David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock returned from another successful tour yesterday afternoon.  Miles were driven and notes were played.  I dealt with head cold for most of it. Thursday:  Our first stop was Asbury Park, NJ's Wonder Bar .  Asbury Park has a mythical quality because of Bruce Springsteen--we were all pretty excited to be there.  What if he shows up?  He's been known to crash other people's gigs unannounced. We pulled up to a foggy, desolate resort town in the wrong season.  Except for about fifty orthodox Jews, there didn't seem to anybody around. We loaded in and set up--tight stage!  The sound was pretty decent, all things considered, though when Greg would play a low G the whole place would vibrate. After soundcheck, we wandered up and down the boardwalk. It seemed, based on the fact that there were about a hundred people in the entire town that night, that we would be playing to nobody, but the pr...

Yacht Rock was up early (for us) on a Monday morning for an appearance on CBS Better Mornings (the local morning TV show).  The traffic was horrible because of the rain, but at least there was no loading in involved--we stood around in the shot while Nick and Pete did all the talking, promoting the Candler Park Fall Festival .  We'll be performing our Dazed and Confused stoner-rock set with special appearances by Rick Derringer and Derek St. Holmes . There were a couple of awesome cars there--a Chevy Nova and a Plymouth Belvedere. Monday night, I played a weird House Live gig at the World Congress Center.  The client was worried about the volume, I guess, so they wanted it to be acoustic.  That's not possible, however, when ONE THIRD OF THE TRIO IS A DJ!  Also, they wanted it to be futuristic, so they requested that I play EWI , which is once again NOT ACOUSTIC.  Duh…We ended up with a couple of monitors pointed back at us, but no micr...

Yacht Rock sold out the Georgia Theatre  in Athens Saturday night!  We were awarded gold medals for the achievement.  The Theatre had a banner day--they set all kinds of records for people coming through the doors (the broadcast of the UGA football game earlier in the day obviously helped), and they ran out of beer, ice, and Red Bull.  We're #1 for the time being. The show was great.  It's such a cool room, and now that we're getting more comfortable on that size stage, it's better and better.  We had a great set list going: Very sax heavy in the first set.  Good stuff. Things are pretty awesome! Here's my solo from Reminiscing :   Reminiscing sax solo Sept 29, 2012 by David B Freeman What an amazing weekend!  We played for about a thousand people Friday night at the Park Tavern and then another thousand Saturday.  Every show from now on should have a thousand person minimum. So…we started at 10 ...

Yacht Rock closed out the season of Park Tavern shows last night with a very strong performance for about a thousand people.  Fun stuff, and we came out without any major disasters! I can't help but think about how much better last night's show was compared to the last one of 2011.  You can recap that disaster HERE .  Peroni Night got the best of me.  Drunk blogging…not good. We brought back a couple of songs that we haven't played in a while in preparation for the big show October 20 at the Variety Playhouse:   Purple Rain and Thriller (both albums played in their entirety) .   Get your tickets now! Late in the first set, we had three sax songs in a row in weird keys (for me):   LA Lindsay and Will it Go Round in Circles both in Ab concert (Bb on tenor), and She's Gone , which has the solo over the verse in B (Ab on alto) .  Why do those keys feel so awkward?  It's not like I never play those notes. In the second set, we debu...

Yacht Rock played one of our strangest gigs…we played some sort of tenant appreciation party for an office building in Buckhead.  9 AM load in.  Yuck. The tent was supposed to be constructed at 7:30 AM, but as of 10 AM they were still trying to put it together.  It made for a throw-and-go. We began at 11:30 AM…not much of a gig, but I can't imagine anyone getting too excited about eating BBQ on an incline of a parking garage, with seven polyester-clad guys playing seventies music at the top of the ramp.  Maybe that's how they imagined it.  If so, then it was a complete success. belt loop davidfreemanmusic.net

I played a trio gig at CNN Center in a room that shares a wall with Nancy Grace's studio.  I was told explicitly by some giggly girl to please turn my saxophone down (still looking for the volume knob), because if Nancy hears saxophone (why me?), she'll come out and shut down the whole party.  Yikes!  This led to endless jokes about my volume knob and Nancy's love of half diminished chords (she likes tension), and later on, our shared affinity for Joe Henderson tunes. We survived without Nancy cutting us down;  I plugged up the bell of my horn.  Whatever gets the job done.  The crowd was a good bit louder than us through the entire night--it turned into one of those "take the money and run" gigs, where our collective interest in playing ebbed and flowed.  That said, I felt really good about what I played.  Check it out:   David Freeman Trio - September 25, 2012 by David B Freeman I'm trying to focus on playing more vertically w...

Sometimes, supporting the arts doesn't mean writing a check. Yesterday, one of my friends gave me the most amazing gift.  His family's grand piano, which they are not using, came to live at our house.    How cool is that?! This marvelous gift allowed us to give away our upright to a family with kindergarteners who had just begun piano lessons.  May we all become better pianists! davidfreemanmusic.net

My AM church gig was going really well until we got to the big song with the choir and the band playing full blast.  We train wrecked it over and over again.  It was so bad, it was like the train wreck in Presumed Innocent (and I, afterwards, ran from the gig like Harrison Ford).  Every time we got to the refrain, what I was hearing and what I was seeing from the conductor would be at least an eighth note apart.  Bad, bad stuff, and it happened over and over again.  Verses were fine, refrains were embarrassing. We got a standing ovation from the congregation.  It must've been an amazing mix by Matt! I went home, switched out gear, and headed to a Yacht Rock gig in Smyrna.  Weird…it was a block/neighborhood party;  there was a stage under a tent in a cul-de-sac.  I'd be curious to have heard the proposal at the homeowner's meeting.  Anyway, it turned out to be a good event with perfect weather.  We played really well.  ...

I played a latin jazz/salsa gig with Jerry Fields last night at a mansion behind the governor's mansion.  Nice place! The gig was super easy.  Lots of soloing over simple forms and standards.  I heard that the guy wanted Ricky Martin…I'm not sure if that meant Ricky Martin songs, or Ricky Martin the guy. The gig had Jerry on congas, Nelson Vega on bongos on vocals, David Ellington on piano, and Chris Riggenbach (with whom I'd never played) on bass.   He was great!  We were also visited by about a dozen slugs during the first set, which descended from the vines above us.  They were everywhere--I accidentally stepped on a few;  Jerry squashed one on his phone.  By the end of the second set, they were gone.  I don't think we killed them all--they just went on their way. Ellington and I joked around through the entire gig…just like we always do. davidfreemanmusic.net

I had a little trio gig at the World of Coke --background music for a corporate dinner thing.  They wanted to speak, too, so I brought my meager PA (two speakers, two sticks, and twenty-five feet of cable). Upon arrival, I learned that it wouldn't just be remarks for the crowd--they were presenting awards, so the PA got really complicated really quickly.  We were in the atrium;  the band was situated on one landing, the podium on the other (stairs between us), and the audience down on the floor.  Yikes!  Forty-five minutes to come up with a solution, test it, and get set up to play music.  The distance between the speakers, plus the distance up to the landing were a major concern.  I finally got it sorted out by daisy-chaining my speakers.  Glad I brought a boom stand as a place to keep the microphone.  This was not was I was expecting. OK, so that was settled…here's the audio from the gig.  It's Tyrone Jackson on keyboard and Ke...