David Freeman Music

Back to the Northeast to complete our run of shows up there. Thursday: First stop, NYC! We were supposed to be back at Irving Plaza, but there was some sort of mix up in the booking, so we ended up at the Playstation Theater in Times Square. On the one hand, cool--bigger room, bigger stage. On the other hand, Times Square... Pictures from my pre-gig run... Not a bad gig, by any means. The room felt kind of sterile, but we still had a pretty good crowd (in the 500-600 range) for a Thursday night in a part of town populated by tourists. I'd have no qualms about coming back here. Plus, any time a crew moves the gear for you, I am thankful (or maybe it's the other way around--any time we have to drag our own gear, I'm not so thrilled). A solid warm up for the weekend, let's say. Drove to Yonkers after the show. Didn't get lost. It's a lot further from the city than I thought it would be. Friday: Woke up and drove four hours to Boston...

It's been a quiet week. The band flew to Austin Saturday for a wedding. More of the same stuff here... I watched the documentary Pearl Jam: Let's Play Two , which intertwined footage of the band's two nights at Wrigley Field and the Cubs' 2016 season, ending in their seventh game World Series victory.  Excellent! I highly recommend it, even though hearing the hits off their album Ten  temporarily rendered me a pile of depressed Gen X mush. Lots of time to kill in Austin--we finished sound checking just after 5 PM and didn't play until 9, so I tried to go for a run. Unfortunately, it was 90 degrees! Slow going, but I got it done. waiting for the bats to come out SRV. 5'5" in real life And the backline...we got some of the same gear that we had the last time we were in Austin. Different/rusty keyboard stands, and one of the Nords (Bencuya's bottom keyboard) was a crappy sounding Nord 2. The top keyboards were, unfortunat...

I lucked into playing with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra Thursday night at Venkman's, sitting in the lead tenor chair. The first half hour was pretty uncomfortable, feeling like maybe I didn't belong there, but eventually I got used to how I sounded within the saxophone section, and I was able to relax. And it was fun! The music is really challenging to me, and required a ton of shedding the book for the few days leading up to the gig. Some of the guys (maybe most of the guys?) are sight-reading the book and keeping up just fine. I'm not sure that I could've done that.

Here we go - a weekend in the the Northeast, playing gigs, sleeping, and running. Thursday: Montclair, NJ. We flew into Newark, hopped in the van, and rolled over to The Wellmont Theatre for a show. This is our second (?) time playing this room, which is an enormous cave of a place. It looks cool, but it's really boomy.  We had a good size crowd (800-850, I think?) but there were lots of tickets given away, so maybe a third of the people there had no idea about us. Still, not too bad for a Thursday. Friday: We slept late, and I went for a run through East Rutherford, NJ. This woodchuck no longer chucks wood Then, off to Long Island! We were back at The Paramount in Huntington. I remember that the first time we played here, this place looked to be the size of a hockey arena. Now, it just looks like the same size room we play everywhere else. That being said, this is an incredible venue. this, on the stage of the Paramount, never gets old The firs...

Scott Glazer was nice enough to invite me back to Blind Willie's to play his monthly residency in a band that included John Sandfort (tenor), Nick Johnson (guitar), Dan Lawrence (keyboard), and Adam Goodhue (drums).  a selfie of Scott, John, and me  Unfortunately, we vastly outnumbered the audience. Eight people in attendance over the course of the night, including Kevin Scott, who sat in on bass for several songs. In spite of the empty room, we had a fabulously silly time, and for the most part, we all played well. It was also not quite as loud as last month, which made a huge difference in my playing. In other words, I could hear myself, didn't overblow, and Sandfort didn't kick my ass quite as much! Good hang!