David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock is in the middle of a pretty big (for us) east coast tour.  Here's what's happened so far: Wednesday:  we left Atlanta and drove all damn day to Washington DC.  Lots of driving, napping, and talking.  We made a lunch stop somewhere in the Carolinas, which turned out to be great. Most of us hit a Whole Foods.  I bought twenty bucks worth of fruit and two slices of pizza. We stopped in Richmond for supper at a place called Millie's Diner --super good food and cool people.  They had those at-the-table-jukebox-selector things.  Thelonious Monk was on there!  I played both-- Monk's Dream and Trinkle Tinkle . The band spent the night in the same crappy hotel that we had stayed in on a previous trip.  Our room smelled like they'd bombed it with five gallons of carpet cleaner.  Bad stuff. Thursday:  one nice thing about staying at the same hotel is that we knew where to go for coffee. More driving…eventu...

I had a rough trio gig last night.   Tyrone Jackson , Nadav Spiegelman , and myself were booked as a trio for background music at a corporate dinner.  Great, right?  I've probably played five hundred of these--we do our thing, they eat, everybody's happy. We began with my tune Under a Tree : You might notice while the piano and bass are soloing, I am in conference with two ladies (agent/hand holder people).  The lady who hired them (who in turn hired me) is freaked out.  Basically, she doesn't like what we're playing and wants to know what else we can do…like…I don't know…blues was thrown out as a different genre, to which I countered that it's going to sound like a jazz trio playing a blues.  Then it went to pop music, whatever that means.  This one stumped me.  Obviously the instrumentation severely limits what we're capable of doing, and who knows what pop tunes we might know between us and be able to pull off. The best we could do was...

Yacht Rock headlined Athfest 2012 in Athens, GA last night.  Great crowd, good weather, nice size stage, easy load in;  bad sound, bad sound, bad sound.  We set up in a hurry (in front of everybody), plugged everything in, and the sound guys couldn't get it together.  It was one of the most awkward line checks ever.  The entire audience got to watch as the crew tried to figure out what microphone they'd just plugged in to what channel.  Not good! Once we got off and running, the sound guys let a couple of microphones feedback just slightly through the entire set.  One was my vocal microphone, which I unplugged after three songs.  The other…we'll never know.  Obviously, they didn't. In other news, I couldn't play the horn lick on Rosanna to save my life.  I was 0-4. Mark Dannells had an atomic flip out after he messed up his solo on Can't Wait for Summer .  Briefly, I wondered if he'd be able to play the remainder o...

Yacht Rock played our monthly gig at the Park Tavern last night to 1,600 fans.  The show sold out early in the afternoon, but they sold a bunch of walk up tickets at the door.  I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it was PACKED. Great crowd, great gig!  We did a chronological set, beginning in 1972 and ending in 1984. Takin' it to the Streets showed up on the set list for the first time in months.  The set list maker does not care for this song.  Naturally, I like it.  We rarely play it.  It seems really silly to me that a couple of obvious yacht rock songs ( Baker Street being another) are rarely performed because someone in the band doesn't care for it.  How is any song on our setlist better or worse than any other?   Takin' it to the Streets by David B Freeman We slipped our originals in there.  They seem to be getting better, though I sucked on the horn section part.  Thinking in two keys will ...

The Yacht Rock Revue closed out our four year residency at the 10 High in Atlanta last night.  Has it already been four years?  We're moving on because our schedule is so packed, we can't make it most of the time.  Rather than show up every five or six weeks for our house gig (to ever dwindling crowds), we decided that it was time to let it go. Naturally, the send off party was super packed.  I went upstairs on the break, and there was STILL a line of people out the door of the Dark Horse waiting to get in.  That's pretty neat.  I can only think of one other "line out the door" night. The crowd inside was, of course, jammed in there.  I wish they'd given out breath mints at the door.  Lots of very appreciative people--they all made it seem like we were never playing again.  Maybe they misinterpreted Jim's Last Waltz poster ?  I even said to somebody, "Why come down in this dirty basement when you could see tomorrow at the P...

I played only my AM church gig yesterday (I took the PM gig off). This gig was not good.  The tunes were a weird mix mash of oom-pah songs with a generic latin tune in the middle.  I don't think they hung together well.  Things we did in rehearsal (introductions and endings) did not make it upstairs to the service.  Plus, the charts weren't very good--one was in the wrong key (untransposed) and another needed editing (some rhythmic things that didn't fit). Worst of all, though, was our sub sound guy, who had all kinds of trouble.  He couldn't unmute some of the stage microphones, and he got yelled at my the senior minister because he couldn't turn on the lights.  The biggest problem was that he couldn't make the headphone amplifier work, so the electronic drums and electric bass were inaudible for everybody on stage (including the drummer and bassist).  They were also muted in the horn monitor.  Unfortunately, they were coming through the main...

Second to last Thursday 10 High gig for Yacht Rock . We had a pretty full crowd last night.  They were a bit ambivalent, particularly with regards to the stage banter, but most people stayed all the way to the end--it makes the gig so much easier when there's an audience! The band played well, and we had a really good time.  We had Daniel Morrison on drums and Kevin Spencer and Ganesh Giri Jaya subbing.  The only really rough spot to me happened towards the end of the first set--I played some big time bullshit on Takin' it to the Streets, and then we crash landed on the ending. I've been screwing around with the levels on my EWI stuff, and I think I've now gotten my ENTIRE rig totally out of wack--things were all over the place last night (mostly too loud).  I think I really annoyed Hans. No Jim Reindel this week, but we did get a Chris Cox showing, which has it's own thing. One more week! davidfreemanmusic.net

I played my two church gigs yesterday…usual stuff.  No problems at either one. After the second one, I headed over to the 5 Spot for the Marsapalooza , a benefit for Steve Florczykowski and Tafee Patterson to offset legal fees involved in the adoption of their son Mars.   Will Scruggs organized the entire event.  Good music and a good hang (because of Will and Steve's combined musical associations, it was mostly people from Event Performance and Kingsized ). For me, it was super cool because I got to hang out for a little while with some of the other horn players in town--I got to be one of the guys.  Will and I hung out off and on the whole night.   Paul Poovey was hanging out and I got to talk to him for second.  I talked to Gary Paulo for a little while (we have the Indiana U. sax studio connection).   John Sandfort (who was super awesome playing with Paul Garrett 's horn band Bumpin' the Mango ) and I hung out for a half hour afterwar...

Yacht Rock played a wedding last night at the Cherokee Town Club , one of the stuffiest country clubs in town.  Gigs like this are a great way to pay my mortgage, but usually not very exciting.  This one proved to be no exception.  We did what we could to entertain ourselves, and got the hell out of there as soon as possible. At the same time we were occupying the ballroom,  the Gentlemen of Swing  featuring my friend Vinnie D'Agostino were playing a tiny wedding in a room upstairs.  It was great to hang out with him for a minute.  His second kid is headed off to college.  We are getting old in a hurry. davidfreemanmusic.net

Yacht Rock played a member's party at the Druid Hills Country Club last night.  We were right on the pool deck…I wondered if we'd be sitting in the sun until late in the evening, but the building we were up against shielded us well. There's always the danger with a bunch of rich people on their home turf that the crowd will turn into super douchebags as the alcohol takes over, but we totally lucked out--everybody was cool all night.  No problems. Before the party had ended, they'd already booked us for the same party next year.  See y'all next time! davidfreemanmusic.net

So…we're counting down to the final Yacht Rock show at the 10 High.  Last night was decent all the way around--the band played well (for the most part), and the crowd was above average.  Everything was cool.  Daniel Morrison played drums with us and played very well. After the break, Jim Reindel arrived and commenced dancing like a nut in front of Pete and Monkey.  First with one girl… Around the pole... and on to a more infamous girl… And then he wiped out… That's how the night ended!  Get us out of here! davidfreemanmusic.net