Friday into Saturday

Last night Yacht Rock played a private party on the senior quad at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina.  We all met at Avatar, loaded the van, and waded through the Friday rush hour to get up there.

Three hours later, there we were, pulling up next to the stage in our van (with a U-Haul).  We set up, soundchecked, and ate.  Then we were off!

The gig posed two main problems for me.  First, the cold weather made my EWI react differently.  As you probably know, the thing senses breath and translates that into volume.  When the weather is hot and humid (aka "Atlanta"), it's necessary to turn down the sensitivity, or the thing plays itself.  These leads to really annoying problems like the accidental transmission of MIDI data to my laptop.  Boo.  Last night's cold and dry (aka "winter") isn't any better or worse, but I need to reset the thing to account for the cool, dry air.

The second problem, is of course, the tuning of wind instruments when the outside temperature is somewhere below 50, as it was last night.  Since I'm usually picking a saxophone once or twice a set, the thing is ice cold, and thus 20 cents flat (at least later on in the night).  So...push in!  The problem is that while I'm playing and the horn heats up, the pitch rises, so I start solos flat and nasty, and end up trying to play one handed and wrestle the mouthpiece into a better spot.  Again I say--boooo!  Then I put it down, and the next time I have to play, the whole process begins again.

Soundcheck:

Other than that, it was pretty easy.  The crowd was fine...what can I say about college seniors at a small private college (population 1,600).  They've already got the expensive attitudes.

The sound was great, by the way.  Everything on stage sounded good.  However, I think the general opinion was that the back corner (behind Bencuya) was sinking, and the longer we played, the more it appeared that I was uphill from him.  Weird.

We returned to Avatar at 3:45 AM to discover that Mark Dannells' car window had been shattered and his very nice Egnater 1x12 extension cabinet had been stolen.  Again, what can I say...people who do stuff like this need to be reprogrammed.  Dannells cursed the surrounding neighborhood at the top of his lungs for a good five minutes.  We hung out until the police showed up and filed the report.  Anyone with ANY  information should contact the Atlanta Police Department immediately:  (404) 614-6544.

Saturday, Please Pleaserock Me played the Decatur Beer Festival.  It was pretty good.  After all the gigs we've played at Smith's Oldest Bar and Park Tavern, it was nice to be on a stage where we (the horns) weren't shoulder to shoulder.  Special thanks to Greg Lee for deciding what should be in our monitor mix.  He had his own mix (and monitor), but he insisted on having the monitor guy put what he wanted in our box.  Not too cool.  This is not my first wedge, and I know what I want to hear.  Between Greg's monitor, Dannells' monitor, and the live sound on stage, I'm not sure what we would have missed if we'd only had the horns in our mix.  Maybe Greg can explain that some time.  Guest blogger?

davidfreemanmusic.net

Thursday!

Let's begin with a couple of things from the Braves game this past Monday:

a few pictures:

a video of the National Anthem:

Acknowledge and move on.

Thursday began at the Ritz (as it should).  We got up and drove back to Atlanta, and went ahead and set our gear in the 10 High so as not to deal with it later.  Smooth move.

Thursday night we met up again and carpooled over to Ventanas for the Creative Loafing "Best of Atlanta 2010" party.  We played a one our set on about half our usual gear (I was on one keyboard and saxophones--no EWI,  Bencuya brought his Wurly and left both his keyboards at the 10 High).  Who could tell the difference, anyway?  It was fun and easy.  The Red Bull and Vodkas were free.  I did the best I could to keep up.  

That show wasn't too bad.  I couldn't hear a single note I played (on keyboard), as there were no keyboard amps.  I played by sight and hoped it sounded correct.

On saxophone, I had to chuck my tenor reed--it just wasn't happening.  

Sometimes you just have to give up  on it.  It was dull and dead and kind of mushy, even though it was fairly new. I do work on my reeds to balance them and make them play as efficiently as I can, but at some point I think you have to throw them away if they're not working.  I can always hear  (even in a reed that's not there yet), whether there's something in there, or it's just a crappy piece of cane.

We moved over to the 10 High (after a brief spot on the red carpet).

The set there was pretty good.  It didn't get very sloppy, so it was pretty fun.  I kept my amp turned down--it occurred to me that every week I push the volume up higher and higher, and I'm blowing out my left ear. I think I'm seeing (hearing) the light.

We started the set with Heart Hotels.  I've got my keyboard part down.  My Michael Brecker part is still a work in progress--because it's usually the only spot where I improvise a solo the entire night (pretty much every other solo is whatever was played on the record) I tend to go crazy and try and play an entire gig's worth of notes.  I need to relax.  They're major seventh chords!  Calm down!

Perhaps you've heard this beautiful mashup of Imagine and Jump.  Here's a version by the great Mark Dannells!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Yachting on Lake Oconee

Yacht Rock played a private party at the Ritz at Lake Oconee last night.  It was a pretty easy gig, and they got us rooms there for the night.  How sweet is that?!

When we turned up at the rehearsal space to load gear into the van, Sugarland was there conducting tour rehearsals.  No doubt tweaking Jennifer Nettles' fake twang.

We stopped for gas somewhere.  Bencuya didn't want to.

Soundcheck looked like this:

The Ritz is really nice.  The weather was fairly uncooperative--we set up with no cover, and then a cloud sprinkled on us, so we moved inside.  After that, it never rained again.

My highlight of the night occurred on Peg.  I got kind of funky (for me, anyway), on my clav part.  I'm a long way from Stevie Wonder, but at least I'm not playing chord, chord, chord.  

We're back in town for the day to do a couple of gigs, and then out again tomorrow!  Stay tuned for more.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Charles River

I always thought Charles River was a river;  turns out it's a drug company.  I think these people might have been on some Charles River medications.

We did a House Live gig for them last night at the Omni.

Wayne.

Jeremy.

They were an annoying, drunk bunch.  We endured lots of people trying to talk to us while we were playing.  Multiple people walked up on stage to talk to Jeremy (the DJ).  By the end of the night, there were more than ten people sitting on the front of the stage at my feet, and occasionally the fat girl would fall over backwards and almost the microphone stand or my instruments.  We had requests (we're not even playing songs!) for Dave Brubeck and salsa.

Here's my personal highlight of the night:  we're playing, right?  We're background music--we're setting the vibe of the party.  Keep in mind that It sounds something like this, and I'm just improvising over it.  As I'm switching from flute to saxophone, a girl starts yelling to me, so (for some dumb reason) I lean down to hear what she wants.


She:  "Do you know what the next song is?"

Me:  "No."

She:  "Can you ask the DJ to play something more upbeat?"

Me:  "This isn't upbeat?"

She:  "What's the next song?"

Me:  "Inagaddadavida."

She:  "What?"

Me:  "Inagaddadavida."

She stares blankly.

Me:  "It's a classic.  You're gonna love it.  It's upbeat."

She stares blankly.

She:  "What's the next song?"

Me:  "Inagaddadavida."

She stares blankly.

She:  "It sounds really good."

davidfreemanmusic.net

Thank You Bobby Cox

Yacht Rock played at Turner Field last night for the playoff game between the Braves and the Giants.  We also sang the National Anthem on the field.

We set up in the plaza directly behind the center field jumbotron.  I think we played about an hour, maybe slightly more.  It was pretty easy--no new tunes or anything.  The way we were set up was pretty difficult to hear the vocals because the monitors for the front line were pretty far away from me.

Other than that, it was business as usual.  I had to deal with the usual potato chip reed issue--I'm thinking about using plasticover reeds or something like that for outdoor events so I don't have to constantly try and wet and flatten those suckers.  It's particularly noticeable because I don't play much saxophone on this gig (relative to the other things I'm doing). It's probably once every six songs, and  by then they've totally dried out on me.

As we were starting one tune, I noticed the light flashing on the EWI indicating that the batteries were pretty much gone.  Yikes!  There was no time to change them out, so I turned it off and on throughout the tune to conserve energy.  When that song ended, I had time to get out fresh batteries.  Woo!  Dodged a bullet.

We went down in the tunnel to head to the holding room next to the Braves dugout immediately before the game.  Along the way we passed some old guy and a trophy-wife looking blonde, and a couple of other guys.  It turned out it was Ted Turner (as in Turner Field Ted Turner, as in "I created CNN" Ted Turner!).  Here's a casual shot over my shoulder.  You're going to have to believe me.

We went into the room to wait the last few minutes, and in walks Ted Turner!  He went to the bathroom, and then he stood in the middle of us and conducted while we practiced the Star Spangled Banner.  Weird, weird, weird.  I mean, it's Ted Turner.

We walked out and sang.  No big deal.  I'm not sure why I can't get nervous about stuff like that.  I guess it was just us and some microphones.

Mark Bencuya!

From there, we went up and watched the game.  Great seats!  Here's the view.

Mark Cobb!

Mark Dannells and myself.

We left after eight innings to get back to the plaza.  If the Braves won, we would play.  If they lost, we would pack up.  They lost.

Thank you Bobby Cox!

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Big One

Saturday was THE DAY!  The big keyboard crunch...could I handle Bencuya's keyboard parts?  Could I hang with Eric Frampton?  Would I be bloodied by my own shame?









The answer?  I DID IT!  A few minor flubs here and there, but I had a fantastic time (I texted Bencuya:  "Being you is AWESOME!")  and played really well.  Frampton was impressed;  the band was impressed.  Everything worked.  How about that!

My stuff.

Eric Frampton wants a cupcake THIS big.

The only disaster was that I volunteered to sing Lowdown, and I bombed miserably.  I was Linda McCartney-esque pitchy.  Yuck.  I was laughing;  the band laughed at me.  I was terrible.  First attempt singing a solo in public:  no good!  I (of course) have a million excuses/hypotheses, but it came down to missing the first note, and then I panicked and couldn't hear the melody, and the lyrics just flew by.  Oops.  It didn't go like that in my preparation!

The keyboard stuff went well enough that the singing didn't bother me much.  I was disappointed that I didn't sing as well as I did when I worked on it, but oh well.

Saxophone-wise, I am in one of those zones where every idea that I'm playing sounds great.  We stretched some tunes out Saturday night so I could rip on them a little more, and I never ran out of gas.  Same thing happened at my church gigs Sunday.  I wonder why the creativity comes and goes?  It's not like I discovered a new way of thinking about any of this stuff--it's the same musical vocabulary I have been using.  The ideas have meaning right now.  I don't know...maybe it always sounds the same on the other side of the horn, but I believe myself more.

davidfreemanmusic.net