David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock played a really easy corporate gig in Hollywood, FL at the beginning of the week, and got back to Atlanta just in time to play a movie premier at the Atlanta Film Festival.  Dig: Sunday:  Up early for our flight to Miami.  Ouch.  The good news is that we were met at the airport by Kip and Hans with all of our gear--they'd driven down the day before with the van and trailer.  After the short trip up I-95, we pulled into the Westin, where a whole crew of stage hands dragged our gear into the ballroom for set up.  After set up, lunch, and soundcheck, we had a little time to hang out in our rooms before the show.  Nice place! our driver/assistant audio engineer Hans, all decked out for the gig The first night was great--by the end of the first set, a few people were in the mood to get out and dance, and by early in the second set, it seemed like everybody was up.  Very cool! Even with the encore, we were still finished by 1...

I picked up a salsa gig in the middle of this past week, playing tonight at the tapas restaurant Eclipse di Luna in Miami Circle.  It was sort of two gigs in one: 1.  The first two sets were a quartet (guitar, bongos/vocals, congas/vocals, and saxes/flutes).  We played latin jazz, bossa novas, and a couple of Buena Vista Social Club tunes.  I fared very well in these circumstances, playing the melody and taking a solo. 2.  In the second two sets, we swapped the guitar for a keyboardist.  We also changed to much more authentic salsa and merengue, and it was here that I had my ass handed to me time and time again, as I vainly attempted to read handwritten, dog-eared charts, at 250 BPM.  In fact, I was surprised that I didn't get fired in between sets (which I would have welcomed because I was so embarrassed). I'm pretty sure I won't be getting called for this one again!

Sunday morning, Yacht Rock flew from Indianapolis to Las Vegas for a weeklong corporate gig (same one we did last year) for Home Depot.  For most of this, we functioned as the backing band for a half dozen employees who took turns fronting the band at the store managers' meeting.  At the end of our stay, we also performed two sets of yacht rock. Oddly enough, we had a layover in Atlanta. Atlanta's airport has some nice restaurants, especially in the International Terminal.  Nick led us to Ecco.  I ate this, which was really good, but had me shitting like a goose by the time we landed in Vegas. (photo cred:  Mark Bencuya) The view from my room in Mandalay Bay, Saturday night at dusk. Sunday morning, we headed off to rehearsals.  The horns for this gig were me, Rob Opitz on trumpet, and Rich Sherrington on trombone. (photo cred:  Peter Olson) My plan to use iPads for charts worked incredibly well. Updating charts o...