David Freeman Music

Thursday night was a really good night of Yacht Rock at the 10 High.  It was much more crowded than it has been, and the band played really well.  All my equipment even worked!  Weird, huh? Pete said that Dannells' and my dancing was a "swirling hurricane of physical friendship." More tonight...we are at whatever used to be Andrews Upstairs (now 8 Track Disco?), beginning at 9:30. www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Last night was Please Pleaserock Me at Smith's Olde Bar.  It went very well.  Most of my charts are almost right. Back to Yacht Rock for the rest of the weekend, and then Easter church gigs.  Stay tuned! www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Here's a computer video of me screwing around with my bari sax.  I was demonstrating for a friend that I'd fixed a leak with made the low end unplayable.  Nothing great, musically speaking.  That's the beauty of the baritone saxophone! You might want to turn down your speakers before the video starts. www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Mark and Katy Cobb had a baby boy this morning!  Gadson Cobb is alive and well!  Congratulations!

Sunday night was a strange one. I went to Buckhead and played my usual church gig.  No problems there, though a big pine tree had blocked one of the streets so I had to navigate around it. The second gig was a Yacht Rock gig at Park Tavern for the Pamoja Penda Music and Art Festival.  Due to some crappy weather that blew threw Atlanta a few hours before (probably knocked down the pine tree), the crowd had dwindled from a few thousand to fewer than one hundred by the time we had arrived. A bummer, no doubt, but it did make the load in easier! All of my equipment worked for a change.  I was sort of anticipating some sort of disaster (because that's the norm these days), but everything was fine.  The only thing I can think of is that I had to change batteries on a wireless pack in between songs. This week should be pretty good.  We have another Beatles tribute gig at Smith's Olde Bar on Wednesday night, Yacht Rock Thursday and Friday, and the Yacht Rock Sch...

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 ...

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 o...

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!)....

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 interf...

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: www.davidfreemanmusic.net

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 aliv...