Blah

The 10 High was pretty blah last night.  The whole night was a grind.

1.  I turned on my Nord, and half the sounds were missing.  Pianos, yes;  upright piano, yes;  rhodes, no; wurly, no;  clav, no;  mellotron, yes.  What the hell?  All you could hear was what sounded like the return on the effects, so it was just a small amount of rhodes with a lot of reverb (the fundamental sound was not there).  Why?  Don't know.  I was able to work around it with the other keyboard.  Glad it didn't happen at a monster gig where I would have been closer to suicidal.

2.  Egnater pointed at me.  Why?  Don't know.

3.  A constant stream of cigarette smoke from the pack of over 50s swingers.  I know they're harmless, but they creep me out (and no, I will not hug you) and they chain smoke right in front of me the entire night.  Why can't they go bug Bencuya for a while?

4.  Annoying middle aged women who think they're MILFs because they've given birth.  No, you can't wear my hat.  No, you can't have the tambourine.  No.

The stripper hanging out with a local radio personality:  "I love your sax playing.  I play alto saxophone."

Me:  "Cool!  Thanks for coming out tonight."  I never know what to say to that…what you did in middle school band and what I do now are veeeerrrry far apart.

Stripper:  "Why are you standing alone in the dark?"

Me:  "There's no one in here that I want to talk to."

Stripper:  "Oh.  Sorry."

That's the way it went.

I plugged in the Nord today and everything works fine, which leads me to believe that even my equipment hates the 10 High.

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The Tyrone Jackson show!

I played a really fun gig with two of my faves--Tyrone Jackson and Wayne Viar.  We were booked as background noise for a corporate dinner, and the client asked that we play something "ethereal," so no jazz trio stuff.

It was really cool.  We didn't plan anything--no songs or keys or grooves.  When the gig started, Tyrone started playing, and Wayne and I did our best to follow him.  It kind of turned into the Tyrone Jackson show because his creativity made the gig happen.  We couldn't have done it without him.

Here's audio if you'd like to listen:



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Marathon

I tried to sleep as long as I could on Saturday, knowing what was ahead.  It wasn't enough.

Saturday evening, the Yacht Rock Revue played a birthday party in Buckhead for world famous author Emily Giffin (ask your wife).  Awesome house (and I never even made it into the actual house!).  A couple of acres of wooded property with a garden, pool, pool house/office.  It was beautiful.

The stage sloped 18 degrees to the rear (as my level app told me).  It might not seem that bad, but when you spend a couple of hours leaning to the right, it gets a little uncomfortable.  I guess the stage builder did not think it was a big deal.

you can see the slope of the tent, dance floor, and stage

As far as parties go, it was about what you'd expect.  We played two sets--the first to almost no one, the second to a pretty good crowd, and then they didn't want us to stop.

I got home around 1:30 AM, packed some more clothes, and took a two hour nap.

A little after 4 AM, I got up, drank a cup of coffee, and headed downtown to play at the Georgia Marathon.  We were told to load in by 5:30 because of the traffic.  We played on a stage in the middle part of the park, right next to the Embassy Suites.  It seemed like it shouldn't be a big deal--there's a street right there, so we'd pull up, dump our gear, park in our designated spot, play the gig, come back, and get out.  No such luck.

First of all, all the streets around there were blocked by 5 AM.  You couldn't get remotely close to the park.  At every intersection, there were one or two Atlanta police officers, and you basically had to keep driving around until you found one who was reasonable enough to let you through to get to the park.  The vast majority of them didn't know or care about a band, and would just tell you they weren't letting you in and you should try the next block over, which was a pain in itself because of the one way streets.  One cop refused to let Peter through a roadblock because he was "whining like a little man."  That's what were dealing with.

We finally got near the stage and dropped all of our equipment off.  The officer on that street wouldn't let us leave our vehicles there, but the designated parking lot for us was on the other side of the park--trying to get back through all the roadblocks and one way streets would have taken forever.  Our policeman told us to park in the green lot at the World Congress Center--"that's where they're staging vehicles."  We drove over there, but they wouldn't let us in, so we had to make a U turn out of there and head out towards the other side of the park.  I ended up parking in front of the  W Hotel downtown, a number of blocks away, and I had to pay $10.  Thanks.

I made my way back across downtown and set my gear up on the well pollenated stage.  Goody.

Two guys in the band overslept and missed the load in time, so the rest of us walked to the Aquarium (where they'd ended up parking) and ferried their gear to the stage.  It ended up being no big deal--we still had plenty of time (and they ended up parking closer than I did).

We played the gig--three sets.  Daylight gradually found us.  The pollen covered us.  I can't really think of how we played.  I guess it was fine.  I hate to say it didn't matter, but it didn't matter.

By the third set, I was really miserable.  The pollen was in my eyes, so I played with one or the other clamped shut.  I was hurting and tired as hell.  The gig ended at 12:30 PM, and we quickly loaded off the stage.

I walked back to pick up my truck, and then drove around Atlanta trying to find my way back to the stage--I came out of the parking lot the wrong way, and ended up driving around the Georgia Dome and the World Congress Center (touring Northside Drive) before I could crack the APD defenses surrounding the park.  When I got back to the stage, no one was there from the band, but my gear was still piled up on the sidewalk.  I loaded up my stuff and drove home.

At home, I took all of my gear out of my truck and wiped down cases, cables, stands, and instruments with damp towels to clean off as much pollen as I could before putting it all away.

I slept or a few hours (with an assist from Benedryl), then got up, took a shower, and played my evening church gig.  I couldn't play for shit, but I looked good.

I was in bed by 8:30 PM.  Hibernate!

davidfreemanmusic.net

First Two-fer of the Year!

I played two gigs yesterday.  Yay!

Gig number one was a trio thing at Lenox Square Mall--Kevin Smith (bass), Tyrone Jackson (keyboard), and me.  We were background music at a private event at Neiman Marcus.

Fun stuff…we hadn't played at trio gig since last November, so I was a bit apprehensive about whether or not I'd be able to keep up, play swing eighth notes, remember any tunes, etc.  I think things turned out fine--I felt pretty good until late in the gig when my hands got cold.  The air conditioner also made me kind of pitchy.

Here's the audio:



Not my best move to break in a new tenor reed on the gig.

Soprano reed…brightest reed ever?  Jan Garbarek?

Gig number two was the regular Yacht Rock gig at the 10 High.  This one was pretty good;  the regular band was there except for Mark Cobb.  We played a few that we haven't hit in a while--Kiss You All Over, My Love is Alive, Thunder Island, Baker Street, and Reelin' in the Years. I had fun.

are those P-90s?

The crowd was ok.  It wasn't very packed and they were kind of ambivalent overall, but the 10 High's been pretty hit and miss for a while.

We have a new bartender!  Caloo?  Kaloo?  Tattoo?  She's good lookin'.  Also present were Megan (woo!) and Jessica's boobies.  Yippie!

photo courtesy of Jim Ramsdell

photo courtesy of Jim Ramsdell

I switched my Nord around so the sustain pedal turns the Leslie on and off.  Every time I hit it, though, my brain treated it like a sustain pedal and I would release the piano keys.  Big dummy.  It's going to take a few gigs to get it sorted out mentally.

Today I was up early to unpack my truck and set out across town for a recording session at Peter Stroud's house.  We recorded a couple of sax parts/solos for the upcoming Yacht Rock originals.  It went really well--I was actually kind of relaxed, and I think for the most part I played good stuff.

Wish I could afford a 414.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Different Stuff

Back to the usual church gigs this week.

Church gig number one was different--we used a horn section this time to fill out specific arrangement.  In rehearsal, it went pretty well,  but on stage, the time got kind of loose--we were strung in a line away from the piano, and the other instruments on stage (V-drums, electric bass, acoustic guitar) were inaudible except for a little bit of it slapping around the house.  Yikes!  I wonder how the whole thing sounded out front.

Church gig number two was normal except that I had Jack with me--I was running sound, playing, and trying to keep my seven year old still.  No easy task.  He got bored really quickly.  Air guitar is not cool in church.

davidfreemanmusic.net

House Live

I did my first House Live gig in a while last night at St. Ives Country Club.  Easy stuff.  Two hours.  They fed us.  Everything was cool.

The House Live gig can be nice because you can practice stream of consciousness playing.  Here's some video (flute, alto, and soprano).  The DJ's stuff doesn't show up on the video that well, but that's the foundation over which the drums (Wayne Viar!) and I are playing.



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Moontower CD release party

I had the pleasure of playing Moontower's CD release party at Eddie's Attic last night.  Fun jammy southern stuff!  The place was packed with fans and family.  Great night!

I played on 2 songs on their new record.  Here's one:

 Every Time by Moontower

This record was recorded at Wonder Dog Studios with Benji Shanks producing.  Benji's so cool…great slide player and a really sweet guy all around.  He played the gig too--he stayed on stage for the whole thing and kept the rest of the band from veering off into the ditch a couple of times (it got a little loose in the second set).  Nice work!  Four guitars, piano, organ, and drums.  Lots of equipment on the Eddie's stage.

Meanwhile, I was cornered at the bar by a short round woman who was so drunk she'd lost the ability to speak English.  We did multiple fist bumps before she went on her way.

Congratulations to Moontower on their first CD!  You can buy it on iTunes here.

Happy birthday Chadwick!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Return to the 10 High

photo courtesy of Jim Ramsdell

The Yacht Rock Revue (with some help from the Yacht Rock Schooner) returned to the glorious filth of the 10 High last night.  Same as we left it!

The gig went ok.  I was into in the first set, and played well.  I got a good solo off on Reminiscing, and we got to play Lonely Boy, which went well.  In the second set, I got really really really really bored and started playing Christmas carols and Smoke on the Water in between songs.  My distorted organ was quite powerful.  

photo courtesy of Jim Ramsdell

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Shamrocks and Church Gigs

Saturday:  Yacht Rock played our first Park Tavern gig of the year, a long three sets celebrating Ireland and alcohol. This gig was big enough to call for an opening band, which I guess needed its own opening band.  Anyway…three bands.  First two…hmm.  No thanks.

Our first set was all U2-we were Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce.  As I mentioned the other night, I don't have much to do except worry about my timekeeping on tambourine and shaker.  I drank a lot of beer.  Not sure in hindsight if I should have challenged myself in this way.

If I may so, I thought we were pretty slammin' on the U2 stuff.  The band sounded really good.

After a costume change, we returned as ourselves for two sets of 70s.  More good stuff--in spite of the long day, we hung in there really well.  Steve subbed again on bass.  He kind of bit it on a few tunes in the second set, but we made it fine.  It's easy to forget how many times we've screwed up these tunes in the past three years--now it's automatic for us.  We had a couple of good laughs at his expense!

The crowd was good the entire day--very little of the annoying idiot drunk types.  They even cleared out pretty quickly after we stopped playing, which made load out a little easier.

Sunday:  I did church gig number one.  The big fun of the morning was a sixteen page chart--what the hell?  Those vocal score plus piano accompaniment charts suck.  The rest of the gig was super easy.  I had a good reed and my flute face was good.

Sunday afternoon, I passed on my usual church gig for the chance to play a gig with one of my heroes, Bryan Lopes.  We played at Cross Pointe Church in Duluth--part of the North Point Church system.  Lopes and I played on one tune that had a sax section thing, so he played bari and I played tenor.  It was fun--the song was fine, but the cool thing was that he and hung out for five hours (and played a single four minute song).

The gig itself was fine, but having Lopes there was pretty intimidating.  I got a solo at the end of the song, and as much as I wanted to play something impressive, I ended up aiming more for not playing anything flat out wrong or just really stupid.  Success, I think.

Lopes and I made it a food gig;  they had dinner for the band before the service, and he and I each ate a mountain of Mexican food, and then burped it up for an hour.  It wasn't even very good, but we made the most of it.  They had chips and salsa, and I'm weak.

davidfreemanmusic.net

U2 Tune Up

Yacht Rock played U2 at The Ivy Buckhead last night…part of the Thursday Night Concert Series that Keeps Us out of the 10 High.  It was a paid rehearsal for us…nobody showed up and nobody in the bar cared.  They didn't even turn the lights on, so we played in the dark.  They must have been busy with the Shake and Bake.

My night was pretty easy, but that's what happens when you're the seventh guy in a U2 cover band, playing second keyboard and percussion.  This pretty much sums it up:

I did get out of there really quickly.  Not much to load out--tambourine, shaker, and one keyboard.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Rehearsal and Recording

It's almost March, so it's almost time for the Yacht Rock Revue to play U2!  We had a rehearsal for a couple of U2 shows coming up--one on Thursday and one on Saturday.  Easy stuff for me…mostly hand percussion, with the occasional one handed keyboard part.

After rehearsal, I made my way over to Madison Studios (where Exocet Studios used to be) for a recording session with Paul Poovey and Eric Alexander.  We did a horn section thing for a Yacht Rock original called Can't Wait for Summer.  I think it turned out well.  Famous last words:  How's this going to take three hours?  It's one tune and we have charts!  Oops.  Peter Stroud produced, though we had a few other "producers" in the room also helping steer the ship.  Russ Fowler engineered.

I put a couple of solos on the tune too.  I think I've mastered the art of not quite nailing it…got close a couple of times, but I couldn't quite get to the end of anything.  Boo.

At least the bari was done in two takes!

davidfreemanmusic.net