Saturday, July 3, I played a set with the Schooner in LaGrange, approximately seventy miles south of Atlanta. From what I heard, we played for someone's twenty-fifth birthday. All I know was that it was in somebody's backyard, and the house and yard were Southern Living immaculate.
We debuted two new songs--Diamond Girl and Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do). Both were a little shakey, but for a first attempt in public, they went fine. I did my part, botching the solo on Arthur's. As is usual with the Schooner, all my stuff was in the first set, so I got back home around the time they finished the gig.
I went to bed around 1-1:30 AM and got up at 5 AM. We (Yacht Rock) had to be in Piedmont Park at 6 AM to load for the Peachtree Road Race. We played as the crowds finished the race and the awards were finished, approximately 8:30 AM til 11 AM.
It was a terrific gig (other than the time frame!). The sound was terrific; the crew was pleasant; the monitors were cool. At 7:30 AM we did a soundcheck, and I played some nasty split-tone altissimo Bb's that were deafeningly loud through the PA. That was awesome.
We loaded out across the park at the Park Tavern parking lot around noon. We were not expected at Turner Field for the game until 1:30, so Bencuya, Dannells, and myself went to Dannells' house to change clothes and eat. We ended up hitting the Felini's in Candler Park. From there, we made our way to the Braves stadium for the biggest show of our lives.
Our first stop was the field to rehearse the National Anthem. Crazy. I was surprised that the grass is as short as it is. The field is immaculate. We sang a couple of times (through the mics--we were audible all the way over where the Olympic torch is on the other side of Fulton County Stadium!), and the fighter plane guys timed us for coordinating with the pilots for the flyover.
Here's video of the rehearsal:
We went and set up on the stage (on wheels) in the tunnel. A quick soundcheck and we were done.
Up in the box we hung out for a bit, changed clothes, and ate before we headed down to a holding room before the Star Spangled Banner. The escorted us onto the field, and here's how it went:
What a moment! I wasn't nervous at all, but I was so totally focused on singing that I don't remember anything about being out there. It was amazing, though.
Back to our box; we watched the Braves lose to the Marlins 3-2. Right at the end of the game I went back down to the tunnel, and once the gate opened in right field I rode the stage out onto the field.
There's a lot going on this week/weekend, and I'm right in the middle of it.
Wednesday night, we played Please Pleaserock Me, which if you don't know is the Yacht Rock guys (plus Jason Pellett on trumpet) playing Beatles stuff and songs from their solo records. It's pretty fun. The gig is really easy for me...basically, I have horn section charts and we just read 'em down. For some reason, I couldn't really get me head into what we were doing. It wasn't disinterest so much as the blahs. The gig went fairly well, and we had a decent crowd.
Thursday night was the Yacht Rock Revue at the 10 High--our usual Thursday nighter. The place was packed, which is always nice!
I still had the blahs heading into this one. The first few songs were a little "are we really playing?" Mentally, I had not yet arrived. Thus, I missed the return to the intro on Grease. Nice. It took about half a set to find a groove.
Ganesh Giri Jaya played drums (and Dereck Murphy sat in a couple). I couldn't really get into what either was playing. Everything was too laid back--not enough kicking ass!
Mark Bencuya played a really terrific synth solo on Hey 19, reminiscent of his solo on I Wanna Be Your Lover from the Reagan Rock prom. Other than that, it was business as usual.
After the gig (at 2 AM!), I met up with a guy over by the Dekalb County Jail and purchased his Roland Fantom X6. I am one step closer to being like Bencuya!
Speaking of which, Bencuya paid me the compliment of the year in telling me how much I have improved as a keyboardist. Brandon Still left us last July to join Blackberry Smoke, and Bencuya says that in listening to the recordings from last fall and then listening to the latest stuff he can hear a huge difference in my ability. Great news! I'm glad it's making a difference.
Friday night, the Yacht Rock Revue played at the Park Tavern as part of the Summer Concert Series. This is our favorite place to play right now--the stage is a good size, the sound is impeccable, and the crowds are always enthusiastic. We did our thing last night and they loved it.
A few personal highlights: I played piano on You're So Vain, and it was the best I'd ever played it. I was rockin'! It was awesome. I had a great time playing the clav part on Peg behind Mark Dannells' solo--while I was playing, I imagined Bencuya listening to it 6 weeks from now and wondering what in the hell I was doing! I played organ on Footloose andfell in love with the overdrive knob on the keyboard. I was extremely audible, let's just say.
Mark Cobb was back, and he was on fire. I LOVE playing with Cobb. He was killin' it. He made the entire band better.
We're singing the national anthem Sunday evening at the Braves game, so we tried it tonight. It went pretty well. I got a little off. We practiced it in the dressing room and it was solid, but I wandered around in the middle. Gotta fix that before we step on the field!
Yacht Rock played a gig last night at The Loft on West Peachtree (part of the Center Stage/Vinyl complex). I'd never played there before (I played a sad little solo sax gig out front years ago), so I was excited to see the inside. The Loft, it turns out, is a big concrete bunker--not a great room at all. It makes me wonder why the front of house added so much reverb on everything when we were basically playing in a cave.
The gig was for Have a Heart Foundation. While we were setting up, a few speakers told their stories to the audience. It was pretty incredible stuff. While I was plugging stuff in, a woman told of how her son died in the hospital and gave away his organs (and he helped something like thirty people because of it). The next lady got up and said that she was walking around with THAT GUY'S HEART! Wow. Amazing!
The sound on stage was not very good. I don't know if it was because of all the concrete or the fact that the stage was hollow or just bad mixing, but there was this low-mids ring that roared through every song. Once we got up to volume, it was difficult to hear very well because it was so prominent (at least to me) on stage. My other thought is that sound guys these days are so used to hearing two guitars, bass, and a thrashing drummer that they don't quite know what to do with a band like us.
Ganesh got tripped up again on the beginning of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and Kevin Spencer took a wrong turn (vocally) on Ride Like the Wind. We spoke on the break about how the mind really starts to mess with you on stuff like that. It's the same thing for me in the breakdown of Lonely Boy--because I messed it up a week ago on the Schooner gig, now the voice in my head REALLY goes crazy as we approach that section and I can't shut it up. I start analyzing what I'm playing, and suddenly I'm paralyzed and can't remember what I'm doing. I wonder how many times I have to play it correctly (on a gig--practicing it doesn't fix it) before I can get past that. It's a hurdle that must be cleared. Same thing with Sailing--we really need to play that song about a dozen times so that I can erase the fear of the intro. Playing it on my own a million times (which I have done since the Variety Playhouse disaster) will not cure me. davidfreemanmusic.net
Last night was extra exciting for me--it was my big debut playing Lonely Boy with the A band. Up til now I've only played it (twice) with the B band at Wild Wing Cafes way outside of the perimeter. Since Nick was not there (Kevin Spencer subbing), we were able to add it to the set list. It went really well, if I do say so myself! The spot in the breakdown where'd I'd messed up last weekend came and went without a hitch (as we approached that part of the song, I was suddenly very aware of how much I was sweating!). No problems, though. I was pumped. It was fun.
On saxophone, I had one of those "do no wrong" kind of nights. My solo on Biggest Part of Me was definitely one of the five best attempts I'd ever had at that song. Everything I played sounded right and logical, and I had no technical hang ups. I felt like I could have gone on another five minutes and still played meaningful stuff. It was very cool.
It's worth mentioning that Mark Dannells played some really terrific stuff in his solos on How Long. Later on in the evening he had a "so bad it's almost good" note in Ride Like the Wind. You've got to go for it!
Kevin dared me to do something to destroy Baker Street, so the last time through the sax part, I played my part a half step higher than the band. I assure you, it sounded unbelievably bad. Don't try it. It'll make your toes curl. We loved it.
Monday night I played with the Schooner on a gig for Sam Adams, brewer/patriot. These gigs are super easy for me, because my only responsibility is to show up and play saxophone. The Schooner guys pack all the sax songs into the first set, so I usually show and blow, and I'm home before the gig's over!
Once again, I played very well with these guys backing me up. I could hear really well, and I just went for it on every song. It was really fun. The band sounded really good. Shannon Pengelly in particular played some really rippin' stuff, especially on the second solo on Peg. Yeah, man!
After my set, I stayed because they had free Sam Adams. I drank at least a six pack. I was very entertaining. davidfreemanmusic.net
I found this clip of us playing Careless Whisper at the Reagan Rock prom .
Saturday night I played with the Yacht Rock Schooner (our b band), covering the second keyboard part as well as the sax/flute duties. Also subbing in were Mark Bencuya and Greg Lee. I asked Greg if it was difficult to sing without playing bass at the same time--I remember Sting saying that some songs are very difficult to perform if he is used to playing at the same time. He said no--it was difficult to sing songs he's never sung before!
Since it was the Schooner, we got to play Lonely Boy, which as you might know is one of my personal favorites. It's a fun song to play, and I like the fact that I get to be an essential part of the band on that one. The usual mode of operations is for Bencuya to handle the most essential keyboard part; I am am much better suited to string parts and things of that sort which cannot derail the band when I suffer the inevitable disaster. Lonely Boy is a rare moment when I get to be "the man" and Bencuya's responsibility is in the strings.
So...last night? Three mistakes--nothing horrible. In the first verse, the piano fills in between the chords in the progression with a repeated A. I started thinking about it too much and tripped a little bit. The other two mistakes were a bit uglier--between the guitar solo and the final verse is a break down to just the piano. I was sailing along just fine, and then I started thinking about the chords (up until then I was just playing, and not consciously thinking). Once my brain (and its annoying little voice) started in--right in the spot where I REALLY wanted to be perfect, I was toast. It was kind of like the GPS on my phone, which is messed up and tells me to turn right as I pass through an intersection. "You are currently playing an A minor triad, though the chord here is really F# half diminished." This little monologue caused me to play and E Major triad and then a cluster of some sort, instead of B sus to B. My apologies. Just like my Sailing episode, I can play it just fine twenty-nine out of thirty times. You caught me at number thirty.
That was a little disappointing, but nothing that crushed my soul.
I got into some pretty good sax solos last night--I wonder why it is that the Schooner inspires me to better stuff? My guess would be two things: #1, we are on a small stage and nowhere for me to move, so I focus more on playing and less on showmanship; #2, we are on a small stage and I can hear my monitor well, so I tend to not overblow.
One thing I've noticed in the past (and again last night) is that the drummer tends to end songs in the middle of my phrases. I think in eight measure phrases, and I assume that everybody can hear the "sentence structure" of what I'm doing. On more than one solo last night, things were brought to a halt on the third measure of a phrase--it feels like I'm stopping in the middle of a word! Very strange. I don't know if he cannot hear me or maybe is listening to something else, but ending in the weird spots like that is very uncomfortable.
Tonight's church gig was a medley of frustrations. When we were setting up, the hand drummer informed me that he turned himself way up because a member of the congregation said he was inaudible. I'll check it out, I said. Once the mass began, I was making my adjustments (one of which was cranking him up even more because I could hardly get any sound from his microphone). When I walked past the band to go hear how things sounded in the middle of the cathedral, I noticed he was playing his drum with two fingers. No wonder he cannot be heard! The solution is not to turn him up, but for him to play a little harder. I was flabbergasted. He usually wears headphones--he's hearing the main outputs from the board--so how can he be unaware of whether or not he can be heard? I have his microphone so hot it was picking up more of the piano than him. If you want to be heard, you've got to give me something to work with!
There were multiple vocals solos last night that came without warning. Is it really that difficult to turn around and say "I sing a solo on verse two." Can you give me a heads up? Do you want me to bump you up or not?
The evening was too amateurish for me to tolerate.
The clincher came at the end of the mass when the priest gave away gift certificates to two dads--one with the youngest child and one with the oldest. I had the youngest child, and then a man in the front row volunteered that his child was younger--still in the womb! So, of course, being a Catholic church, the father of the unborn (and thus younger than my five year old) won the prize. Ain't that a bitch? That guy should be ashamed of himself--as my wife pointed out, the only thing that guy's done at this point is impregnate his wife, and there's a big difference between that and fatherhood. Afterwards, the priest said to me "you almost got it!" I should have kicked him in the nuts--he doesn't need those to be a "father." davidfreemanmusic.net
Yacht Rock played a post-rehearsal dinner party at a place in Buckhead called The Pool Hall. A pretty grungy place it was--no door to the men's room--you just walk around the corner and there's a urinal. Nice! The back room had four pool tables (only three functioning last night). It's the kind of place where trash is dropped on the floor and picked up at the end of the night.
The stage was approximately thirty feet wide, but only about eight feet deep, so we set up shoulder to shoulder. I assume Mark Bencuya played the gig, though I never saw him when we were on stage. Actually, the set up was not bad. I could hear everything ok. I'm not sure how it sounded to someone walking the length of the stage. You probably got a good shot of whomever you were standing near.
We played the same set list that we'd played the previous night. Not much saxophone--I think I played sax on two songs in the first set and one in the second. It was mostly keyboard with some EWI thrown in.
We had to load out down a hallway next to the bar because going in or out of the front door was impossible. That worked great for us--the hallway spit us out right in front of our vehicles. Greg Lee helped me pack up.
While we were waiting for the gig to begin, we hung out at Bencuya's car, listening to the board tape from our gig last Saturday night. Pleasantly surprised were we! Everything sounds good. Nice to know that sound guys took us seriously and gave us their best shot. When we played the Variety Playhouse last December, they acted like we were on our first gig--too much telling us what to do (instead of the other way around). This time, they were much easier to deal with.
After that, we did play pool. Mark Dannells and I were doing well in our first game against Greg Lee and Mark Cobb, but not so hot in the second game. We were unable to finish because of the gig, however, so the Dannells/Freeman combination remains unbeaten!
Last night was the usual 10 High gig for Yacht Rock. All in all, not a bad gig! The crowd wasn't interested in what we were doing, and I think that kind of wore on us after a while.
We went through some of our Reagan Rock stuff again. Still got it! davidfreemanmusic.net
I did a gig last night with Full Tilt at the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead, for the same people for whom I had played Sunday night.
The first set (the "dinner" set) was totally bizarre. The keyboardist and bassist are a duo, and they would play the keyboardist's original smooth jazz tunes--the rest of the band was ignored or just expected to wander along with them. Very strange. The keyboardist would tell us the key, but most of the time it was not the correct key. We finally played a standard (Wave), but they played it in C instead of D. Fly Me to the Moon was on the setlist, and when we got to it, the bass player didn't play anything--the keyboardist played left hand bass. It was a very frustrating hour and a half. Lots of glissandi. Bad news.
After we came back from the break, we went into the dance set, and things were much more normal. What a relief! I don't think I could have taken another hour of dinner music.
Here a few more Reagan Rock prom pictures from last weekend.
I played a quartet gig at the Intercontinental Hotel last night. Unfortunately for us, it was an outdoor gig--yet another opportunity to sweat profusely! Other than the heat and humidity(which was only bad for the first hour), things were pretty good. The band for this one was Tyrone Jackson on keyboard, Fuji Fujimoto on bass, and Kinah Boto on drums. For whatever reason, I felt like I was struggling to light a fire under Kinah. I played with all the intensity I could muster, but I don't think he had much to say about it. I felt at odds with the band--the more I tried to lead them in the direction, the more I was pulling against the vibe of the group. Should I have laid back more and gone with them? I don't know. I didn't say anything to him because I would rather not tell him how to play; rather I would expect him to listen to my playing and follow me (at least when I was playing). Ultimately, the fault lies with me. Either way, I was kind of frustrated.
