David Freeman Music

Cruise time!  It's been a year since our last cruise--the 2015 Sail Across the Sun/Train Cruise.  Time to do it again. Thursday:  up too early to fly to Ft. Lauderdale, and then we took a shuttle to the port of Miami to meet the boat.  I'm pretty sure we do this to save money. A few changes for this one: 1.  Nick is still on paternity leave, so Ganesh Giri Jaya (of the Yacht Rock Schooner) filled in for him. 2.  Kip and Zach were along as crew, and they brought the in ear monitors.  Leading up to this trip, there was some doubt about whether or not we'd be able to use them because of the different sound systems on the boat and the short turn around time between bands.  They agreed to give it a shot. As usual, the host company, Sixthman, made it very easy for us to hop on board.  A quick check of our rooms--we have balconies this year.  Monkey on one side... and Kip and Zach on the other. The cruise shi...

I was up much too soon Sunday morning after a late Saturday night, this time to head down to a brunch gig at Venkman's with David Ellington as the Dave and Dave Duo.  The first set went pretty well, but I totally fell apart in the second set, and my coordination and concentration went all to hell.  By the time I began driving home I was desperate for a nap.   Anyway, I tried to call some tunes, for better or for worse, that we haven't played recently on either a Dave and Dave gig or Ellington's last two quartet gigs.  Check it out: As usual, I stumbled back to life in time to make my church gig, which was poorly attended.  I wonder when the church will finally give in to reality and just cancel mass?  Is there some tipping point where it would make more sense to say "find another time to get here"?  

Saturday was a gig for some kind of big money fundraiser at the Ritz in Buckhead.  Strangely enough, we were not in the actual ballroom (where the dinner and the auction and the bulk of the evening's affairs were), but across the prefunction area in the smaller rooms, where the stage was almost too wide for the room.  I remember seeing Blue Lou Marini playing a wedding reception gig in this same room a few years ago. Many, many gigs have I played at the Ritz--my guess would be at least 200 in the twenty years that I have played around Atlanta.  A few stand out to me--a Christmas Day brunch gig (that I played with Rob Henson and a horrible pianist), where we played for five hours and I think I was paid something like $150;  the other being a wedding where a woman had a heart attack and collapsed on the dance floor (while the band played She Works Hard for the Money )--the room was cleared of guests, but for some reason the musicians had to stay put on the stage and ...

Last weekend was the first big weekend of gigs for me, with four Yacht Rock gigs and a jazz gig thrown in the middle.  Mostly good stuff, I would say, off the top of my head.  Along the way, Bencuya and I endured a keyboard stand crisis, sponsored by Quik Lok.  Read on... Thursday:  Yacht Rock played a private gig in Alpharetta for the same people who flew us to the Virgin Islands last summer.  Alpharetta is not as far, but not as awesome. Right as  I walked in the door, Bencuya (who was already there) texted me that one of the knobs on his keyboard stand had become stripped, and did I have another knob?  Fortunately, yes.  We installed the new knob, though the thing was so tight that I had to force it, tearing up my knuckles as I cranked a quarter turn at a time.   We did get it all the way in, but it was really tight, almost like it was the wrong size (FORESHADOWING!) Kip had been sick for a few days leading up to this ...

Yacht Rock had a pair of gigs Thursday, and then a van ride to north Georgia and back Friday.  I took several naps. Thursday:  the day began with a morning performance at Timber Ridge Elementary.  We did one of these a few months ago in Nashville.  I'm guessing it was purely a publicity stunt, except we didn't really do much with it on social media, so...there was a guy with a camera from WSB there, too, but we didn't get any coverage (as of yet) because everybody's fixated on the weather. On to the next thing!  We played our third consecutive Thursday nighter at Venkman's.  I took a nap in the green room between soundcheck and the gig. As a tribute to Glenn Frey, we added a song from his first solo album. Nick is on paternity leave for the next six weeks, so Greg's brother Ganesh (of Yacht Rock Schooner fame) is filling in.  He sang lead on this one. Friday:  we headed to Nashville for a private gig.  This trip was doo...

Dave and Dave Duo made our triumphant return to Venkman's Saturday afternoon.  I kind of wondered if we'd been blacklisted or something, as we'd played there twice in November, and then...nothing.  All the brunch dates in December and January filled up without so much as an inquiry, so I finally spoke up about it.  Anyway, we're back, and I believe we'll do one a month for the next few months. So...Dave (Ellington) and I tried a few of his newer tunes culled from a recent quartet gig, plus a handful of our old reliables.  Fun stuff!  I felt really good on this one.  I'm going to blame my mistake coming back in at the end of Cold Duck Time  on the crowd noise (the sold out puppet show that proceeded us was packed), and my starting Crawdaddy  a whole step too high was because I was accustomed to reading concert pitch charts.  Damn. If you like what you hear, you can come see the David Ellington Quartet (with me) January 30 at Venkman's fo...

Yacht Rock played another Thursday night at Venkman's.  Since Mark Cobb was unavailable, it was decided that we play without drums, hence the "Unplugged."  Not entirely true;  the show was acoustic guitar oriented, but I still played a keyboard, as did Bencuya. looking cool and probably playing something dumb (photo cred:  Jim Ramsdell) Beyond that, this was another fun Thursday night.  Since the idea was to pare things down, it was fun to renegotiate our way through these songs in a slightly different format, so I played more hand percussion, played some string parts on organ, and played the Africa solo on flute. Other random things... 1.  Monkeyboy didn't realize that we were going drummer-less until two songs into soundcheck. 2.  We added Gerry Rafferty's Right Down the Line.   I think it's a keeper!  Then again, I say that about every song we add. 3.  We played David Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World , learning it ...

The Yacht Rock Revue began a string of Thursdays at Venkman's last week, vaguely (super vaguely) reminiscent of our old Thursday night gig at the 10 High...except the load in wasn't disgusting, and ceiling didn't leak, and it didn't stink of cigarette smoke, and the PA worked, and at the end of the night my ears didn't feel like they'd been hollowed out with a screwdriver.  It was on Thursday night, though, and there were some familiar 10 High faces there checking us out. At set up, I found out that another keyboard stand of mine had died, once again at the same knob--the threads on the screw were stripped.  Fortunately, Nick had to swing by his house for some other stuff, and he grabbed one of the spares from the rehearsal room.  I called the manufacturer after soundcheck, and when I asked for replacement parts for this particular stand, he knew exactly what I was talking about.  "I have nightmares about this particular knob."  OK...sympathetic cust...

I was barely able to pull myself together Sunday morning to head back to Venkman's for a brunch gig, this time in a quartet led by David Ellington.  Filling out the band was Mike Beshara on bass and Ben Williams on drums. I think it went pretty well.  My sides were sore, making good breathing difficult, and I was pretty tired, but I hung with it as best I could.  Dave threw several originals at us, plus a variety of odd meter tunes (I'm getting the hang them), and the Chick Corea classic You're Everything  (my worst solo ever in a long time!). We finished up at 3 PM.  I went home and crashed for a couple of hours, staggering back out the door in time to make my church gig.  By the time I'd returned home, I almost felt like me again.

...and just like that, 2016 began with a gig!  Yacht Rock plays the Beatles (formerly known as Please Pleaserock Me) performed two sets at Venkman's.   It seemed like pretty much everybody who didn't want to deal with drunk people the night before instead chose this show.  Nice move. Our horn section for the evening was Paul Poovey on trumpet and Tom Gibson on trombone.  Both played very well.  Also playing well on the gig was The Great Bencuya, whose fantastic chops shown through in my in-ear mix--probably because it wasn't clouded with my own attempted keyboarding.  The entire second set was one of those times I wish I could've just watched over his shoulder.  It was particularly awesome. Not particularly awesome was my sax solo on Oh Darling! The first part was fine, but I remember thinking How does this end?  right before I screwed up the end. Post show hijinks at Monkeyboy's expense (hiding a guitar case) and then at my ow...

New Year's Eve 2015.  Yacht Rock played at Park Tavern in Atlanta again, a gig we've played for most of the past few years.  The gig is on the ice skating rink, so it's a bit chilly, but the noise ordinance fortunately sets the ending time of the gig right around 12:15 AM.  I can recall some crappy country club New Year's Eve parties I played in the past where the last set would begin  at midnight, finishing around 1 or 1:30 AM.  No thanks.  People are a mess by that point. The Schooner guys opened the evening with a fine set of their own.  We jumped up right after that and played maybe 75 minutes.  Not a bad gig!  Home by 2 AM.