireworks.

Nice gig! We flew back to Atlanta the next day. I slept the whole way.

davidfreemanmusic.net

How to Play When You're Drunk

2011-10-08T01:16:00.002-04:00

Hell if I know. This last Park Tavern gig was a fairly miserable experience. Why?

1. All of my gear is in North Carolina for a wedding tomorrow night, so I had to borrow gear to cover this gig. I found about borrowing gear a week ago. It did not go well. The stuff I borrowed was not really compatible with this gig. I could go into the details of it, but why bother.

2. I was drunk.

So yeah, I played like shit. I drank a lot of beer before we got on stage. My gear sounded bad coming through my speaker. It was uninspiring to say the least. I didn't enjoy it. I watched my watch click down til 11 PM. It certainly didn't help to hear what I perceived to be a sarcastic comment from a friend of the band. I know I didn't have anything to offer tonight, but I sure as fucking hell don't need to hear about it from anybody outside of the band. I'm not even sure if I need to hear it from anyone inside the band. I know when I'm not playing well, and when it sounds like shit. I sit closer to the fucking speaker than you do, and I know way better than you do what my parts are supposed to sound like.

Sorry if it sucked for you. It fucking sucked for me, too.

davidfreemanmusic.net

More Two-fers

2011-10-07T13:02:00.000-04:00

Wow! Another night with two gigs (and both were indoors!)!

My first gig was a little trio gig at the Marriott downtown. This one came up at the last minute--it became an "official" gig (I received a contract) about twenty-four hours before the gig. Because of this, I wasn't able to get Tyrone or Kevin on the gig. Tyrone was playing a gig with Joe Gransden and Kevin was in the room next to me playing with Brent Runnells. This gave me the opportunity to check out some different guys--I hired Nick Rosen on piano and Nadav Spiegelman on bass. Good stuff! All three of us played well. We did a set of tunes by other people before we tackled some of my songs.

Here are mp3s from the gig:

My second gig was the regular Yacht Rock gig at the 10 High. This one was fun! Ganesh played great--he had a lot of energy that really made the gig feel easy.

The second set was a little silly. There might have been alcohol involved. Happy birthday to Mark Bencuya!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Both sides of 5 AM

2011-10-03T15:05:00.002-04:00

Man, what a crazy weekend!

Friday: huge show in Athens at the Georgia Theatre. Going into it, I wondered how were going to make out at the Theatre. Our previous best gig in Athens was at the 40 Watt, where I think there were something like 400 people in attendance. The Georgia Theatre is roughly equivalent to the Variety Playhouse here in Athens, and I thought if we had 400 people at the Variety, it would look really thin.

No problem: we sold out the Georgia Theatre. What an awesome venue! Check it out:

green room

The only problem was that I didn't play very well. I guess the sound was kind of bugging me--I couldn't get comfortable. It certainly didn't help that the guitar was over my right shoulder, but the bigger issue to me was that the stage sound was loud and washy, but I couldn't pinpoint what the particular sounds were--just a big wave is something that I had to play against. Sometimes my amp was too loud; sometimes it was too quiet. I couldn't find a balance against everything else on stage. On top of all that, I just had a bunch of brain farts--like I'd play the same part on every chorus of a song, but the third time through the chorus, I couldn't remember thing I'd played on the previous to choruses. Why?

The entire gig was recorded to a 24 track Pro Tools rig (greeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaat), so I'll hear myself screw up with great frequency at some point down the road.

Mark Bencuya took an AWESOME solo on I Want to be Your Lover, and Mark Dannells ripped a really great solo on Easy Lover.

The crowd was awesome. We played two encores.

We drove back after the show. By the time I'd gotten home and emptied my equipment from my truck, packed for Saturday, and gotten into bed it was 5 AM.

Saturday afternoon: I played a gig with a group in Stockbridge. Going into it, I was pretty excited because it was a jazz gig with a different group of guys playing cool tunes--stuff like Snakes (Marcus Miller) and Hang Up Your Hang Ups (Herbie Hancock). Monday night we slogged through a three hour rehearsal--only the drummer and myself were really prepared to play. The guitarist was two and a half hours late to the rehearsal, and then didn't know the stuff at all. Not impressive!

The gig was for a festival in Stockbridge--one of those portable stages in a park. We were playing from 12:40-1:20 PM. Most of the band got there around noon.

A word about the sound man: INCOMPETENT.

When we were setting up, I showed the sound man my wired clip on mic (a Shure Beta 98 H/C, if you're wondering). It plugs into an XLR cable. It needs phantom power. I told the sound man "I brought my mic. It needs phantom power." He said, "OK."

From his front of house mixing position, he had me play so he could set the level. The gain kept coming up ("I'm not getting it" he said). So then he opened up the monitor in front of me all the way ("Are you getting it?" he said). Then he said, "Oh yeah! The phantom power!" and he hit the phantom power button. It sounded like a nuclear explosion and two trains colliding all at once. Like, 180 decibels of ice picks into my ears, and it lasted a solid four or five seconds. Wow. That was really dumb.

The sound on stage was really bad (even after that, amazingly enough). Everything coming out of the monitors sounded like a cell phone video of a rock concert. Loud, brittle, distorted--you get the idea.

Aside from that…um. Remember how I was saying that our set was from 12:40-1:20? The guitarist finally showed up at 1:10 PM, walking to the stage like he was going into a convenience store. So guess what we did from 12:40-1:10? We stood on stage and waited. And waited. And waited. Thankfully there was no crowd, which limited the embarrassment.

waiting for the guitarist

Once the guitarist plugged in, we were off. First tune (Hang Up Your Hang Ups) starts with the guitar riff. Did he know it? Did he know that he did not know it? Did he care? I would say NO to all three questions. That was pretty lame. We went on with it; the rest of the band was fine. The leader had laid out a plan of who was soloing on which tune; that went out the window pretty quickly.

The rest of the gig followed in much the same fashion. I probably wouldn't have been annoyed if we hadn't spent all that time at rehearsal working out the forms of the tunes. It was kind of a free-for-all jam situation.

The following bands were stacked up next to stage because we went so late (the guitarist for the next band arrived before the guitarist for our band--ouch!). Some guy jumped up and began playing an acoustic set before I'd even gotten my horns off the stage.

I had enough time to drive back to home, grab my gear, eat lunch, and head out the door to my next gig.

Saturday night: I played with the Yacht Rock Schooner (along with Mark Bencuya and Greg Lee). We played the Vinings Jubilee--basically in the center of a shopping center/restaurant complex, there's a spot where the set up bands to play for weekend entertainment.

It was cold. The wind was bad all day, but once the sun went down, it was even worse. My hands hurt and my horns were ice cold. Thankfully, I was wearing a suit. One of the guys just had a short sleeve shirt on.

The sound man complained to me that my electronics were noisy. Kind of confusing, since the same signal was going through my amp, and I wasn't hearing any of that. He seemed pretty insistent that it wasn't HIS equipment with the problem.

The gig went well, though. We were loved. The 10:30 curfew was welcomed!

Sunday morning: one day later, I got UP at 5 AM, this time to play the Brookhaven half-marathon with the Yacht Rock Revue. Same cold, same wind. It was tough.

We sang the National Anthem. I think I messed up my part a little.

The announcer called us "the Yacht Club Revue." Twice. Even though it was on his script as "the Yacht Rock Revue." Here's to stupidity!

The gig went well. The sound on stage was really good. My hands hurt and my horns were ice cold. The synth buildup in Lido? Couldn't do it. My hands couldn't play that fast.

I went home and went straight to bed (around noon). I got up at 2 PM, ate, and left for my next gig.

Sunday night: Yacht Rock played a wedding reception at The Garden at Great Oaks in Roswell. Pretty nice place, though not really set up well for loading in equipment and food (and guests). How about paving the driveway?

Right off the bat we confronted by the manager of the facility, an evil old woman named Joi. She was not interested in helping us in any way--it seemed like we were in for a long night of hell with her.

Here's a review somebody found on Yelp (posted two weeks ago!):

Having worked in the Hospitality Industry for 15 years I tend to look the other way and keep my mouth shut. However, in this instance I cannot do so. Party Planners, Brides, Grooms, Guests BEWARE! While on the surface the Gardens At Great Oaks appears to be a beautiful place to host your event there is an evil and dark presence at this facility that will undoubtedly bring a dark cloud to your day. The presence goes by the name of Joi and she is the "manager" of the event facility. In my 15 years in the industry I have never encountered an individual with so much hate and ill will towards people in general. It was if just the thought of individuals having a good time was enough to throw this woman off the deep end. Aside from the fact that she looks like she has been sewn together with missing parts and her wardrobe is akin to an afghan throw she really is just a miserable human being. I witnessed this woman yell at guests, slap a young woman, and throw a case of wine at someone who worked for her. Her ability to "manage" an event does not exist. Every request that we had from when and where things were to be served, to when the bar would open was not met. On top of that, at the end of the evening the "facility" was to provide a limo for our guests back to the hotel and when the limo had not arrived for some 45 minutes Joi explained that we could "just take a cab". Really just take a cab? You are going to say that to a bride and groom? Top that with the fact that Joi would not allow us to keep the food in the fridge overnight, in fact her response to that was you can pick it up on Wednesday afternoon. Mind you this was a Saturday? Do not take any recommendations from this woman with respect to her caterer or any other recommendations for that matter. At the end of the evening we were to have a bunch of left over food which had all been pilfered by Joi, the caterer and the helpers. When we arrived in the kitchen to retrieve our food (since we did not want to leave it there till Wednesday) we were told that it was for the "crew". The nightmare that this woman brings to this place is enough for anyone to stay clear. I have received a warmer welcome at the DMV then this woman could provide. Shame on you Joi! Shame on you for what you did and what you do to people. You make celebrations "Joi-less"!

Wow!

Something changed between us and Joi, though. She went from the wicked witch to our best buddy. We'll know what triggered it, but all of the sudden she was there to hook us up with anything we needed.

The wedding reception was outdoors for us. Very cold, though not as windy. Usual stuff for me: hands hurt, horns cold. I played ok.

I got home just before midnight. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

davidfreemanmusic.net

No Sub Night

2011-09-30T11:37:00.001-04:00

The Yacht Rock Revue played our usual Thursday night extravaganza at the 10 High. This week featured the regular band! No subs.

On some of our gigs, having the regular band there can be a hindrance--we're comfortable enough with each other that the silly jokes come early and often. The 10 High is the worst place for this--there's not enough of an incentive to behave. We were really good last night. Not to say we weren't messing around, but the funny stuff didn't overshadow the music making.

Going into the gig, I was really tired. Beth and I went to see Wilco Wednesday night; when I got home, I took my Nord apart in an attempt to fix what I thought was a problem with the mono output jack--I got the whole thing in pieces, couldn't find anything, put it back together, and then only the bottom third of the keyboard worked, so I had to take it apart again and find the ribbon cable that had come unplugged. Put it back together but it still wasn't fixed. Once I'd sort of given up on that (I used the headphone jack for sound as temporary fix), I moved on to finishing learning Lady (You Bring Me Up) by the Commodores. My responsibility was strings and horns. It turned out to be really really really complicated. Damn you Lionel Richie!

I got in bed at 5 AM. My alarm went off at 8:30 AM. I was at the rehearsal space by 9:45 AM. We played through our Lady, our two completed originals, Take Me with You and Baby Be Mine (for the upcoming Purple Rain/Thriller gig). I was hanging on to Lady by my fingertips. The mono jack on the Nord was still not working.

When I got home, I ate lunch and got Jack off the bus. Then I set up my stuff and practiced Lady for a couple of hours--slowly, just trying to get the flow of the parts. I also discovered that the Nord problem was a bad cable--because I was using a TRS to XLR cable, I was able to hear sound sometimes because of the ring (the R in TRS), and that's why I could use the stereo output of the headphone jack successfully. Duh!

So yeah, Lady for like three hours straight. I finally got the hang of it. Still on three hours sleep.

I got the gig and couldn't wait to go home and go to bed. Once we got started, though, I was having fun and was wide awake. In fact, most of the first set was about the best I've ever played! After each of the first few songs, I thought "Wow, I haven't messed up yet!"

Without any notice, we played our two originals on the gig, and they both went over really well. What a coup! The second song, Good Thing, got a particularly good response. Pretty cool!

Lady went well, but I was again holding on for dear life. I need about eight or ten more gigs with it before it will be comfortable.

At the end of the gig, it dawned on me that I'd set up my tenor but never played it. I only played alto on three songs, and flute on one. I don't mind though, because we did some different songs than we've been playing with the subs.

Great gig!

Tonight we're playing the Georgia Theatre in Athens. How cool is that?!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sweetwater Brewery

2011-09-28T10:51:00.003-04:00

Yacht Rock played a party at Sweetwater Brewery for some lawyer. It was a snoozer of a gig.

I never understand this plan: food and the bar inside, band outside. Nobody goes outside (see the above picture from our first set)! Oh well, the weather was nice, and we ended at 9:30. Can't beat that! That power for the entire street went out shortly after that, ensuring that there would be no overtime. It did make the load out a real pain in the butt, though.

The next couple of days are so busy, I may fall over dead. Stay tuned. You'll be the first to know.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Math Problem

2011-09-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

Here's a math problem:

Freeman drives 50 minutes to a three hour rehearsal in the drummer's garage, then back home again in 50 minutes, all for a forty minute gig an hour from home on Saturday afternoon.

The gig pays $75. What the hell?

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sea Island

2011-09-26T08:45:00.001-04:00

Mark Dannells on the run

Yacht Rock played a wedding on Sea Island on the Georgia coast.

We drove all afternoon and showed up on time (5:30 PM). In the midst of setting up, we were informed that the guests were due to arrive shortly. Evidently no one had bothered to fill us in on all of the wedding details, so we were left to interpret things like this (copied from the itinerary):

745pm: All Quiet

8pm: Guests Arrive (ceremony off site at St. Simons Presbyterian Church at 630pm)

Father of the Bride will do a welcome when wedding party & bride/groom arrive

Bride and Groom will be introduced

730pm - 1^st Dance: Love Will Keep Us Together (2min on ipod)

Father/Daughter and Mother/Son: Dancing in the Moonlight (2min on ipod)

(play 90 min set)

Impressive? Dancing to the first dance before you arrive at the venue? Or is that supposed to 8:30 first dance? Or is that supposed to be 6:45 all quiet, 7 PM guests arrive?

It turned out that it was 6:45 all quiet, 7 PM guests. So…no soundcheck, which I guess is no big deal.

my view from the stage

We ate and changed and then someone came and got us--"They're expecting y'all now." We got out there and stood around for 10-15 minutes. Again, no big deal, but we went racing out there for nothing. Indigestion?

The first set was a drag--low energy blahs from the crowd and (therefore) the band. Did I mention we were forbidden to drink during the first set?

The second set was better, but still only marginally more exciting than the van ride.

After the gig we were issued keys and directions for our accommodations. The client/agent/somebody had reserved rooms for us at the Queens Court Motel, which is a bug infested shit hole on St. Simons Island. At one point, I think this place was maybe a quaint little place where your parents stayed when they were dating in the 60s, but now it's a bug infested shit hole. Mold on the walls, dead cockroaches on the floor, bugs crawling across the beds. Let's put it this way: we took one look at it and started talking about driving through the night back to Atlanta (five hours away).

used to look like this

now looks like this

We lucked out and found a Quality Inn right next to I-95 in Brunswick.

The drive back was pretty entertaining. We played musical trivia. Lots of screaming, lots of obscenities. Lunch was had at Hooters in Macon.

I got home with just enough time to unload all my stuff and head out to my church gig. Not much happening there. It sounded ok. I didn't play particularly well.

Big week ahead.

davidfreemanmusic.net

For the Love of Mark Dannells

2011-09-23T12:45:00.001-04:00

Mark Dannells returned to Yacht Rock last night. It's good to have him back. He was complaining that his hands felt stiff after not having touched a guitar in over a week, but I thought he played really well…a couple of rippin' solos on Peg and How Long. He also angled a fan so it would blow his hair back. They teach you stuff like that at Berklee.

The band was half Schooner and half Revue, with Dani on bass. We had Ganesh and K Spence up front and Daniel on drums. Bencuya, Dannells, and myself occupied the other positions.

In spite of the rain passing through town, we had a really good crowd. It felt kind of packed! Not much turnover, so we didn't make REALLY big money, but it was solid, and fairly good looking.

We got a little crazy in there towards the end…one song ended with Dannells going into Black Magic Woman, and then I started playing Hava Nagila in a different key over the top of it. We also had competing keyboard sound effects bouncing back and forth for a few songs (lots of telephones, a car engine, laughter, and a train) between myself and Bencuya. Hans (sound guy) even got into the action with his pitch shifter on Escape (Pina Colada).

Pretty good gig! We had to hang out because it was pouring, but the rain let up enough later on that I could get all my stuff out to my truck.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Four in Twenty-Six!

2011-09-19T09:38:00.000-04:00

I played four gigs in twenty-six hours. The first two were really good, and the second two were pretty foggy. I wish I could have worked sleep in a little better.

Gig One: the Yacht Rock Revue played the Taste of Chamblee. When I pulled up to the gig, I had my doubts--it looked like we were going to play a bland gig in direct sunlight. By the time we went on, though, the crowd had grown and the sun had gone down enough to get behind the trees. It turned out to be a picture perfect outdoor gig.

We were fortunate to be able to pull up right behind the stage to load gear (and leave our vehicles there). Sweet! The band before us was the Heaven Davis Blues Implosion. I knew everybody in that band except the keyboard player, and not one of them recognized me. I probably should have networked better--a little "Hey asshole, remember me?" to jog their memories, but I didn't. I guess there's a chance this will bite me in the butt later in life. My lack of enthusiasm for networking will eventually lead to my employment at some place like Office Max.

Heaven Davis (vocals)--played on her CD and the subsequent CD release party at 800 East (incidentally I was introduced to Mark Cobb by Clay Cook at this gig).

George Price (guitar)--used to teach guitar in the studio next to me at Ken Stanton Music. We jammed one time out in front of the store on Blue Bossa and a blues. How could he NOT remember me?

Steve Mays (bass)--subbed on some of my church gigs at St. Ann. I bet he would recognize the back of my head better than the front.

Reese Harris (drums)--played a few latin jazz gigs in a band called Wild Rice. I must not have played anything memorable. He has also seen me with the Schooner.

The band sounded really good--the blues stuff is not my thing, but they were solid. No self-indulgent half hour guitar solos or anything.

They came off the stage and we went on. They "had heard a lot about us" and we "couldn't wait to hear us." We played one song and then they "got in their cars and left."

Our sets were good. It was the regular band minus Mark Dannells, who was on vacation. Shannon Pengelly subbed for him. We had a good time, everything felt good, and the sound was good. Cobb had on a new suit. Nice.

We finished right around 8 PM. I loaded up and drove to the Dixie Tavern.

Gig Two: I played with the Yacht Rock Schooner at the Dixie Tavern. I'd been looking forward to this gig for a couple of weeks because I got to play keyboard on the gig, too. Big deal, you say? Yeah, because it was a chance to play some of the other (Bencuya) keyboard parts, like rhodes on Peg and Hey Nineteen. Fun! We did this a year ago (me and Frampton), and I like the challenge.

I was super pumped. It was really exciting for me, even though there were only a handful of big parts (Hey Nineteen, Peg, Doctor My Eyes, and Lido Shuffle). I even took a solo (yikes!) on the end of Hey Nineteen--nothing chopsy at all, but correct notes played in time. Heck yeah! I had so much adrenaline going by the end of it, I could have picked up a car.

Hey Nineteen solo by David B Freeman

It's probably good that Ganesh didn't let me go any longer.

After we played Lido, some guy told me my playing was fascinating to watch.

Frampton!

T.Y.

The Schooner sounded great. Everything felt great. It was a ton of fun! I really like doing the sax/keyboard thing with them--it's harder to get into it when it's just saxophone. I was sandwiched between Daniel Morrison and Delicious Tom Young--the groove was really solid.

The Dixie Tavern let us stop at 2 AM. I was in bed by 4. Owww.

Gig Three: also known as church gig number one. Not much of a gig for me--I played a little bit of saxophone, but mostly flute doubling the melody. I messed around with using headphones again, but the mix is not good to me. The bassist is the guy who's most interested in what's in it, so it's really bass and piano heavy. I'm better off hearing everything (except the damn V drums) acoustically.

The organist made some Kenny G crack at rehearsal which I ignored. You shouldn't curse on a church gig.

I was home by 11 AM, and asleep shortly thereafter.

I woke up around 5:30 and got dressed.

Gig Four: church gig number two. This one sounded pretty good! No guitar and no drums, so the mix was pretty easy.

Funny thing about this gig--the last note hasn't finished ringing in the cathedral before the vocalists and the pianist/leader are telling each other what they did wrong. This week they were all ganging up on one person--lots of on the spot analysis about why she was dragging. Mildly amusing stuff.

Yay for football. I fell asleep on the couch.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Two Gigs!

2011-09-16T18:21:00.002-04:00

I had two gigs yesterday.

The first gig was an awards night for Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. I've played this event for the past four years--I'm getting the hang of it! We played an hour an a half dinner set, and then walk-ups for the awards ceremony, and then one song to send 'em out the door. Easy! Everything was great about this one: we played my tunes with no volume restrictions, we were fed (chicken, green beans, and something…orzo?), they validated our parking, the gig ended early…yes! It's was great.

The band was Tyrone Jackson, Kevin Smith, and Justin Chesarek on drums. This was the first gig Justin and I have ever done together. Success! Everybody played well.

Coolest moment…Tyrone picked up on the end of my solo on Beth Ann at the last chord change. I don't know how to describe it--it was just awesome.

Here's the audio:

After this gig ended, I raced over to the 10 High and played the Yacht Rock gig.

This was the best 10 High gig I've played in a long time. Everybody played well and the energy was good. We were being silly, too, but musically things felt great. I wish they were all like this!

I got a couple of good solos in…I was really loose from the earlier gig. My sax was way up in my monitor--abusively loud. Ha!

We went on break after I'd really torn it up on Takin' it to the Streets, and some girl told me that the band was great and I was a really awesome singer. Must not have been tearing it up like I thought.

I've got another two gigs tomorrow…when it rains, it pours, I guess.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Trio at Ventanas

2011-09-14T01:30:00.003-04:00

I played a trio gig tonight with two of my favorite musicans: Tyrone Jackson and Kevin Smith. We had a background music gig at Ventanas. Great gig!

I feel really out shape, jazz-wise. Too many Yacht Rock keyboard parts! I need more time on the horn…sure wish I had more gigs with these guys.

Everybody thought we were playing somebody else's stuff ("Is that a Bob James song?"). That's a compliment, right? My stuff's not total BS!

davidfreemanmusic.net

On the Move

2011-09-11T16:10:00.000-04:00

Friday night, it was late…I played the first set with the Yacht Rock Schooner at 37 Main in Buford. That place gives me the impression that there is NOTHING ELSE to do in Buford--it's always packed. The crowd was good, the band was really good.

I couldn't hear anything that I was playing. I guess that's what you get when you don't show up to soundcheck. I tried the old trick of playing a few notes in between songs--not very reassuring! I think I could hear myself in the mains; maybe not. My position was an arm's length away from the speaker and I couldn't tell. I had no monitor of my own, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't in any of the monitors on stage. I think I was more or less inaudible. Ugh.

The band was really solid--they really had a good groove going.

There were several beer bottles on the lip of the stage in front of me, and I noticed when we started Baker Street that I nudged one when I bent my knees, so then every time the hook came around, I tried to knock the other ones down. I think I hit five.

Saturday, the Yacht Rock Revue played a wedding reception in Columbus. Some guy heard about us and hired us sight unseen! He also had something to do with hooking up the gig in Washington DC.

This was a fun gig to me, mostly because Mark Cobb really felt like playing--he gave the whole band energy.

We had Kevin Spencer subbing for Nick (on vacation). He did a great job filling in.

First dance was Just the Way You Are. I'm getting closer on the solo, but I sound a little sharp.

Just the Way You Are sax solo by David B Freeman

Lately I've been coming up with some new stuff to play on Reminiscing. It's funny how that kind of thing comes and goes. I feel pretty good about that song, but (for instance) on Taking it to the Streets, I have nothing to play. I just play bullshit through the entire end.

We played Break My Stride for the first time in a year and a half (I think). I was sure the chorus started on G. I insisted! and I was wrong. It starts on F.

Another oldie that came back was I'd Really Love to See You Tonight. I was a little shaky in some spots. That's almost the norm for me on that one. I try and play it casually and then I screw up.

Other than those, I played well the entire night, and then we did Taking it to the Streets for the encore. For some reason, I was pedaling on C instead of G. My embarrassment kind of crushed my good feeling about the night. Damnit! How long have I been playing that wrong?

Church gig number one got the day off. The "orchestra" (the church concert band) is playing. I slept in. It was great.

Big week this week…a couple of jazz gigs and a couple of Yacht Rock gigs. Stay tuned.

davidfeemanmusic.net

Too Many Dudes

2011-09-09T12:44:00.003-04:00

We (Yacht Rock) played at the 10 High last night. It was pretty obvious that we were shut out by the football game. The crowd never showed up, and the gig was lost to indifference pretty quickly.

I played well. We had Ganesh on drums, K Spence on vocals (in for Nick), and Shannon on guitar, so the set list was all really safe stuff--things we've been playing forever. There were some strange guitar chords in the middle of Sister Golden Hair and the intro of Hey 19, and we did the radio edit version of My Life…speaking of which, that was a game of musical chicken--the vocals went one way and the band went the other, and at some point we (the band) had to jump when it was finally obvious that the vocals were not coming back to us. Thankfully, we'd heard that mistake before--almost predicted it.

Lido needed more bass in the intro.

Everything in the second set was pretty normal and pretty plain. Shannon got a fiery solo off on How Long, and I thought for a second we were going to pick up the energy, but it was just a flicker! I stumbled a little bit in the Africa solo, but nothing catastrophic.

Anyway…it was the 10 High. Too many dudes--always a sign that we're going to make no money.

There's always next week!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday stuff (Technical Difficulties)

2011-09-05T02:02:00.001-04:00

After a couple of weeks away, I was back at my church gigs this morning.

Church gig number one changed up the morning rehearsal time--instead of meeting at 8 AM, we got together at 8:30. When I walked in, there was a service going on in the main sanctuary, but I found everybody downstairs.

It was a quick and painless rehearsal--a couple of traditional hymns (flute), and a couple of gospel things (tenor). No problems. At 9:15 we went running upstairs to set up.

This is the second week of V Drums--this time with a substitute soundman! Woo! I guess all the microphone cables for the entire band had been patched incorrectly at the stage, so there was no time to troubleshoot the electronic drums that were not making electronic drum sounds. Hmm. We entered into a stand off of sorts--sound man was busy up in the balcony trying to find his inputs; drummer continued to bang on very quiet drum kit. I said, hey, let's stick a vocal mic on his XLR--maybe it's a bad line…maybe it's the DI…maybe it's the quater inch cable going into the DI. I was ignored.

Suddenly it was 9:30 and we started. In the headphones: a ton of bass, a ton of piano, some vocals. No guitar, no drums. I didn't like the sound of that, so I went without headphones--better, but I could hear the drums, and the slap off the back wall was at least a sixteenth note behind the band. I didn't like that either!

Other than the technical difficulties, it was a good show/service. I had good reeds on my tenor and clarinet, and my flute face was good. I think we played pretty well, and our leader was happy. We also played the second service. No problems there, either. Yay!

I went home and fell asleep on the floor, listening to a Michael Brecker masterclass from 1986. Good stuff. Here's hoping it all soaked in.

Church gig number two was pretty good, too. Good soprano reed, and my flute playing was comfortable. I had a pretty good mix in the PA, too.

Right before we started, the previous service's leader told me that the piano microphone was going bad (I noticed a few weeks ago that there was a short in the mic/preamp setup). Sure enough, I soloed it and it sounded like old vinyl.

Band leader said, "When we flip the switch, the crackling goes away." The switch was for the ground. Aren't you disconnecting the ground pin in the XLR and thus eliminating the phantom power that you need to power the microphone? That was my thinking. We flipped the switch and then we got no signal to the board, which makes me wonder if my theory was true, and if so, why was that an option on the preamp box?

Anyway, the hell with that. I unplugged the cable, stuck a vocal mic on it, and stuck it on the soundboard through one of the holes in the piano frame. Worked fine, and I like the sound of it better than that stupid crackly microphone.

The band sounded pretty good; vocals were pretty good. Not a bad gig at all.

I've got another pretty easy week ahead, but I'm looking down the calendar at a week from Saturday--I'm playing second keyboard with the Schooner at Dixie Tavern, and I have a couple of parts to learn. I did this about a year ago (read about it here). I'm feeling much less overwhelmed this time--pretty sure I'm gonna kick ass. It's a good challenge.

P.S. I'm still thinking about the car crash we saw in Dallas a couple of weeks ago. I wish we'd stopped to check on them. The taxi we were in slowed down--I regret not getting out to see if everybody was OK. I would have wanted someone to do that for me.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Tailgating

2011-09-04T00:42:00.002-04:00

this guy proved once again that the toughest job in the band is the front man/lead vocalist

A few guys from each of the Yacht Rock bands joined together to play at the Shepherd Center Society benefit at The Tailgate. In other words, we played under a tent in one of those abandoned lots around the Georgia Dome that becomes a parking lot whenever there's a football game. The band was Pete, K Spence, Monkey, Bencuya, Dani, Ganesh, and me.

Matt Reed (guitarist and big UGA fan) organized the music. He said load in at the 2, so I was there at 2 (backed my truck up to the stage--nice load in!). Unfortunately, I had to sit through the opening band. Witness:

This was one of many fine hits, others of which were Sweet Child of Mine, Here I Go Again on My Own, and some other crap. I think STP was in there. The only thing missing was Stacy, babe.

The odor from those two porta-potties directly behind the drums was robust.

By the end of their set, I was thinking bad thoughts, evil thoughts. I wasn't so much thunderstruck as annoyed that I'd shown up so early. I was thinking "Matt Reed, why did you do this to me?"

We threw our stuff on stage around 3:30 and started at 4.

hey look! Vince Neil on sound! nice heels!

The sound guy refused to move the bass cabinet across the stage because everything was already "wired up." Like electricity? Like it all sounds perfect just the way it is and we can't move anything? he mic'ed up that Ampeg 8x10 cabinet with an SM57. On purpose. In fact, Dani and I tried to scoot the cabinet a foot closer to the drums (also a foot further AWAY from me), and sound guy started yelling at me from across the stage because I'd knocked the 57 (and the one foot tall mic stand it was on) over. Like it hurt it.

Dannells played Matt Reed's guitar rig and seemed rather uncomfortable about it.

Kevin got a new shirt?

So whatever. We set up our stuff and played. Not a bad set! It was kind of a greatest hits package--What a Fool Believes, Ride Like the Wind, Baker Street, Brandy. Dani played the entire thing like Larry Graham on crack. I played a couple of good solos (Reminiscing and I Can't Go for That), and a moderate amount of crap on Lowdown. Half the PA shut down at one point due to a power failure.

We finished and everybody loved us and we played an encore and maybe the governor was on the way to congratulate us. We raked our gear off the stage.

hipsters invaded my truck!

protect thy pants

The next band up was Ponderosa. They were pretty awesome. I felt like a fraud. It made me question my career. We had to leave quickly.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Park Tavern

2011-09-03T12:43:00.003-04:00

Greg Lee, dancing machine

Yacht Rock played the Park Tavern last night. We had a pretty good night--it never quite reached the insanity of a few of the previous Park Tavern gigs, but it was fun and the crowd was pretty into it. For some reason, it was a much older crowd than we generally see. It was like our usual crowd sent their parents, and this was a safe gig--there are tables for sitting and it ends before midnight. I think seating and bedtimes are important to that demographic. You could throw restrooms in there, too, except that the Park Tavern restrooms are not user-friendly. It's news when the men's room does NOT flood, and the women's room always has a line.

Our Beatles tribute, Please PleaseRock Me, opened the show. It was pretty good! I was on and off stage for most of it, playing tambourine and cowbell. The first song had tambourine--I realized this (standing offstage) about halfway through. Do over! Damnit! The last four or five songs had horns (Greg Lee, Paul Poovey, and myself). We were really crammed up on stage and it was tough to hear, but I think we were pretty good. Paul said his trumpet was sliding all over his face, which made Penny Lane especially challenging. Is it ever going to cool down?

A quick change and we were back as Yacht Rock. I was determined to suck less than the previous night's implosion, and then we decided to do a soft start--a quiet count in, beginning before the break music had been turned off--and just like that, I'd already started screwing up. Not impressive. Once I finally started playing, I was OK. I still rush really bad on Greatest American Hero. If I would just relax, my accuracy would greatly improve.

I got a little more ambitious about the number of notes I was going to play on Whatever Gets You Through the Night. It turns out, I can't really go for it and sidestep at the same time. I think the solos were good, but I had to remind myself--to the left! to the right! I bet I could sound like this if I could stand still. It would also help if I was in the monitor, but that'll never happen either.

Give a Little Bit is back. I played the solo correctly two nights in a row; a miracle.

I screwed up the end of I Wish for no apparent reason.

The rest of the night was pretty easy. I played a something wrong in the bridge of Power of Love--like instead of Eb major, I played a C major triad or something gross. Not my best work.

I think we have one more Park Tavern gig this month--October 17. It's been a great summer of gigs. We'll be back next spring.

davidfreemanmusic.net

10 High Failure

2011-09-02T11:56:00.001-04:00

Ugh. Yacht Rock played the 10 High last night. I was there, but it probably would've been better if I'd gotten up after the first song and left. My playing was pretty bad (and pretty uninspired), and the more I tried to bear down and get it right, the worse I got. I just didn't have it. Bencuya recorded it, so I'll get to relive this collection of near misses in a couple of months. Great.

Dallas to Acworth

2011-08-29T10:21:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend waiting…somewhere in there I played two wedding receptions.

The first gig was in Dallas with Yacht Rock. We flew out first thing Saturday morning--landed at DFW at before noon. Unfortunately, we didn't load into the venue until 6:30 PM, so we killed off those hours with a big meal at a Mexican restaurant and a walk to Dealey Plaza. Everybody should eat too much, walk around in 105 degree heat, and look at a bunch of pictures of JFK's blown out skull. The Dallas experience.

it appears to be perfectly safe

Greg points out a spot where a bullet chipped the curb

I managed to get a nap in there while watching hurricane coverage.

The reception was at the House of Blues in Dallas--not in the main concert room, but in the restaurant part. What a pathetic excuse for a music venue! The stage was small (no big deal there), but the PA was pathetic (two mismatched monitors, sixteen channel board, and two Mackie SRM-450s hung from the ceiling for mains), and the guy overseeing the production spent more time looking at his phone than us. I don't think he ever actually walked out in front of the band to hear what it sounded like. Every sax solo felt like I was playing without a microphone. It was very uninspiring.

The only things in the PA were vocals and saxophone, so who knows if it ever balanced with the stage sound. I tend to doubt that my EWI/keyboards made it out into the room--I couldn't turn up too loud or I wouldn't be able to hear the rest of the band (plus the sax was prone to feedback). The amp I was using was sitting in the corner and pumped out a ton of bass (plus I was in the corner--more bass!), and the stage had some low end resonance around C or D that was really irritating. I left out some left hand stuff on the keyboard because of it.

What else can I bitch about…I ended up with a Nord 2 instead of a Nord 3. I can definitely tell the difference now. Yuck! That amp wasn't as bad as the one I used at the House of Blues in Orlando, but it really didn't sound very good. I missed my gear. I had shitty reeds on both horns, I think, but everything about playing saxophone in there felt bad.

So…a pretty miserable gig, and I played like I was miserable. It's a drag, too, because we were playing for a friend of the band who really loves us. It could have been a lot more fun.

We saw a spectacular car crash (an Audi TT vs a Ford Expedition) in downtown Dallas on the way back to our hotel.

Lobby call was 6:30 AM. I got about four hours of sleep. A guy with a Super Bowl ring got on the plane, and then I fell asleep.

We were back in Atlanta around noon. I went home, ate, and crashed for about four more hours on the couch. An hour later I was on the way to a wedding reception in Acworth.

I played with most of the Yacht Rock guys in a cover band called Constantly Awesome. It could have been called Six Feet Tall--Matt Reed played guitar--they made Bencuya and me look short and bald.

I was added onto the gig late last week to provide the Hora (why me?). It was an easy gig. I spent most of the gig playing tambourine and watching Bencuya. Piece of cake. Nice venue, too--Waterstone Restuarant on Main Street in Acworth.

Easy week this week.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Bomb Night at the 10 High

2011-08-26T12:35:00.002-04:00

Ahh, the 10 High. It was tough to go back after last week's excitement.

I think we played ok. I played well personally, but as a band we were pretty flat. I had an awesome alto reed--right in that perfectly broken in moment in its life. Unfortunately, there were only two alto songs on the setlist, though (and two tenor tunes). Bummer. The keyboard stuff was all good (we played Lonely Boy). I was really comfortable with everything--I can't think of anything were I screwed up. Probably the worst thing I did was to accidentally hit record on my Fantom a couple of times while we were playing Ride Like the Wind--the way my hand was shaped kept turning it (and the accompanying metronome) on.

Actually, the worst thing I did was on my flute solo for Lowdown. I tried to think of it as A7 instead of E minor, and then I tried to play an altered scale over that (which was NOT an improvement), and then I thought I'd stick with it to see if my ear would adjust. It did not. I did not sound good…now I know. E minor is better. Stay inside!

Some of this happened:

Anyway…Good Luck Ganesh pulled us through on the money, even though it looked like the room never filled up. Yay for that!

While we were packing up, the entire Dark Horse Tavern (10 High and the Warren Room included) were semi-evacuated because a crazy guy claimed he had a bomb. It looked like a can of spraypaint to me, but I guess you can never be sure. The bouncers were chasing him through the parking lot--not towards my truck! Bencuya and I followed the parade (with Bencuya quoting Prince's 1999--"Mommy, why does everybody have a bomb?"). Soon enough he was in the back of a police cruiser. Too much excitement.

Here's some stuff from the festival a few weeks ago. An awesome picture by friend of the band Chad Hunter (of Moontower).

Also video of us playing Rosanna. What a great mix! That's me on organ, brass, and the synth solo.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Yacht Rock Tour!

2011-08-23T13:01:00.002-04:00

someone is strangling Greg

Last Tuesday night, Yacht Rock launched a short tour up to New York City. Pretty cool, and wildly successful!

We left around 8 PM and spent Tuesday night in Charlotte. There was no gig there, but we wanted to get a chunk of the driving out of the way. Our ultimate goal of the first leg was to get to Washington DC, but it was too far to try and drive straight from Atlanta and then set up and play a gig.

Wednesday we drove to DC. We arrived right around 6 PM (just in time for rush hour!) and loaded into a club call Saloun in Georgetown. It was not much of a bar. A really long shoebox of a room with a tiny stage, no PA, no lighting, flies in the restroom, broken windows…pretty nasty. We did get to park the van right outside the front door, though, so I guess it wasn't all bad.

The promoter who hooked us up with the gig was informed at 6 that there was no PA. It finally arrived three hours later--two main speakers, two monitors, one mixer, and some cables. Not impressive! I guess it would be acceptable to bitch about it being deficient, but if we had gotten the PA we would normally request, it wouldn't have fit on the stage. Ahh yes, the stage…it was the size of a parking space. Seven guys, all that equipment, and sidestepping do not fit. Greg just about wore a hole in the wall with the headstock of his bass, and Dannells had to hold his guitar vertically if he needed to touch anything on his pedalboard.

We played well in spite of the circumstances, though it was super loud. Only vocals were in the PA, so I had my amp cranked to try and get it out in the room, but my amp was two feet from my left ear. Ear plugs helped, but it was just too much volume.

The DC crowd loved us. We assured them that we would return in October--just not to Saloun!

well hello, blondie!

Afterwards, I dealt with three drunk idiots, one of whom was named Jonathan, who insisted (spraying me in the face with spittle over and over again) that I play I Still Believe from The Lost Boys. We had the same conversation over and over and over…could I play that song? Of course! Will I play it at his friend's wedding? Maybe! At some point, Jonathan said that each of the three of them would pay me $500 to play it at the friend's wedding. I was later able to get the money up to $1000. I can't wait!

Later on, someone was in the restroom HURLING while I was changing back into my shorts. Out comes Jonathan, but he walked right by me because I had taken my wig off (thankfully--would I now be sprayed with vomit spittle?). I dodged the bullet momentarily; he did recognize me later as we were loading the trailer--as he was falling out into the middle of the street. "Hey…you're that guy! You're gonna play I Still Believe, right?" Right--$1,000.

We spent the night in Maryland.

Thursday morning we got up and drove to New York City. Yay! Staten Island to Brooklyn, under the tunnel, then up the FDR to the pier to play the Rocks off Hudson Cruise. We did two sets while the boat went down the East River, around the Statue of Liberty, up the East River, and back to the pier. I was thinking about Sonny Rollins and the Williamsburg Bridge, and this:

The cruise was pretty good. The sound was really bad on stage, but the mix out front was not too bad. It was loud, loud, loud--even the iPod that was playing on the break was distorting from the volume.

The food was terrible, and the woman who served the food was up to the task! What an old witch! We were doing her a favor by eating her pasta and meat grenades. So much for New York being a food mecca.

The crowd was really good. We were originally on a smaller boat, but some Yacht Rock super fan (I think a big guy from Google) bought all the tickets up and gave them to his friends, so the cruise company moved us to a larger boat, and then that one sold out. They loved it and it was easy (except the load in/out was about half a mile down the pier!). I hope we do it again, but we're going to need a bigger boat.

I spent a good chunk of the break talking to some hot chick about reeds. She suggested I try Superials on alto.

We spent the night in White Plains.

Friday during the day I went into the city and hung out with my niece and sister.

That night, Yacht Rock played a private party at a country club in Westchester county country club (Willow Ridge). Another easy gig, though the crowd was thin (eighty people?). Easy, easy, though, and it ended a little early.

service with a smile

Saturday was the main event--a wedding in Brooklyn. We got into the city pretty early, parked the van, and wandered around for a couple of hours. I went and checked out my sister's old neighborhood--also where I lived for my time in New York. Nothing has changed!

I played a gig here (upstairs restaurant)

The wedding ceremony and reception were at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Another small stage, but it sounded pretty good, and the people dug it. One thing we'd never encountered was a union crew--the sound guys (maybe five of them?), loaded out gear in and out for us. That was a nice plus. The room was really cool looking.

The groom played drums the last song of the night--Ride Like the Wind. Not too good. Bride on cowbell. Check the technique.

We spent the night in New Jersey.

Sunday, we drove all day and all night to get back to Atlanta. Yay!

davidfreemanmusic.net