Schooner Saturday

Tonight was a super easy gig with the Yacht Rock Schooner at the Wild Wing Cafe in Alpharetta.  No keyboards, no EWI...just saxes and flute.  All my stuff was in the first set, too, so I was home before they finished the gig (and I texted them to let them know).

I felt pretty good, playing-wise.  I recorded most of the first set (I missed the first couple of songs because I forgot to turn the thing on), and I'm kind of flat (speaking in terms of pitch), but the effort is good.  I didn't get much in the monitor because we (Mark Bencuya and Kevin Spencer) were sharing the wedge, and that's usually when I start to overblow and go flat.

You'd think with no keyboards and no EWI I'd be safe from technology's evil plans (or my stupidity), but I did have one small problem.  I left the transmitter on my tenor on while I was playing alto on I Can't Go for That, and a couple of times the tenor cancelled out the signal and I got no sound in the microphone (you can hear it in the solo--when there's no chorus effect it's because you're hearing acoustic sound only).  Way to go, Freeman!

Ganesh Giri Jaya played drums tonight.  I think it's the best set I've ever heard him play.  He nailed everything.
Bencuya played some awesome organ stuff on Biggest Part of Me.  He did this perfect palm slide that made my knees buckle.

Check out the HORRIBLE wrong note I sat on at the end of the bridge/beginning of the last verse of Summer Breeze!  More evidence that I could not hear what I was playing.  Ouch.


www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Double Thursday

Yesterday was another double gig Thursday for me.  House Live did another gig at Ventanas downtown.  As you can see, it was another cool looking gig, and we had a good time.  My new shirt performed well.

When that gig ended, I drove like a wild man to the 10 High for the Yacht Rock gig.  I'm beginning to think that the crowd will never catch on to the fact that we start at 9:30--everybody turns up in the middle of the first set (10 PM!).  

This installment of Yacht Rock was invaded by the Schooner!  We had Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums, Kevin Spencer on vocals and Vanessa Olivarez on vocals.  We played lots of tunes we haven't touched in a while, which was cool, and then kind of frightening!  Lots of "I wish I'd played through that this afternoon" moments.  Overall, I think things went pretty well.  The second set kind of steamrolled me, though--a few too many in a row where I didn't get a chance to think them through before we got on stage.  The giant Newcastle on the break was also involved.

The Great Mark Cobb came through around 10:30 and stayed and played in the second set.  He even sang Brandy, which hasn't happened in quite some time.  

Now...the equipment problem of the night!  This gig's weirdness occurred either in my little mixer or my DI to the house.  Hans (sound guy) says that my levels would be either really hot or barely there at all.  Things were fine on stage, so I'm thinking that the aux send on my mixer is messed up.  I would rather it was the DI, but I doubt it.  A few months back Hans mentioned that my level was much lower than the previous week (even though I hadn't adjusted anything on my board).  I suppose it could be his line, too.  I guess we'll troubleshoot over the next month and see where the problem is.  The fun never ends!

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Tuesday at Opera

We did a House Live gig at Opera in midtown last night.  It was an "industry event", so it was a mixer for a bunch of event planners.  Steven Walker (drums/percussion), Jeff Burnisky (DJ), and myself were set up in a tent outside.  When we began, the thing was like a greenhouse.  It was probably 10 degrees hotter in the tent than outside.  Once the sun went down, it was chilly everywhere.  Playing in the cold weather makes my hands feel terrible.

Not much to report...I messed around with my effects pedal a good bit--a dialed in a nice slapback delay, a la Sanborn's effect on Young American!  I still haven't quite let my obsession with that go.

 I also made some HORRIBLE sounds!  You can set the effect up for a parallel interval, and I tried the following (just to bother Steven):  half step (painful!), whole step (very comfortable!), fourth above (weird), and an octave plus a half step (back to painful!).  You can investigate these intervals on a gig like this.  A fourth and a fifth below actually sound cool.  A third below if weird, but in a good way.

We were hoping to get some food out of it, but all they had were homemade pop tarts and some really funky (as in really gross) Chinese food.  Those parallel fourths were for you.

There were lots of strange fashion choices by our audience.  The boots/skirts thing is either sublime or hideous.  Here in Atlanta, it's been cowboy boots and mini skirts (of which I am generally not a fan), but there were also mini skirts and UGGs (of which I am definitely not a fan).  Not to be outdone, there was some weird MC guy (in the final two pictures!) wearing a pinstriped fedora, "Oakley/blades" type sunglasses, an Ed Hardy style shirt, and furry black and white (rabbit skin?) boots.

Here are some great moments:

1.  Girl asks if she can play my flute.  "No."  She says she plays flute.  "Bring your own."  "We could duet."  I decline.  Girl says, "I think I still have my flute."  End of story.

2.  Good looking woman who could be Robin Roberts' stunt double asks me if I "go out in the audience."  Like work the crowd?  Yes, she says.  I'm playing into a microphone on a stand, so no.  Do I do it at other events?  It costs extra, I say.  Antoine (or whatever her favorite sax player's name is), does this, and people go crazy.  My reply:  I'm not saying it's not effective, I'm saying it's really cheesy.   She should probably hire Sergio for that.

3.  The soap in the restroom smelled like Raid, and my hands thus smelled like Raid until I could get home and wash them.

Once I got home, I got back to work finishing out the new charts for the next Please Pleaserock Me gig (March 31, Smith's Olde Bar).  I'm down to the final chart.  It should put Greg Lee's mind at ease;  he's getting uptight about preparing his bari sax parts.
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Technology Gives me the Finger

I am writing you from my laptop, which for the past two minutes has been having a seizure, but now looks fine again.  That's pretty much how it goes for me and technology tonight.  As soon as the thought "I'm buying a new laptop tomorrow" flashed in my brain, this laptop went back to normal.  Now it's doing it again.  Me and technology, we're not friends right now.

It just did it again, and I had to shut the computer all the way down (the screen wouldn't come back on at all).  Now it seems fine.

This afternoon Yacht Rock played a gig at the Tin Room Cantina over by North Druid Hills.  From the get-go I should have known that it was not meant to be.

We got set up and soundchecked (in direct sunlight, which is always fun for not being able to read any displays--never mind the way my reeds dried out and looked like potato chips).  Everything worked fine, but about four songs into the gig, my wireless microphone on my sax started picking up RF interference (which made it sound like I was playing saxophone with gale force winds around me).  At the time, I had no idea it was interference--I assumed my microphone had developed a short, so I switched to my other microphone, but it was no better.  I tried changing the channel on my wireless, and that made it better, but I still was picking up some radio noise.  In the midst of dealing with this (and the gig continued while I was trying to dissect the problem), the generator that was providing power for the stage began to run out of gas.  Due to this fuel problem, the power began to fluctuate, and the keyboard I was playing (while thinking about how to solve my sax mic problem) went dead and then came back on.  As I was playing, it did it again, and then my entire setup lost power (as did the guitar).  We limped through the song and then took a break so the sound guys could solve that problem.

So...we came back from the break.  I checked my microphones, I checked my keyboards, I checked my EWI.  Everything worked fine with no strange noises.  We played for what seemed like two hours, and somewhere in the middle my EWI decided to go berserk.  I was playing it and all of the sudden it would hang a note (the note would not stop).  Then it wouldn't make any noise until I reset it (at one point, I restarted the computer, tried it, and restart it again, all while trying to play my EWI part on a keyboard).   What's that?  I spent the next couple of songs trying to diagnose that problem while playing something else.  Before I could solve it, the dang thing hung up again!  I missed some really critical stuff, like the solo in Africa.
What's the issue with this thing?  It's radio interference again!  My EWI is hooked up to a wireless MIDI system, and when the notes would hang, it was because my MIDI receiver had lost contact with the transmitter (thus hanging the last note).  Once I'd figured that out, I grabbed a MIDI cable out of my bag and bypassed the wireless.  From there on out, everything was fine, but by then my brain was pretty much wrecked.  All I wanted to do was leave!

I have to write this down before it gets away:  Mark Cobb is awesome.  Had it not been for the f**king RF interference that ruined my day, this blog would've instead been a catalog of great stuff he did at the gig today.  The most awesome thing tonight occurred in Escape (Pina Colada Song).  During the musical interlude, Cobb started playing the dotted quarter note (I think) as the pulse, and then started swinging that (I think I'm remembering this correctly).  It was soooooo great!  He also flipped the time around in something else (Somebody's Baby?)  and put the backbeat on one and three, and then flipped it over again, and then again, and the other six of us just about blacked out.  So awesome.  Mark Cobb it is.

Anyway, I'm home now (watching Norah Jones on Austin City Limits).  When I got back here, I tried out my wireless MIDI and it worked fine.  My laptop looks perfectly good right now--the screen has settled down and it's working as well as it ever has.  Why does technology have to embarrass me to the point of contemplating a career change?  Why?  All my stuff used to work fine, but now I'm totally gun shy--it's Russian roulette waiting for my next equipment disaster to come around.  I don't know what the solution is.
www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Friday Quartet gig

Tonight (Friday night) I had a quartet gig downtown for some kind of pharmaceutical dinner.  The band was Louis Heriveaux (keyboard), Kevin Smith (bass), and Kinah Boto (drums).  They made it so easy!  The client was also very cool and they left us alone to play the music and enjoy ourselves.  They even thanked us after the gig.  Here are the mp3s for your listening pleasure:

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Thursday Threefer

Thursday was a tough day.  Three gigs!  I'd never done that before.

1.  I played a duo gig with Tyrone Jackson at 7:30 in the morning at an elementary school in Austell.  This was fun because Tyrone is so much better than me.  It takes everything I've got just to keep up.

I went home and crashed for a few hours.  I got up early in the afternoon, loaded my truck, bathed, and headed out the door.  I loaded into the 10 High that afternoon.

2.  I played a quartet gig/house band for an awards ceremony at the St. Regis Hotel in Buckhead.  This one was a killer--they are (let's say) very particular, and even though I've done the gig twice before, they did not express much confidence in me.  The event seems to be pretty immaculately planned, but they dropped lots of last minute stuff on me which really frayed my nerves.   Louis Heriveaux, Kevin Smith, and Marlon Patton did a terrific job dealing with everything and we made it out alive!  I got out at 9:07 PM and drove like hell.

3.  At 9:30 PM, I was in the 10 High, dressed and ready to go.  We played our usual stuff.  No problems to report.  Nick helped me load out.

I noticed on my alto that I've maybe been putting less mouthpiece in my mouth, and it has led to problems with the altissimo feeling very pinched.  Last night I made a conscious effort to use more mouthpiece, and I was much more comfortable up there.  I was screaming!

Sanborn's mic is distorting...kind of like they said, "We can't do slapback in the studio, but we have this other effect we can use!"
I've been listening to David Bowie's Young Americans almost constantly over the past few days.  I'd forgotten just how awesome David Sanborn's playing is all over that record.  He did the tour to support that album, too.  I wonder if he got bored with the freedom to play anything anywhere night after night.  I don't hear any set parts anywhere--sounds like he had free reign.  The stuff on the record is magnificent.  There's also a video of him playing on The Dick Cavett Show:  

Sanborn's mic is distorting badly...kind of like they said, "We can't do slapback in the studio, but we have this other effect we can use!"  

He's still the man.  I've give both nuts to trade places with him in this video.
www.davidfreemanmusic.net

St. Patrick's Day!

Yacht Rock was supposed to play two gigs for St. Patrick's Day.  The first was a set outdoors in the parking lot behind Limerick Junction.  For some reason, they decided to try and construct a cover for the stage while we were waiting to begin (even though it'd been raining all day).  Needless to say, it was not built in time for us to take the stage.  We bailed on the gig.  Sun Domingo had to play out there, and they said it was freezing!  (of course, the next day was sunny and almost 70!).  Here's the photo evidence of the "event."  Dig Dannells' green pants.

After that, we headed to the W Hotel in Buckhead to play a very dimly lit (both in lighting and a certain waitress!) event.

After that, we headed to the W Hotel in Buckhead to play a very dimly lit (both in lighting and a certain waitress!) event.
www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Monday House Live

House Live played a gig last night at Ventanas downtown.  It was another easy gig.  I'm not sure if I was tired or what, but I could never really get in a groove--too much noodling.  So it goes!

A busy week is here.  Stay tuned.
www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Meehan's Public House

Please Pleaserock Me and the Yacht Rock Revue played the Shamrock and Roll Festival in Sandy Springs yesterday.

My thoughts:  cold!...thought it would be warmer-should've brought a jacket...Francisco Vidal is the ultimate one man bar guy (is that a putdown or a compliment?  both)...laptop screen is just about dead (scaring me again!)...played with REMakes, and I hung out in the cold with no jacket to do two songs, but they only called one of them...changed into a suit in the open parking lot of a Kroger...nailed my vocal part on Paperback Writer all three times!...Greg tried to play bari sax in the horn section (somewhat successful--now he knows what it's like)...Dannells counted the strings--between all the guitars, we had sixty-six strings on stage, and none of them were in tune because of the temperature (including this ferocious electric twelve string in the picture)...reset all my gear for Yacht Rock--a twisted tornado of cables...played two sets REALLY LOUDLY...Cobb was on another planet last night--all over the place...drank from a pitcher of beer...new denim suit is big in the waist, but otherwise looked good...stage crew started packing up before we did...Nick helped me load out...home by 11:30 PM.
davidfreemanmusic.net

Thursday and Friday

Thursday night was a very low key Yacht Rock night.  Mark Dannells' guitar rig went on strike during the second song (said it was one of very expensive pedals), but he had it "fixed" (it decided to work again) by the end of the song, and it was fine for the rest of the gig.

Equipment issues in live performance are the ultimate Chinese fire drills.  Not only are you embarrassed because your gear has gone haywire (usually catastrophically, and often very audibly), but you are then under the gun to diagnose and fix the problem before the next song begins.  To make matters worse, not only is everybody in the band watching you solve the problem; everybody in the ROOM is watching you solve the problem.  When you don't have the answer, you will sweat blood.  For something like the configuration of guitar pedals (or say, an EWI MIDI'ed into a laptop?!), there are so many little cables and switches that you end up frantically pushing and pulling the connections and hoping that it's not an issue with the actual electronics.

Friday night was a duo gig with Dan Baraszu in Acworth.  We played at a The Old Mill, pretending to be the house band.  In the middle of our set (this is all pre-planned), a guy in the audience would get up to join us for a song.  He would then break into his girlfriend's favorite song, and stop in the middle and propose to her.  Even though he was a terrible singer (and bailed on the piano playing), it still worked:  she said yes.  The gig was otherwise very easy.  I played flute, soprano sax, and tenor sax.

Some weird weather was blowing through on the way there.

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"Do You Believe in Miracles?"

Yesterday was the Yacht Rock Olympics.

I left home at 1:45 yesterday to get down to the Park Tavern for the Sham/Yacht Rock Festival.  We loaded in our equipment (and parked over-the-horizon far away).  All of us got dressed in suits and ties, threw our gear on stage in less than 30 minutes, and played a rippin' set of Beatles tunes (Please Pleaserock Me).  That went over very well, and we had fun.  There were moments of uncertainty, but I don't think it mattered because it was all pretty loose and fun.  My four notes of vocals on Paperback Writer--I don't think I ever got it right, but my tambourine was pretty good, so that was enough!

After the Beatles set, we ran back upstairs and changed, and then came out and played an hour and a half set of Yacht Rock to the faithful crowd.  It was pretty packed, and lots of fun.  Usual stuff...lots of fun little moments between me and Cobb, lots of dancing by me, kind of sloppy but just going for it.  I tried to play like I didn't know we were recording!

The Park Tavern gig ended at 7:30.  Bencuya and I tore down as quickly as humanly possible.  I sprinted the length of the Park Tavern parking lot to my truck (still in my costume, shirt wide open...cue the Six Million Dollar Man sound!)

brought it back and parked it in front.  We then forced all of our equipment through the still packed patio, up the stairs, and into our vehicles.  About six loads later, we were all set and he and I raced off to the Wild Wing in Suwanee.  Special thanks to Dannells and Pete for helping me get out.

Bencuya accused me of driving ninety miles an hour, but I swear I never broke eighty.  Regardless, we made good time (twenty minutes!), and the Schooner band met us at the back door to help bring in equipment.  We set up, soundchecked and off we went!

We did two sets at the Wild Wing.  It was pretty good--they are definitely improving as a band.  The crowd was not really into it.  We had the usual stupid requests for Skynard, Billie Jean, and Jethro Tull (happens every time some idiot sees a flute).

I think Bencuya and I are the Ying and Yang of Yacht Rock keyboards--he can't mess up, and I can't get all the way through a song with some sort of mistake!  Last night in Doctor My Eyes, right at the first guitar solo, I was trying to do a big rip up to a high note on the organ and the Nord locked up on me!  All forty notes I had just touched would not stop playing--a huge aural puddle of puke (that for some reason was hysterical to me).  I had to turn the keyboard off and back on to kill the sound, and I missed the entire section.  It was that kind of night.  I asked Bencuya if he'd ever done that before to a Nord and he said yes--maybe this counts as progress for me!

Here's one of my most favorite/dumbest moments of the night:  we're playing Rikki Don't Lose that Number;  Bencuya's playing piano and I've got nothing but this weird little "marimba under a pillow" sounding thing that kind of gurgles in a couple of spots.  I hadn't planned a sound for it, so I was just going to use my usual marimba sound but turn the highs and the mids off on my mixer.  However, when I turned the knobs on my little board, had my back turned to it (so the knobs we upside down) so instead of turning the highs and mids down, I turned them up.  Straight stupid, and of course I forgot to move them back to neutral for the next song (Africa) so my sounds there were TERRIBLE and super loud due to the gain boost.  I swear, I need a roadie just so I can yell at someone.  Anyway, it finally dawned on me what I'd done, but I'm sure everybody in Suwanee wants to know why I was so bad all of the sudden.

My saxophone reeds felt great last night.  There wasn't a ton for me to do, but my alto reed let me go anywhere I wanted.  I got in some good stuff on Biggest Part of Me, too--the band kind of laid there at the beginning of my solo, so I didn't start trying to play a million notes right at the beginning--I took it easy, too.  I always want to rip into it on that song, and if I could delay a little more, I think I'd getter a better effect out of it.  I get excited...gotta calm down!

I finally added in chords on Lowdown (what is known to us as the Love Boat part).  I wanted to do it at the Park Tavern, but I wasn't sure of myself so I chickened out and just played flute.  I think it sounds better with the full chords.

We finished right around 1 AM.  Bencuya estimated we played sixty-five songs between the two gigs.  I didn't play on all of them (I think he did), so I'll say he gets the gold and I'll take the silver.

I packed up, loaded out (with a little help from Kevin Spencer, Ganesh, and Bencuya) and was home at 2:30 AM, and passed out on the couch by 3 AM (watching  The Godfather).  I slept off and on throughout the morning, and finally started living again around 2:30 PM.

I'm back on my church gig tonight.  It's been a couple of weeks since I've been there.  I'm looking forward to a gig with no pressure (or sunglasses).
www.davidfreemanmusic.net