Old Friends, New Year

I'm back!

I started the year by attending a friend's wedding.  Will Scruggs played in the band (Kingsized) at the reception.  Yay!  I've known Will since he was still in college at Emory, and he sounds better than ever.  Will has done really well at creating his own gigs and finding his own "thing."  Very cool!  He's also a really nice, dependable guy.  You can see what he's up to by checking out his website.  Yay Will!

Will Scruggs!

My family took a week long trip to Disney World during the first week of the year.  Along the way, we had a little time to take the David Freeman:  This is Your Life! tour, visiting all my old schools, homes, ex-girlfriend's homes, and hangouts in Orlando.  It looks just the way I left it twenty years ago.  Has it really been twenty years since I graduated from high school?

my old house

my old school

Being back gave me a chance to reconnect with a few of the most important people in my life.  First was my old saxophone teacher, Artie Almeida.  She (and her husband John) have been on the music scene forever in Orlando, and they're still playing and teaching a lot.  Amazing people!  I love that they've stayed in central Florida and made the most of their opportunities (she got her doctorate in education and flies around the GLOBE giving seminars about teaching elementary music;  he is now the trumpet professor at UCF).  Aside from my family, they were the most influential people for me as an aspiring musician.

After that, we zoomed by my old neighborhood to check in with the Mr. and Mrs. Dougherty.  They are parents to my best friend in high school, Neil, and they often served as surrogate parents when mine weren't available!  Mrs. Dougherty has been one of my biggest fans FOREVER.  They are wonderful people--I wish they were still a bike ride away.

On Sunday, it was back to work.  Church gig number one…usual stuff.  I got a little solo on one of the songs.

 Even Now (sax) by David B Freeman

I didn't bother bringing my flute to church gig number two--just played soprano through the whole thing.  I think most of the pads in the right hand are ruined from the beer spill a few weeks ago.  Time to go see Bryan Lopes!

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NYE on Ice

The Yacht Rock Revue closed out our spectacular year by playing our New Year's Eve show at the Park Tavern.  Just like last year, they put carpet and a stage on top of the skating rink…we were the greatest show on ice?

We played a really good show, I thought.  I can't think of anything that didn't sound good--it was just a really solid, even show to a sold out (1,500 people) crowd.  It was also shown on a webcast, so anybody could tune in.  How cool is that?  Very hip--I hope that continues with next year's Park Tavern summer concert series.

I played pretty well.  I had a couple of spots where I was really killing it, immediately followed by brain farts and corresponding wipeouts.  Oops.  Tim Smith was standing behind me offstage for the entire second set--maybe he wasn't listening to me?  On the whole, I think I was good, though.  Hopefully this erases my abomination of a performance the last time we were here.

As far as New Year's goes…I've never been a fan.  I think because my parents treated it like it was any other night, I've never felt like the world was crossing some imaginary boundary.  After the show, I couldn't get away from the Park Tavern quickly enough, past the puke puddles and the girls so drunk they were crying.  Some lady stopped her car in the middle of 10th Street for several minutes because her passenger had his door open, throwing up again and again (I know because I got stuck behind them).  

At the next light, I looked in my rearview mirror, and guess who was behind me, hazards on, passenger side door open.  Not impressive.

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A Wedding? On a Thursday?

Yacht Rock played a wedding Thursday night.  Weird, huh?  I guess they were cashing in on every discount you could find.  Fine with me, though…instead of coming home at 2:30 AM smelling of smoke (and possibly having to wipe spilled beer off my flute),  I was home at midnight.  Plus, we made more money.  So ha!  A win all around.

The gig was pretty fun.  I mean, especially for a wedding, it was a relaxed, nobody's bugging us kind of thing.  We hadn't played together in ten days--it felt pretty good compared to the previous wedding where we were all committed to getting out of there ASAP.  Mark Cobb seemed pretty refreshed, like he was enjoying himself.  Bencuya slipped Rockit into his I Want to Be Your Lover solo again.  Good stuff.

We played Give a Little Bit again.  I screwed up the sax solo the last time we played it.  And then I heard it in the grocery store a few days before Christmas, and as soon as it started I knew I would be standing there listening to the spot where I bit it.  My shame, conveniently located in aisle six at Publix.  Anyway…the solo came back to me.  I played it fine.  I need to stop thinking about it so much.

We also hit Biggest Part of Me for the first time in a long time.  I had a pretty good solo going on that one, but the weird thing was that I was kind of doing little bunny hops and kind of moving around a bit--almost uncontrollably.  Not like a seizure;  but I the part of my brain that was not involved in the head-to-hands chain that makes the music was saying "Why do you keep doing that?  What the hell is wrong with you?" but I just kept kind of using a little body language to pound out my solo.  I don't do too much of that--there's always some "for the show," but this was more of the involuntary, electricity-running-through-me kind of thing.

Last gig of the year…Yacht Rock is playing at the Park Tavern Saturday night.  Get your tickets now!

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Duo Dave

I played a GREAT duo gig last night with the one and only David Ellington.

Driving up Main Street in Woodstock, I thought "Man, it's dark here!"  My directions told me I was in the right place, but all the shops and restaurants looked closed.  I pulled into the parking lot, met up with Ellington, and we investigated on foot.  It turned out that a car had plowed into a transformer and knocked everything out!  I sent Ellington home and agreed to play the gig solo.

Right before I was to begin, the power kicked back on, so I called Dave and told him to turn around and come back.  In the mean time, I went ahead and played solo sax for about twenty minutes.  Once he was set up, we played a couple of normal length sets.

Part of it was that I was having a great night--I felt good and I had a good reed and I could hear myself--but Ellington really made me play better.  We hadn't played a gig together in over a year, and it felt like we picked right back up.  He played really well and made every tune comfortable.  It was a good gig and good hang with one of my favorite people.

Some guy tipped us a dollar for playing Giant Steps.  I think it worked out to be a penny for each of us per chorus.

Fun stuff!  I hope to see Dave again soon.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Christmas Eve Gigs

I ended up with three Christmas Eve gigs last night…two at church gig number 2, and one at church gig number 1.

The first two were in the parish hall, and turned out to be pretty easy.  I think the most challenging thing about being in there is mixing, as we plug into the wall and use the speakers in the ceiling.  From our spot in the corner, it's impossible to hear what we sound like--I had to walk out a half dozen times and check it out, usually right down the center aisle because of the Christmas Eve overcrowding.

I did help myself right from the start by unplugging all the XLRs from the mixer and zeroing out the board.  No point dealing with all the crap.  I did figure out how to use the onboard effects, so the second service got to hear us with reverb.  Yippee!

Playing-wise, things were ok.  I felt ok on flute, and my soprano felt really good (Lopes just finished putting it back together about a week ago).  Christmas carols are pretty straight forward.

I raced out of Buckhead at 7, headed to church gig number 1.  Driving and changing my shirt at the same time...what other profession does stuff like this on a regular basis?  I thought, what am I going to say when I wreck with one arm in my shirt and my pants wide open?

I made it in plenty of time.  No sweat.  I could have changed my shirt in the parking lot.

The gig went pretty well.  I did catch an audible--play Oh Little Town of Bethlehem on flute.  I was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY out of tune on that one, and fumbling the melody a couple of times made me sweat, which my flute slide around on my lip, which made me sound worse, which made me sweat more.  Turn up the suck!  I was really bad on that.  Good thing only about a thousand people heard me.

They did this really cool thing last year, so I was ready with my camera this time.  Lights out, and then they pass candles out.  It looks awesome.

No church gigs on Christmas Day.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Frampton Proclaims my Brilliance!

I played my final Thursday Yacht Rock show at the 10 High for the year.  Due to the holidays, it was mostly Schooner guys (just Greg and me from the Revue), with the mighty Eric Frampton on the other keyboard.  That means different keyboard parts for me on a few things (Peg, Reminiscing, Hey 19, Lonely Boy, Somebody's Baby, Silly Love Songs, Takin' it to the Streets, Lido Shuffle, Doctor My Eyes, and Thunder Island).  It's fun, but I kind of flinch because I'm used to playing the other part.  Anyway, Frampton said afterwards that I was brilliant!  Quite an endorsement, though I really did play really well if I do say so myself.  I'd played all of those except for Thunder Island before, and once I got through the opening octave thing where the piano enters, it was easy.  I did have one small disaster--in Lido, I was banging out the piano part, thinking about how great I was doing, and then I drove off the cliff at the synth build up.  First synth thing was fine, but when I added my other hand, boom.  I think I tried to start it outlining an F major triad instead of a G major triad.  I had to stop for a second and reset.  Stoooooopid.

Let's get back to the brilliant part…so yeah, I was brilliant.  Let's remember that.

It was not all smoochy lovefest stuff, though.  Some chick knocked a beer off the speaker in front of me, and it splashed beer all over my saxophones and flutes.  Raise your hand if you're guilty (and get poked in the left boob).

Thanks a lot.  Particularly irritating was that she heard the bottle hit the stage, looked to see where it was, shrugged, and went back to trying to take a picture of her friends.  I should have had Nate throw her out.  Now my horns are sticky and smell like beer, and my flute has sticky keys (flute took the worst of it).  Fortunately there were no dents and everything seems to play.  I worked on cleaning flute pads through the entire break.  I tore a dollar bill in half in the process.  Federal offense?

Side note:  Yuengling is really shitty beer.

At some point in the second set, and second drink (in a cup) came off the speaker.  Not cool at all!

Other than that, it was really good crowd.  I went into the gig thinking that the 10 High would either be pretty packed or totally empty.  It was the former.  Yay for that!  Lots of good looking people (women) across the front row.  Thanks for that.

davidfreemanmusic.net

We Made It!

Yacht Rock finished off a tough stretch of gigs by playing a wedding Sunday night at Puritan Mill.  I'd never played a wedding gig there with a stage--always on the concrete floor.  I wonder if it's permanent?

I think it was probably the best gig of the weekend.  The crowd was into it (and really good looking), the load in was easy, the stage was big, we had someone else running sound for us, we only played two sets…piece of cake!  And the band played pretty well.

Not much to report, other than that.  Pete's wife Alyssa was the wedding coordinator (from Sashay Events with Mark Cobb's wife Katy) and she sat in with us on five songs, some of which we hadn't played in a year.  In particular, we hit You're So Vain again, and I finally got through it without choking (like last time).  Yay for me!

Bencuya slipped Rockit into I Wanna Be Your Lover.  Very cool, though it got no reaction from the band.  Not listening?  I tucked three Christmas carols into my Reminiscing solo Friday night and got no reaction either.  It makes me wonder what everybody's doing.  Dannells was standing right next to me and didn't hear any of them.  Kind of like last night at the Buckhead Theatre--I was pumped up about my solo on Dick in a Box, and when I said something to Bencuya about it, he said, "Was it good?"

Anyway…we finished at midnight.  In bed by two.  We made it!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Tacky Christmas Party

Yacht Rock spent Saturday night at the Buckhead Theatre for the Tacky Christmas Party--a benefit for Toys for Tots.

This event was not well attended.  I believe the ticket prices were pretty steep (I heard $75), and we were advertised as Please Pleaserock Me instead of Yacht Rock.  I wonder if we'd been booked as the latter if they crowd would have been stronger.  I think there were only a couple of hundred people there.  It looked pretty empty.

No problems, though.  We played right through it.  There were some great moments (Cobb's drum fill in With a Little Help from my Friends) and some keyboard issues (I switched keyboard patches while playing the drum pads on my Fantom, and the first keyboard note I hit sounded like a police siren!  Holy shit!).

I played a really good solo on Dick in a Box.  I hope somebody got video of it!  I don't know why--just a combination of luck and being able to hear myself well.  I could have kept going--everything I was playing worked great.  Wish I'd played that well the week before!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Rave Against the (YRR) Machine

Yacht Rock played a marathon of a gig last night--4 sets!

The party was at Ventanas…never a good place for a band this size.  Loading in is difficult (to say the least) and the room is acoustically difficult--all glass and concrete.

The most difficult part of this gig, however, was the music in between the sets.  The client played their iPods during the breaks, and it was all euro disco kinda stuff.  I don't even know the genre.  It was what I imagine a rave sounds like, except this was a corporate holiday party.  They loved that stuff, too, which made me wonder why we were there.  I guess they liked us too, but it was really tough to come back from spin-class music and do our thing.

I had a good night playing--better than last night.  My hands felt quick.  Dannells and I did really well on Still the One (me playing the second guitar).  I'm still reading my chart (the concert pitch to alto thing kills me).

We finished at 1 AM.  In bed at 3!
davidfreemanmusic.net

Sax Heavy

Thursday means Yacht Rock at the 10 High!  This gig was pretty good.  We played pretty well and the crowd was more responsive than they've been in the past few weeks.

The set list was pretty sax heavy, especially compared to what we did all fall.  On some of those gigs, I probably picked up a horn once or twice a set, and the rest was keyboards.  Last night, seven of the thirteen songs in the first set had saxophone (only two of ten in the second set).  It was fun, though I I was back to playing some dumb stuff on a couple of songs, and I tried to play Your Momma Don't Dance a fourth away again (like I was playing bari…opposite problem from last week when I WAS playing bari!).

Towards the end of the night, my brain gave out or something.  I played like I was drunk, but I hadn't been drinking.  Some boneheaded mistakes…

We've got a busy couple of days…the last big gig weekend of the year!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Salsa!

I had a fun little salsa gig with Salpicon last night at Kat's Cafe in midtown.  I hadn't done a Latin gig in years;  it was fun to try and keep up with it again.

The circumstances of the gig were a bit insane.  I got called for the gig just before noon Monday.  I went and hung out at a rehearsal Monday night--didn't play hardly anything because there weren't any charts.  I went home, and in the next twenty-four hours charted out ten tunes.  (Along with sleeping and doing a Yacht Rock rehearsal).  Then, boom!  There we are on the gig.  I think it went pretty well.  I played flute as well as saxophone.

In other news, here are two clips from last week's Yacht Rock Holiday Special.





And you can hear me in the mix!  Yay!

davidfreemanmusic.net