David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock had our final run of the year up to Chicago, with stops in Nashville and Columbus, IN along the way.  We had some really nice weather and good crowds at every stop! Thursday:  first stop, Nashville.  The trip began with a quick "acoustic" show at an elementary school.  This was a freebee promo thing we did for a fan who teaches at the school.  Since we were late (no big surprise there), we forewent changing into our stage clothes and did this one in our street clothes.  Three songs, and we were done...and then the autographing began!  The large number of random pieces of paper I signed was way out of proportion to the way I played. From there, on to the Mercy Lounge! Back at our usual spot.  Not the greatest load in--there's a long ramp to the front door, and then either a flight of stairs or a passenger elevator--but the room has a pretty good vibe (especially compared to its larger downstairs neighbor, the Cannery Bal...

The Dave and Dave Duo was scheduled to play brunch and evening performances at Venkman's this past Sunday, but Ellington realized after I'd already confirmed the date that he would be out of town.  No big deal. Matt Kaminski covered the brunch gig.  Dave and I have been playing this batch of tunes for a couple of years now, so it was pretty cool to hear another organist's approach to tunes with which I was very familiar.  Pretty cool--Matt's got his own thing, his own vocabulary, sounds, and approach.  I dug it!  Sometimes I wanted to stop playing and just watch to see how he was doing things I'd never heard before. photo cred:  Matt I recorded both sets.  You can check them out here: In between brunch and the evening, there was just enough time to kill that I considered going home.  To do what?  I guess I could've gone and sat on the couch for an hour, but I stayed and broke in some new reeds and got ready for my next partner...

Ahh--the bacon gig!  Yacht Rock has a standing yearly gig over by Druid Hills Country Club in Atlanta, and this was probably our sixth year in a row doing it.  In the early years, the gig was in early December (same night as the SEC Championship), but it comes earlier on the calendar these days--good for me, because we were so cold in the tent that first year, my EWI froze up and stopped working. best costume prizes The highlight of this gig (other than the outstanding costumes and the extremely cool hosts) is the candied bacon.  My bacon consumption was at an all time low this year (4 pieces!), probably down because of my guilt about how much Halloween candy I've eaten.  Greg thought that maybe the bacon wasn't as good this year.  I say "Who Cares!  It's bacon!  Eat it!"  He may have been joking.  Hard to tell from this picture. Anyway, the gig was cool.  I do like an easy night of work. Our illustrious sound crew ...

Chattanooga, of course!  Yacht Rock played our first club gig (our only other appearance being at the Riverbend Festival earlier in the year) at the Revelry Room, and sold it out!  Looks like we might be making it up to Tennessee a little more often. Things didn't begin well, however.  The Revelry Room has only been open for four weeks, and by the looks of it, they're still trying to sort things out.  For example, we loaded in off a muddy street (with no ramp option so everything had to be carried up some stairs).  The stage was dirty, covered in glitter and dust.  A few of the guys found a broom and a shop vac and cleaned that up before we started setting up.  Not very rock and roll.  The green room stuff on our rider also took a while to materialize, and when it did, the bananas we just a little too green.  In five or six days when these are ready, I'll be happy.  I'm guessing that whomever did the shopping for our requests is...

David Ellington, Kevin Smith, and I played a trio gig last night at the World Congress Center.  Weren't we just here a couple of weeks ago? Some funny stuff (to me): 1.  The gig was for Roland, but Dave brought his Nord and a QSC powered speaker. 2.  The Roland people checked Dave's keyboard out to see if it was made by them, which is funny because a bright red Nord keyboard is one of the most easily identifiable instruments out there.  We guessed that maybe these people weren't from the music division. 3.  I was asked to bring a PA.  We got in the room, which was small enough that we probably didn't need a PA, only to find a production team of three in the back of the room and their PA (with small line arrays and a sub on either side of the stage) fanned out to cover the room.  I wonder why we wouldn't have just plugged into their system? 4.  We were given thirty minutes to set up while they flipped the room, but the client opened ...

Yacht Rock finished our two night stand at Venkman's with an encore performance of Michael Jackson's Thriller.   Third time's the charm?  I think the few things that we might have sacrificed in terms of accuracy (I'm pretty sure I reverted back to older background vocal parts in a few spots) were made up by the relaxed feel of the set.  We may have been more precise at the Variety Playhouse show, but we had more fun at this one. The second set was comprised of 80s tunes from our set list.  No big surprises. For I Wish,  Pete comes to my position and plays my keyboard, and I go up to his spot and play EWI.  As I moved up front, I checked my EWI and it worked fine.  However, once the song started, I had no sound in my in ears!  I went back to check my laptop, which registered that it was getting MIDI signal, but there was nothing in my ears, so after fiddling with it for a little bit, I switched to saxophone and finished out the song. Upon ...

Yacht Rock celebrated our eighth year of existence by recreating our original set list.  Some of these we haven't played in eight years.  Preparing for this was a pretty hard grind--there were only a few that needed my attention, but at this point in the year, I'm so fried on trying to learn anything new that I am easily frustrated. It'd be great if we kept all of these new old ones, not only because of the work it took to learn them, but also because they sound waaaaaaaaaay better than they did eight years ago. Noteworthy: Things We Do for Love is a new old one.  Difficult vocal harmonies, easy keyboard part.  Forgot multiple times to clap during the "Like walking in the rain" part. Lonely Boy .  I wanted to sing this one.  Nick sang it instead.  He crashed and burned at the last verse. Magic  (Pilot).  Easy vocal part (for me), tricky keyboard part. Heart Hotels .  I love the way this song builds and grooves, and it's g...

I failed to mention the biggest weirdness of Friday night's gig downtown:  I got home, pulled my truck into the garage, and as I walked around the back to go in the house, I noticed a cell phone.  Umm...now what? A couple of thoughts: 1.  I tried responding to a recent text (I can swipe the message notification and reply without unlocking my phone), but that was not an option.  Same with returning a missed call.  The phone wouldn't let me do it. 2.  I noticed that this was a Verizon phone, so I wondered if I could turn it in to a Verizon store and let them track down the owner. I mulled the whole phone thing over for a while, and then the "FIND MY IPHONE" alert went off.  I wanted to answer that one, too, to say, "I'm here!  Come get it!  I don't want your phone!" but that is also not an option. Finally, the owner called and wanted to know who I was and how I got her phone, and of course, how she could get it back.  I told h...

Yacht Rock played a very strange gig Friday at the Chamber of Commerce in Atlanta.  Following on the heels of our sold out show last Saturday at the Variety Playhouse (and more or less selling out the Georgia Theatre in Athens the night before that), we played for around forty people, the vast majority of whom ignored us until the last THIRTEEN minutes of the gig, when two people finally set foot on the dance floor.  We played almost two full sets without anyone coming near us.  Maybe they were enjoying the music while hanging out (possibly networking?)?  I'm not sure.  Very strange. Also weird was that fifteen minutes after we finished, a group of people who threw the party came into the dressing room to thank us for being there.  That's not weird (it's nice of them to do so), but we were almost all half undressed at that point (I was wearing underwear and socks when they came in), and they hung out talking/thanking for a couple of minu...

After slugging through the Yacht Rock Variety Playhouse gig, I went home, climbed into bed, and slept for 10-12 hours.  Sleep was the best preparation for Sunday's gig, a jazz trio (with David Ellington, piano, and Kevin Smith, bass) for some sort of corporate reception/feeding. Most of these corporate things are really uptight, but this client was super cool.  She came in and hung out for a second;  she even had Ellington take a picture of us while I was playing his new keyboard (a modern rhodes piano made by Vintage Vibe). So...the gig was pretty great.  We all played well, the people were really cool to us, and it ended on time.  Check out the tunes (no repeats from Wednesday's trio): I feel less bummed about my life. In other news... Fantastic pictures from the Thriller show by Emily Butler Photography.  Here are a few of me.