Thursday Night Tune Up

Last night was supposed to be the final tune up for the Second Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special, but Nick felt himself getting sick and decided to take the night off (turns out Cobb had diarrhea and projectile vomit happening last night, too), so it ended up being just another night at the 10 High.  K Spence in on lead vocals and Ganesh on drums.

Is there such a thing?  This one was really good, especially in the first set.  We were really going for it.  I was having a great time, playing well.  Everybody was playing well.  All my stuff sounded good and felt good.  I got through Lonely Boy with no issues (mental or otherwise).   Even Dannells seemed satisfied with himself.

Dannells is awesome.

Just like last week, the cold arctic air coming down the stairwell made my horns unhappy.  Both instruments had potato chipped reeds when I picked them up, and I had to quickly rehydrate them to return them to normal.  Why is it that I only have to do that once, and then they're ok?  The potato chipping thing only happens one time per gig for me, no matter how long they sit after I flatten the tips out.

We went on break and I sat down and got really sleepy.  Not tired, but sleepy like my contacts were bugging my eyeballs and I wanted to take them out and go curl up somewhere.  Alas, the show must go on!

The second set was pretty good, too.  I remember Bencuya playing a really cool synth solo on Lowdown, and evidently Han's pitch shifter mutilated what I was playing in the PA on Baker Street (I couldn't hear it over my on stage sound).  People stayed until the end, and they were not disappointed.  It was fun, and we made good money.

Tonight's show at the Park Tavern should be awesome.  Usually I kind of dread these special ones because I feel pressured and unprepared, but I'm confident I'm going to nail it tonight.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Preparation

I've spent the past few days preparing for the Second Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special coming up this Friday at the Park Tavern (tickets still available for the early show, but the late show is sold out!).  We learned some holiday songs and some new Yacht Rock songs.  It's gonna be good.

We did a rehearsal Tuesday night.  What a difference a year makes!  Last year, I was struggling in my attempts to do anything useful on the keyboard--very much gritting my teeth and holding on for dear life.  This time, I am a much more comfortable.

I practiced the new stuff a ton--I pretty much had it all memorized going into the Tuesday rehearsal, so I had no problems.  Things went so well, in fact, that I impressed Bencuya with one of my synth parts!  I was showing Cobb two missing measures, and I ripped off the bridge for him, and Bencuya said something like, "Holy shit!  That sounded REALLY good!"  How 'bout that!  I feel like I never have to play it perfectly again since he heard me.  I almost called Brandon on the way home to tell him the good news.

Wednesday morning, we did a live performance on the Regular Guys show.  It went well, though in the back of my mind I was cognizant of the fact that I was playing keyboard on the radio, and if I crashed and burned, many many many people would hear it.  However, it went fine.  I had no mistakes that I can recall.  We did Wonderful Christmastime and Imagine a Jump (Dannells sang the hell out of it!).

Wednesday night I did a Schlock Rock performance--my first years.  Schlock Rock is Jewish musical parodies of popular songs.  So, there was La Bamba with Hebrew words (about something Jewish).  There was a song built on Lady Ga Ga's Pokerface.  There was a song by "The Kosher Police" about keeping kosher, sung to Every Breath You Take.  There were Beatles melodies with Hebrew lyrics.  It was bizarre.

Lenny Solomon played an old DX7!  I texted Bencuya "A working DX7!"  and then it cut out during the first song.  Oops.

Thursday morning was another Yacht Rock rehearsal.  Same kind of thing--I feel better about this gig than I have about any other Yacht Rock special event.  I'm ready to kick ass.

davidfreemanmusic.net

So Schoon Me

I played another Yacht Rock Schooner gig last night--a holiday party at a country club.  Hans on sound!  Not much I can say about it.  This one was three sets of music, so the sax stuff was really spread out.  I think I only played two tunes in the last set.  It was super duper easy.  In a way it was kind of boring, but it was nice to take it easy.

I had lots of people asking me why I wasn't playing.  "Putting out the vibe."

Earlier in the day I played my morning church gig, which seems to have kind of calmed down from the chaos of a few weeks ago.  We were spread out along one edge of the stage due to an orchestra concert that night, so I was very far from the piano.  It was me and drums, as far as I could tell.  At least I finally found a place to sit down!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Saturday Schooning

I played a gig last night with the Yacht Rock Schooner--just saxes and flute--for a holiday party at the Cobb Energy Center.  It was really sweet being that close to home.  20 miles round trip!

It was pretty easy, but as always, it's really weird to not play the other parts of the song the way I'm used to doing in the Revue.  I spent about half the gig sitting off to the side of the stage, playing games on my phone.

The band sounded pretty good, though the mix could have been better.  You'd think (if you were a sound guy) that a band with two keyboards must have a significan amount of keyboard stuff going on in the music, and maybe you'd want to hear that in the mix?  The times that I was out front (when not playing games on my phone), it was all drums and bass.

Other than my lack of faith in the sound production, it was good.  I played pretty well, and I was home before midnight.

I took my attire inspiration from this video of David Sanborn playing with Paul Simon.



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Thursday

Usual Thursday...I redeemed myself on Lonely Boy.  I experimented with the difference between vibrato  and leslie on my organ stuff.  Not too much else happened--my awe inspiring setlist (complete with clip art) was about all I had.  It was a weird night where it seemed like I couldn't get my levels set quite right--too much of this, too little of that.  I'm trying not to set my stuff up wide open, but when I stand up (to play saxophone, for instance), and I don't get the feeling that I've got any kind of volume happening.  Even Nick asked me if my sax mic was on.  Hmm.

I will say this...my reeds are old and soft, and I played Baker Street sooooo flat.  I would've needed a hacksaw to get up to pitch.  Soft reed, and then all the cold air blowing down the stairs hit my horns.  Boo.  Time to start breaking in a new batch!

So much for that.  In the mean time, check this out (with fellow IU alum Sara Caswell on violin):



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Beatles vs. Stones

We played a AWESOME gig last night.  The Main Street Exiles were rockin'--best gig I've ever played with that band.  Please Pleaserock Me then took the stage, and played the best gig we've played in a long time!  Great stuff, great set list.  Even the crowd was great.  I had a wonderful time.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Protec's Secret Glue: Vomit

I had a rehearsal yesterday for the upcoming Yacht Rock Holiday Special (Friday, December 10).  We also went over the Beatles stuff for the Please Pleaserock Me show (tonight at Smith's).

I used my bari sax at rehearsal...I opened the case for the first time in probably six weeks, put the thing together, and got ready to wail.  As I drew my breath for the first note, I was nearly killed by the smell of...puke?  I don't know.  My horn smelled like somebody/something had thrown up in it, and then baked it.  I nearly died.

When I got home, I washed the mouthpiece, the neck, the mouthpiece cap, my hands.  Total sterilization.  I squirted some mouthpiece disinfectant into the neck and left it there.  But where was the smell coming from?  It turns out my new Pro Tec baritione saxophone case is glued together with barf.  I Febrezed it and dumped an entire box of baking soda in it, and it's currently outside sunning itself.  Here's hoping the odor is eliminated, or there may be trouble.  Funny that I did a google search, and I'm not the only person who has dealt with this particular problem.

I did a House Live gig last night at Ventanas.  The usual stuff...how many more pictures of that place do I need?  Nothing else of note happened, though I did notice my effects pedal was very uneven--some sounds were much louder than others.  This morning I checked it out--I used a TRS (stereo) to XLR (microphone) cable, and only some of the effects were only coming through on one side of the stereo, while others were both.  Oops.  Gotta use a TS (mono) cable to a DI to an XLR, even though the quarter inch output says stereo.  I guess you've gotta be stereo on the other end, too.  Live and learn.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Usual Sunday

I got home from the trip to Athens at something like 4 AM, unloaded the truck, and went to bed around 4:30 AM.  Ouch.  I was up three hours later to chug some coffee and head out to church gig number one.

Church gig number one was the typical circus that I've described in the past few weeks.

The service began a half hour later (10 AM), and last week I asked if rehearsal would be a half hour later.  Yes was the answer I got.  Of course, I showed up at 8:30 this week and they were knee deep in the music, making me look late.

Other than that, it was the typical one song of this, one song of that, one song with a choir I'd never seen before, one song with handbells.  I didn't get any preparation emails earlier in the week this time, so there was nothing I could have done differently.

I've been wearing my glasses to this first gig so that I don't have to force my contacts into my face so early in the morning, and once again I noticed how much I need my peripheral vision--a little cue, or eye contact with someone.  That's too bad.  My eyeballs aren't in the mood that early in the morning.

I don't know if it's by design, but when I began this gig we were playing a lot more gospel sort of stuff, and now it's turned more towards the contemporary christian stuff--less tenor and now more soprano.  Less blowing for me (and more sneaking around in the music).  It remains to be seen how this will play out.

I went home and went back to bed.

Church gig number two was also the same as it has been.  Fewer singers than past weeks...drummer plays too softly--he should take off his headphones and balance his volume to the rest of the band acoustically...drummer should mic the suspended cymbal...some of the regular music has changed with the liturgical calendar, which is nice after playing so much of the same thing all summer/fall...my infatuation with the tight clothes usher is waning...

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Melting Point

Yacht Rock played in Athens at The Melting Point last night.  A great gig!  The sound was wonderful and the room was really cool.

We met up at the office and headed out of town, stopping along the way at our favorite gas station.

The stage was kind of small, but we were able to make it work.  The sound was great!  It was a really good volume on stage, and I really dug that I didn't have to turn up that much because I could hear myself in the house.  Yeah!  The sound guy--Mike--was very good and paid attention to us.  All the solos got a good bump in volume.

I got kind of worried when I set up and we tried my line and got nothing--same thing as at Andrews!  Mike fixed it, though.  It was a problem on his end.


Ganesh played drums with us.  Danni covered for Greg Lee.

My only major flub of last night was the breakdown on Lonely Boy.  It was a reverse brain fart!  I was going along and not really thinking about what I was doing, and right at the break where everybody but me drops out, I started consciously thinking about what I was doing, and then I had NO IDEA what I was doing.  Damnit!

Mike Bielenberg filled in for Bencuya.  He did very well!

Pete and Nick covered the stuff that Bencuya and Greg usually sing, and they were perfect.

Dannells played some great stuff on Doctor, My Eyes.  He started the first solo with this AWESOME bent note.  I wish I could do stuff like that.

Great gig, great night!  I even took a nap in the van on the way home--woke up back at the office.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Main Street Exiles at the Star Bar

Main Street Exiles played a gig last night at the Star Bar, opening for Nine Inch Neils.  The opened for us.

NIN were really good.  Much like Yacht Rock, they are able to use the kitsch factor to win the crowd over.  I mean, they got the whole Star Bar to sing along to Sweet Caroline, I Am I Said, and Song Sung Blue.

Our set was kind of rough.  We jumped up on stage, line checked, and started playing.  No monitors or anything.  Tony decided to leave the bass cabinet on the opposite side of the stage from where he usually is, so I flipped and stood next to Freddy.  We used a different drummer (Donovan Babb, who played very well).  Cox's microphone kept coming unplugged.

Chris Cox

Here's the problem with all that--the songs are really loose to begin with, and Cox needs everyone to be in the right spot so he can be loose, and we need to be able to hear Cox clearly in order to know where he's going in the song.  Instead, all I could hear was Freddy's guitar (which sounded great, but...), and the drums.  I didn't hear anything of me through the monitor.  Sometimes (in between songs!) I could hear it in the house.  I think I was playing everything right.  Cox got kind of frazzled and lost his place, and we kept dealing with drunk people putting their jackets over his monitor (at one point I saw the drunk guy take off his suit jacket and put it down, then untuck his shirt, then take off his belt, and I thought...ooooooohhhh, this is fixing to get weird!)

Anyway, it was kind of rough.  No disasters where we had to stop, but plenty of moments where everybody had to tread water for a second before going into the next part.  

Afterwards, the sound guy told me that me sax mic "stopped working altogether" towards the end of the show.  I would have thought that's something worth mentioning during the gig.  Even better, isn't that something worth trying to fix?  I hope most of it was there.  I could kind of hear the solos in the mains, so I think I was ok.  

That's what kind of night it was.  Once we got paid (pretty quickly), everyone went their separate ways.  I wasn't the only one looking to get out of there.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Turkey Eve

Yacht Rock played Turkey Eve at Andrews Upstairs/8 Traxx Disco Wednesday night.  Sold out!  Very cool.

The sound continues to be a problem in that room.  When I arrived, the stage looked like a tornado had just passed through.  Cords were everywhere and a monitor was face down.  The sound guy was kind of putting it all back together.

I was not a fan of the sound guy.  Right from the start, I made a recommendation about where to put one of the monitors (in front of Greg and Bencuya), and he continued moving it further to the side (right where I set up my keyboards).  When I said something like, "That's not going to work," his response was "That's the way it's going to be."  I bit my lip and helped Ganesh load in gear.

Once I started dealing with my own equipment again, I set my keyboard stand behind the monitor in question, and the sound guy moved it, insisting to me that we keep an open path across the stage.  Moments later I saw him pick up Ganesh's kick drum and move it.  I don't think it's cool for the sound guy to ever move the band's equipment without permission.  He excused himself with "We're all trying to make the gig happen."

So...I climbed off the front of the stage, unplugged the misplaced monitor, and moved it to where it should be.  Then I could set up properly and still leave the open path.

Once we finally got down to checking the sound, my line had some sort of issue where he was not getting enough signal.  I checked the line by running it into my amp and it worked fine, which made me think that the problem was on his end, but instead of him troubleshooting his part, he had me reroute my signal to accommodate him.  I was not thrilled.  Because of that, I had no independent control on stage (because all my adjustments affected what I was sending him).

Everybody else seemed fine with this guy, so it must have been me.  He told us he'd been there since 10 that morning "fixing stuff."  The guy last month had spent several hours "fixing stuff" too, and it had sounded pretty good.  I'm kind of curious as to how much stuff needed to be fixed, since we're the only band that plays there.  I would presume that everything was basically the same as we had left it.

Pre-show, we were hanging out in the dressing room, and the sound guy came back and mixed himself a drink, which I thought was weird--hopefully he's not getting hammered, and hopefully he's not using our booze to do it.

The gig itself was typical of Andrews, which is to say kind of numbing.  On the second song of the gig, Bencuya's microphone clip fell off the mic stand while he was adjusting it, and he sang a verse and chorus holding the microphone in one hand and playing with the other.  The sound guy was on stage and off constantly, dealing with bad cables and god only knows what else.  Dannells played a terrific solo on Peg, but nobody heard it because the microphone on his amp was evidently not functioning.  Early on in the gig I could hear my sound in the house, but once he got it dialed in, I felt like I vanished.  Things like Hey Nineteen and Africa felt like I wasn't in the PA at all.  It's never a good feeling.  Pete said he couldn't hear me at all.

Speaking of Africa, I was playing the solo without thinking, and for some reason as I was playing I began thinking consciously about what I was doing, and couldn't remember the last note of the solo.  If I'd continued playing and NOT thinking, I would have been fine, but since I started thinking, I played a HORRIBLE last note.  Stupid me, stupid me.

We played Baker Street, and maybe it was just an optimum reed and my throat was really relaxed and open, but I have never played a saxophone that loudly.  I was kind of impressed with myself.

Overall, I played pretty well.  I don't think I embarrassed myself in front of Bencuya very much (except for the end of Africa--he yelled his approval at my last note).  I was better than last month.

After the gig, the room emptied quickly--not like Halloween, when we had to fight through the dancers with our equipment.  The DJ in there is still pretty bad; it doesn't seem to crush her ego too much when everybody leaves after our show.

davidfreemanmusic.net