Summerour

I never did figure out for whom we were playing last night.  The Yacht Rock Revue did some kind of auction/charity event thing last night at Summerour.

This gig went much better than the previous night's blanks.

All the excitement (for me) came in the second set, when the batteries in my EWI died in the first song.  I just swapped them out for what I thought were fresh ones, so I must have a bad one in there.  Anyway, pretty significant panic.  I was able to limp through the first tune (Africa) by turning everything off whenever I wasn't playing.  Once we got through that, I quickly stole the four batteries in my sax mic transmitters and put them in the EWI.  Whenever I needed to play saxophone in the second set, I would take the two batteries out of the wireless MIDI transmitter I have on the EWI and put them in the sax transmitter.  It wasn't too bad--I just had to plan a couple of songs ahead so I would be ready to do the battery Chinese fire drill in between songs.

I'm thinking about stashing a pack of AAs in Monkey's amp.

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Spaced Out

The Yacht Rock Revue played our (somewhat) regular 10 High gig last night.  This gig isn't paying nearly what it used to produce, but it's still giving us a couple of extra rehearsals.  We have a pretty big show coming up a week from tonight (Friday), and the opportunity to screw these songs up in front of a smaller crowd is appreciated.

My amp died while I was soundchecking…scared me for a second, but it turned out it was a bad power cable.  I swapped it with the cord from my top keyboard, and it was steady, but then my Fantom would turn off randomly whenever someone came near.  So…bad cable.  I broke out my spare.  Problem solved.

We started out pretty well, in spite of the very thin crowd.  Somewhere towards the end of the first set, I started spacing out.  I was playing, but not paying too much attention.  I wandered around on break (went upstairs and watched baseball), and the first half of the second set, I was mentally NOT THERE AT ALL.  The strings on the chorus of I Want to be Your Lover?  Not in the first chorus--I just watched go by, and it kind of clicked--hey dumbass, it'd be great if you'd play.   Oops!  OK, I'm back…no I'm not.  I missed the flute entrance to Lowdown.  Same thing--I stood there thinking, why is everybody already playing? (it's stacked entrances--bass, guitar and rhodes, flute, then the first verse).  I totally missed it.  I will say that I played a pretty rippin' flute solo.

The rest of the gig floated by.  I don't think I screwed anything else up, but I wasn't paying attention.  Duuuuuhhhhh…

Exciting news…Hans confirmed my suspicion that Heart Attack and Mr. Heart Attack (center of the last picture above) are swingers.  Yuck!

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Easter

I got shut out of my AM church gig yesterday…they were doing some kind of more traditional service with a chamber orchestra ($$$$!), so no Dave.  Boo.

My PM church gig went well, though my soprano reed did not rise from the dead.  It's done.

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First Time in Months!

The Yacht Rock Revue conquered the 10 High last night.  Even though it's our regular Thursday night gig, all seven of us haven't been on stage together there since mid December.

It was a great gig--the most fun you can have at the 10 High.  We never got bored, the crowd was responsive (even though it looked from the outset like we'd be smothered in douchebaggery), Heart Attack didn't have one (she did eat a bowl of fries in between cigarettes), and everybody played pretty well.  There were some rough moments (I sucked real bad on the stupid Wham song), but nothing to kill the vibe.  Good show.

We had a couple of guests…a guy named Adam Johnson (friend of Dannells') sang Hold the Line, and Jeremy Stacey (of Sheryl Crow and Noel Gallagher fame) got up and played Hey Nineteen with us.  Both were really good.

Here are some audio for my Eighties girl:

 Careless Whisper by David B Freeman

 True by David B Freeman

It's funny to hear people singing as loudly as the band.

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Sweet Water, but Not on my Keyboard

Soooooo…Yacht Rock played a benefit for the Atlanta Humane Society, held (just like last year) at the SweetWater Brewery.  I like dogs, so yay--fun gig.  There were several ladies walking around with dogs. I got lots of weird looks for encouraging their animals to "quick!  go get in my truck!"

Things were fine.  We loaded in, set up, soundchecked.  We ate their food (they had chips and salsa=yay!).  We played a set--sounded good.  We played another set, and you could see lightning off in the distance.  Hmm.  We decided not to play the last forty minutes of the gig because the weather was closing in on us.  The Humane Society was cool with that.

A couple of drops and we started to pack up.  Before we could get much further along than that, it started pouring!  Aggh!  The stage is covered, so we had protection, but the rain was blowing in from the front of the stage.  We moved everything as quickly as we could to the back of the stage.  Our cases, which had been stacked outside of the stage, were pretty wet, but we got everything on stage was quickly as possible.

It looked like we were managing ok, and then the roof began to leak!  A pretty good stream of water started, almost directly on my keyboards.  It managed to soak all of my cables and pedals.  I got my horns put away and my laptop covered, and Pete scrambled to get both my Fantom and Nord into their cases.  It was chaos for a few minutes.

The rain eventually let up, and I got everything in the truck.  When I got over on the interstate, the roads were totally dry, but a few miles down the road I got another blast of thunderstorm.

All of my equipment is laid out on the dining room floor.  Tomorrow I get to see what's working and what's not.  Fun!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Pretty Good Sunday

Actually, it was a really good Sunday.

My AM church gig is beginning to make sense.  Maybe I'm getting used to the new format, but the big horn section songs don't feel as weird as they did.  It also makes it easier for me with instruments--I know it's just going to be tenor and clarinet, so I'm not going to drag my other stuff to the gig.

One thing that was a drag yesterday morning:  getting off the elevator and hearing the band already playing.  It turns out that the band leader wanted to start at 8 instead of 8:30 (when I showed up), but he didn't tell anybody, so as people started filtering in, they had to dive into rehearsal.  Nice.

We're off the "all black" clothing thing, which is totally cool with me.  I'm not a fan of that look, especially when fewer than half the musicians are actually doing it!

From my church gig, I drove to Dallas, GA for a quick recording session.  Some guys had recorded the Rolling Stones' Can't You Hear Me Knockin', and they needed someone to provide the saxophone solo.  No sweat.  Time to drive out there:  40 minutes;  time in the studio (from the "Hi, I'm Dave" handshake to the "Thanks for having me" handshake:  15 minutes.

It was a home recording set up--two rooms in a guy's basement.  I was in one room with an expensive mic, the control room was on the other side of the wall.  There must have been some kind of limiter on the headphones, because the mic was so hot, I could hear my stomach gurgling, and when they'd talk to me, I could hear well, but when I played, there was no sax in my ears, and the overall mix was really low.  I guess it wasn't a big deal--I could still keep in time, but it just sounded kind of weird.  Anyway, I blew through it and that was that.

My PM church gig was the normal thing.  Palm Sunday!  Every time someone would mention Judas Iscariot, all I could think of was the Branford tune.

The vocals sounded good, and no complaints from anybody.

Here's one more from Saturday night's gig:

 I Can't Go for That (Yacht Rock Revue) by David B Freeman

davidfreemanmusic.net

Rhodes Hall Wedding

Yacht Rock played a wedding at Rhodes Hall in Atlanta last night for a couple of .  If you've ever been there, you know there's no room for a seven piece band.  Fortunately, the weather was perfect…almost everybody ate supper on the front lawn, and the band was set up on the porch.  Nice!

This was a super easy gig.  Two sets…we played from about 7:30 til 10, with a break in the middle.  Everybody played well.  We're getting the hang of it!

Here's last night's attempt at Maneater.  I almost got it right.

 Maneater (Yacht Rock Revue) by David B Freeman 

And the crowd goes wild!

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The Expensive Stuff

The Yacht Rock Revue played a mixer at the Piedmont Driving Club last night.  Expensive pussy.  Lots of hot, ultra rich women as far as the eye could see.  There was also a crazy lady who terrorized Mark Dannells for a while (much to my enjoyment).

So guess who played a wrong note in the fuckin' Maneater solo?  What the hell is wrong with me?



In my defense, I will say that the sound on stage was kind of strange, and when I went up to play the solo, almost the only thing I could hear was Bencuya's synth (but not really the rhodes) and some drums, and I felt like I might be in the wrong place and maybe my mic wasn't on.

Everything else was cool and they loved us.  Easy gig!

davidfreemanmusic.net

One More at The Ivy

The Yacht Rock Revue played our final show at The Ivy Buckhead last night.  We did our Dazed and Confused stuff, so lots of two guitar/one keyboard stuff.  I spent a lot of time doing nothing.  For the first couple of nothing songs, I turned the volume all the way down on my keyboard and just pretended, but even that got kind of lame.  I watched a lot of Sportscenter…I saw Trent Richardson and Ryan Tannehill's pro day workouts multiple times.

In the second set, I played on four of the songs--one was just tambourine, and one was a wurly part that isn't on the original (so that I would have something to do!).  So…lots of time watching the band.  We did play Whatever Gets You Through the Night.  That was cool.  My other great highlight was sneaking in the intro to Amoreena before the second set.  Thanks to Mark Bencuya to launching my obsession with this song.



davidfreemanmusic.net

Church Things

I did my two church gigs this Sunday.  It was kind of nice getting home earlier last night--I wasn't as tired (or grumpy) at church gig number one.

My AM gig is changing…I'm not sure where it's headed.  For the past year and a half, we've been half traditional hymn based stuff, and half more contemporary stuff with a heavy gospel vibe (which was cool because it left me some room to blow).  Now we're going between the traditional stuff and things that I don't know how to describe…here's the one we played this week:



I'm not sure how it's going over--this and the one we did a few weeks ago have a lot of production in the recording.  We did a horn section thing, but that big velvety wall of strings and stuff isn't there.  I'm not sure what it sounds like in the audience.  I do know that the horn section against the sound on stage feels really weird--there's pretty much no audible guitar, bass, or drums, so it's us trying to get something going with the acoustic piano.  Maybe it works out front…I don't know.

Whatever's happening does feel like a bit of an identity crisis.

The PM church gig was pretty low key.  I did bite my tongue when one of the singers started bitching about her microphone not being on.  It was on and it was coming out of the speakers, and I did check the input level several times.  I get the feeling she's trying to do something to round out her voice, and it's not not cutting through the way it used to.  This week, I'll let it slide.  If I hear more about it next week, I might be persuaded to do bad things…not immoral (we're in a church!), but there are lots of knobs on the mixer.

Another good week of gigs is coming up.

Also, for those of you who are not Facebook people, you might want to take a look at my YouTube channel, which has several recent additions.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Early Wedding

The Yacht Rock Revue played an early evening wedding yesterday…geez!  why don't more people do that?  It was great.  We loaded in (supposedly) at 1:30 PM and finished at 9 PM.  I was home shortly after 10 PM.

The reception was at 103 West, home of the first gig I ever played in Atlanta.  I hadn't been in there in a few years (the downstairs), but they've totally redone it--it's no longer dark and cramped.

We played a set of Beatles stuff and two sets of Yacht Rock.  The playing part moved really quickly.  Easy gig!

davidfreemanmusic.net