May and June's Triumph and Tragedy

It's time for another "way-too-late" blog update! Only two weeks behind schedule! World class procrastination!

May began with night two of our shows at The Fred Amphitheater in Peachtree City, GA. Maybe not as electric as the evening before, but still a very solid show. Sort of business-as-usual with a lazy soundcheck, a livestream performance of With a Little Help from My Friends for the 500 Songs for Kids Beatles show, chips and salsa, some sort of vegan concoction of rice, beans, and veggies that I brought from home, and solid playing on stage.

The following weekend, I played in a concert production (no acting, just the singing) of Nine at the Cobb County Theatre. The orchestra was stretched all the way across the back of the stage, with the conductor on  one end and me on the other. Luckily, we were all on headphones and the conductor wore a microphone that she used to count in tempo changes. Sill, check out this picture. The conductor is the last head at the end of the line of people on stools. 

I did thoroughly enjoy playing all my instruments, though! Shows are such a terrific challenge! I wish I could squeeze more of these into my calendar.

One more shot, this time with the stools empty, so you can see physically how far I was away from the baton! 

On to the next weekend! Yacht Rock was back at it, this time in Charleston for an outdoor show.

This one was ok. There wasn't much of a connection to the audience, so I couldn't get very excited about it. Let's just say that this was a good warm up for better gigs later in the year.

nice pic of me by Kip, soaking up all that audience vibe from fifty feet away

The following night, we played "The Amp," a really great amphitheater in St. Augustine, FL. This was a GREAT gig, like this was the honeymoon for starting up the Yacht Rock gigging again. Oh yeah. Awesome.

They even had these cool concert posters that we signed for fans. Dig it.

Yeah...we want more of these.

On the next Wednesday, I played a lifestream jazz gig from Venkman's comprised almost entirely of my originals. Holy hell, who would ever willingly book that! It was fun, but maaaaaan, it was tough. My embouchure was not ready for two hours straight, and my brain was not ready for the stress of doing a show, talking to a camera, and then concentrating on my music. And thus, by the time I sat in on Bencuya's show (which followed mine), I was either an idiot, or really wildly entertaining for a half hour.

Joining me in the jazz were Louis Heriveaux (piano), and Tommy Sauter (bass). How cool was that, though, to play my own tunes! And people were digging it!  Very cool. I'd love more chances to do something like this once Venkman's opens back up.

The next Yacht Rock gig was on a former tennis court in Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

Can I bitch about it? The airport was 90 minutes away; the stage was small; it was hot; the people were all Duck Dynasty; we were ignored for the entire time (except that they demanded an encore--really?). As you can see in the picture, we were never threatened with a chaotic mosh pit of smooth music lovers.

On the other hand, we got paid, I squeezed in a good run, and the chef made us all really great food (including the vegan spaghetti and meatballs). Also, Scott Sheriff subbed for Mark Bencuya on this one and played everything perfectly. It's a draw, I guess, and after fifteen months of not playing gigs, nobody's allowed to gripe about it. Definitely a clunker, though.

June was abysmal, so I'm just going to include the one gig I had, and then I'll be ahead in the blogosphere because June isn't even over.

Yacht Rock played a gig in Greenville, SC at the airport--another portable stage and a hot parking lot. This one was awful. We set up and sound checked and everything was good, but on the gig, my sax microphone would not work--the frequency that I was on had a massive dead spot basically all over the stage. I tried about fifty times to rescan and find a different frequency (while I'm also trying to play the gig, mind you!), and the receiver would only suggest one frequency (the one with the giant dead spot). On the fifty-first scan, it suggested a different frequency--yes!--but when I changed my microphones to that one, there was nothing but deafening static. Sooooo, rescan, rescan, rescan, still trying to play the gig, rescan, aaaaaand fuck it. I ended up back on frequency option one and hoped that I could find a spot on stage that worked, but no, so I played into Nick and Monkeyboy's vocal mics. It sucked. I was miserable. I hope that whoever else was on my frequency (a plane on the runway behind us, perhaps) got an earful of obnoxious saxophone.

In other news...here's my social media stuff that I put up in May and June.

First up, a little blowing over the Charlie Parker tune Blues for Alice, with the aim of getting used to a different mouthpiece, and just getting comfortable with the alto in my hands.

Earache My Eye was a special recording for Mark Bencuya's Dr. Demento livestream show. This is from a Cheech and Chong album. 

I also guested on Mark Bencuya's livestream show when he played more of his regular stuff, and we took on New York State of Mind.

My friend Rob Opitz is doing a recording project, and he invited me to play on one of his arrangements. 

I've been working through Bach flute sonatas to help with my playing endurance, and the Siciliano seemed like a good one to capture.

I'll Remember April

As live music begins to pick up momentum, it seems I'll have to go back to updating this blog more than once a month. Until that happens, thought...here's what happened in the month of April!

The first big live Yacht Rock gig of the year was to be in Orlando on April 10, performing at the Hops and Hogs Festival at the Central Florida Fairgrounds. We were all curious about playing for people instead of cars, and maybe what sort of a risk we'd be taking as the COVID stuff begins to recede. 

The fairgrounds has a nice stage and plenty of room for social distancing! Maybe it was too early to expect to see much of a crowd. I mean, look at all those people! We were stuck in an afternoon lineup between several southern rock bands (the collective love-children of Lynyrd Skynrd and Warrant) and Sugar Ray. Uhh, ok. 

Unfortunately(?), a vicious line of the thunderstorms came racing across the state. The winds started blowing gear around, and there was a rumor of a tornado--Old Testament, real wrath-of-God type stuff! The officials told the audience to leave immediately, and we packed in a hurry.

Check out the tarp above Pete's head in the picture. Things escalated quickly.

And, there was this guy...

Our first gig back was cancelled, and we weren't disappointed. We got as far a setting up some gear, and it was over--put it all back in the trailer and send it back home. And would you believe that it never actually stormed! There was light rain around 10 PM, but that was it.

The following Monday afternoon, we recorded a lifestream for a private client. Easy stuff. I think it was an hour long. This felt like a good tune up gig. No pressure. I honestly remember nothing about playing this one.

That Saturday, we returned to Florida. Our gig was at an actual yacht club(!) in Ft. Lauderdale.

Plenty of room on our flight.

This place had a really nice outdoor set up with a large covered patio for us to set up under. As you can see by the pictures, the weather was much more polite than Orlando's temper tantrum.

Easy private gig. 

The following week had the Ladies of Soul lifestream show. As before, I overdubbed horn sections after they'd recorded the "live" stuff.

A few days later, we were back in Florida AGAIN!!! This time, we played the first night of the Moon Crush Festival in Miramar Beach/Destin. 

Lots of down time before this one (several of us drove down the day before the gig). I laid around in my hotel room, went for a run, and ate this crappy pizza. Options were limited.

This show was fun. The entire crew was made up of familiar faces from Atlanta venues and cruise ship gigs, and it was nice to start working normally with so many friends around. We had perfect weather, and I from what I could tell, the festival had a good turnout.

It was a beautiful gig, and I played great. 

The drive back to Atlanta was long, though. Five or six hours in the van is a lot.

The final show of the month was night one of a two night stand at The Fred in Peachtree City, about forty-five minutes south of Atlanta. 

I enjoy this place--it's a nice, big stage, the crowds are good, the sound is clean, and you get to go back to your house at the end of it.

In other news, I worked on two transcriptions that I took off Instagram, both by Ryan Devlin. The first is a single chorus over the chords of I Got Rhythm.

The second is a gig video of Ryan playing some wild stuff over Cedar Walton's Bolivia (the video starts early in the B section).

I also continued recording at home. Here's some sax stuff I recorded for a couple of friends.

 

 

What's in May? Night two of Peachtree City, a stage performance of Nine (the musical), Charleston, St. Augustine (Florida AGAIN!), and a casino in Lake Charles. 

Ryan Devlin Boston Rhythm Changes

Here's a quickie post: This is my transcription of an Instagram post by saxophonist Ryan Devlin, and it looks like a chorus of rhythm changes, maybe in a hotel room. Excellent bop vocabulary!

March

March was pretty quiet. I played a couple of weddings, made a few videos. It feels like things are moving in the right direction, though.

On the first Saturday of March, I played a wedding reception at the Atlanta History Center. It was kind of a pick up jazz sextet with a vocalist, playing standards in really distant keys to accommodate her range. In spite of that (and being unfamiliar with most of the musicians), the fun of winging it made the night fairly enjoyable.

I wore a mask for this (pretty much the only way I was willing to play indoors with a hundred and fifty strangers!). Having to open the flap to insert the mouthpiece was a little bit of a hassle, but it was so much fun to play a gig! 

After about an hour and a half, we handed the room off to the DJ and split. Home by 10 PM. Love it!

A few weeks later, I was invited to play in a jazz duo in Decatur for a wedding--this one was for the ceremony and the cocktail hour.

Similarly, this one came together at the last minute, and I was paired with a musician that I'd never met. Our only specific request was to play Etta James' At Last as the bridesmaids came in, and then to accompany two vocalists who would sing At Last as the bride came in. It seemed so easy!

The coordinator came by at one point to say that it was almost time; maybe she told us to go (she spoke to the pianist, not me). Anyway, we started into At Last as an instrumental. I played the melody all the way through; no bridesmaids. I soloed over the form; no bridesmaids. I soloed over the form again, then played the melody again; still no bridesmaids. Piano solo! Still no bridesmaids. One of the vocalists arrived, and inexplicably, started singing! He sang a few lines, then stopped, so I took up the melody again. People are looking at us like we're crazy. I finished the melody, and the vocalist started AGAIN and then bailed out AGAIN! We finished out the form of the song for him. Finally, the bridesmaids began to enter, so we played the whole song a few more times, and the vocalist tried to jump in a few more times, and we were able to safely land the thing (somebody in the crowd actually said "One more time!" after we stopped!). Soooooo, then we started it all up AGAIN for the bride; I played the string part of the intro, the vocalists started singing...and no bride! (the pianist turned to me and said "Maybe she got cold feet!") All the way through the song with the doors to the room closed; we went into a solo, and finally the doors opened, bride entered, we handed the song back to the vocalists...whew!

After the ceremony, we made our way downstairs to the lobby for an hour of cocktail jazz while the upstairs room was converted for the reception. Our duo was parked right next to the bar in a marble lobby; needless to say, it was a pretty raucous, with everybody in the room shouting over the duo and each other, and the two us trying to play loud enough to hear ourselves. Nobody wins! It was nice to play some tunes with another human, though. Home by 9 PM!

That's it for gigs. I do miss the unscripted chaos!

In other news, I've continued to put out short music video projects. 

Change of Scene was a song written by Greg Lee, and recorded by the Yacht Rock Revue for our most recent album. This video demonstrated the sax section thing that I wrote.

Work to Do was a horn arrangement that I recorded for an upcoming Ladies of Soul livetream. It's the Average White Band horn parts over the Isley Brothers version.

There's something about the polyrhythm of playing two against three, and the genesis of this song was the duple rhythm of the baseline within this waltz. This song still doesn't have a name.

Somebody in college showed me the Telemann canonic flute sonatas, which are amazing duets because there's only one part (much like Row, Row, Row Your Boat) and the second guy starts a measure after the first guy. All these split screen performance videos reminded me of how easy it would be to play a duet with myself.

My friend Troy Bieser wrote and recorded his song Tell Me, and invited me to add a sax solo. I always envision myself playing something soulful and also wildly virtuosic, and then when it's time to record, I choke and end up playing safe, almost mundane ideas. Hopefully I'm chipping away at that, though, and will one day be confident about really going for it when I'm at the microphone. 

And yes, the video idea came from an old Hank Mobley album cover!

February Stuff

Things are very slow right now in the local music biz, so I haven't much to report. A few livestream concerts have been broadcast--the Yacht Rock Valentine's Day Prom, and also the performance of Hot Dads in Tight Jeans, which you can watch on Facebook and YouTube.

The Prom was a pay-per-view thing, so I can't share the video, but here are some cool pictures from it:

Since then, my time has been focused on recording horns for another Ladies of Soul livestream, cranking out a couple of songs each day. Here's one:

Who's Loving You by the Jackson Five was going to be on the Ladies of Soul show, so I wrote a horn arrangement, and then it ended up getting cut from the setlist. My arrangement didn't really work anyway, so whatever--there's no place to breathe! On a real gig, I/we'd have died. At the very least, we would've needed a time out.

Anyway, I made a video out of it. My original plan had been to to just record the background horn parts and maybe I'd play bass notes on a keyboard just as a pitch reference, but then I thought I'd add a drum loop, except that I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I ended up playing the drum part and the bass part on a MIDI keyboard, and then I decided to add a keyboard part to make it sound a little more conventional, and hell, let's record a tambourine part kind of like the original song, and then if it's gone this far, I might as well play the melody, too. Waaaaaay more than I thought I'd do.

I do like the way the video turned out, though.

Here's a practice thing I recently discovered:  one of the nice things about Instagram (for musicians) is that the clips tend to be a minute long, so if you hear something that you want to investigate, you're not going to have to wade into some twelve minute Coltrane solo to find the lick that caught your ear. I made screen recordings of things I liked, and then dumped the video into the app Transcribe, and wrote out what I heard. For example, here's a Ryan Devlin clip with a lot of modern ideas that I wanted a look at.

Here's another grab, this time of NYC saxophonist Sam Dillon demonstrating some outside playing (note: I think of each melodic idea as its own thing, so not necessarily something you would blaze through as one transcribed solo. I used solid bar lines to demarcate where I think you should breathe and regroup).

Also, here's a random Michael Breaker lick that I saw on the internet the other day and played a hundred times in a row.

See you in March?

January Happenings

Greetings! The music making continues to creep along through January. Here's what I've been up to.

Two weeks ago, Yacht Rock reconvened on stage at the Roxy to record our Valentine's Day Prom show. This one leaned into the 80s a bit more than we might normally go, and it was fun to play some different songs...hell, it was fun just to play a show with a band!

Also check out the light show that James did! This is from soundcheck. The disco ball was used to great effect.

 

Speaking of playing some different music:  we're coming up on the one year anniversary of the release of Hot Dads in Tight Jeans, so we got together last week and recorded a show of us playing the entire album. Only about half the songs have ever been played live, so it was a fun challenge to learn the other songs, walk in, sit down, and play them with the same intent that we give to Step and Bad Tequila. 

The keyboard "division of labor" (dividing up the multitude of parts on the album) necessitated that I cover one of Mark Bencuya's synth solos on the song Can't Stop while he continued the main part running underneath it. To accomplish this, I chose to take a saxophone solo, but drastically alter the sound using my effects pedal. Here's an example of it:

That show will be broadcast on the Yacht Rock Revue Facebook page in February. 

Around all of these livestream recordings, I was supposed to be preparing to play a concert of the musical Nine at the Lyric Theatre (no acting, just the singing). It was set up as safely as possible with everybody who could wear a mask wearing a mask, lots of distance between each of us, and plexiglass barriers to further separate us. You may recall that I did something similar with The Color Purple a year ago (you can reread it here).  The music was a nice challenge, and I'd been working through the Reed III book for a couple of weeks when the musical director called with the news that the show had been cancelled/indefinitely postponed because too many of the actors had had positive COVID tests! Woah! I'm disappointed that I didn't get to play, but it feels like I dodged a bullet here.

Here are some fun musical moments from the book:

Next month? More of the same! By the looks of the calendar, things won't be headed back to normal until July. In the mean time, I'm trying to post things a little more consistently on my Instagram page and David Freeman Music Facebook page.

December Gigs

It's been the slowest, weirdest December in my lifetime. Oddly enough, though, I did get several calls for gigs, but almost all of them sounded like bad ideas--a jazz duo (yes!), but in somebody's living room with twenty-five people in attendance (hell no!).  Who's taking a gig like that right now, but also, who's putting together parties like that right now? I declined all of those, reminding myself that it would not be worth it to possibly infect anyone in my family for $200. 

Last Sunday afternoon, I did take an outdoor jazz gig in College Park that was a lot of fun. Louis Heriveaux, Tommy Sauter, and Ben Johnson joined me for a neighborhood Christmas party in somebody's yard. Great fun with a few old friends! Louis wanted to know if I still hated Christmas tunes--it made me think about it, and I guess my problem is that on these gigs, people want you to politely play everything on Charlie Brown Christmas. I, on the other hand, am usually so excited to be playing a jazz gig that I want to play every tune like it's Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard! 

Anyway, 54 degrees was a little chilly, but I am still happy to play some tunes with my friends.

In other news, the Ladies of Soul (Keisha and Kourtney Jackson) put out a livestream concert on Christmas Eve. The backing band was Mark Bencuya, Mark Dannells, Greg Lee, and Zack Albetta, and I wrote and recorded horn arrangements for everything. Big fun for me, and our audio/video ninja Zach Wetzel was able to blend everything together perfectly. Check it out here.

Leading up to the broadcast, I also made some short videos to highlight my parts. Check these out!

One more good thing: I got a call from Steve Augeri (formerly of Journey!) to play on his quarantine project. This song, called If You Want, needed one of those heroic 80s tenor sax solos in the vein of Tim Cappello or Clarence Clemons. Steve sent me the song, I recorded a couple of passes at home, we talked on the phone, I recorded a couple more, and it was done! Recording from home rocks.

Georgia on my Mind

Saturday afternoon, I began making a video as part of the #GeorgiaOnMyMind campaign to encourage voting in Georgia's upcoming election for the Senate. I wrote the arrangement in an hour or two. My game plan:

1. Feature the different saxophones at different times. The alto has the melody in the first eight measures; the bari has it on the bridge; and the tenor has it for the last eight.

2. Have some sort of big band soli thing where all the voices move with the melody. This is the second eight measures.

3. Lots of rhythm in the supporting voices! I didn't want it to die with a bunch of whole notes under the lead line.

Here's page one of my chart.

On to recording it! One of my quarantine projects has been to try and transition my recording software from Garageband to Logic. I have enough knowledge to know what I'm trying to accomplish, but finding the corresponding button to push in Logic sometimes takes a while. 

The other hurdle on this particular night was transposition. Reading concert pitch charts on Eb alto and Eb bari sax? Difficult, but not impossible. Reading concert pitch charts on tenor? Not too bad. Reading concert pitch charts in bass clef and transposing them to each saxophone? Ahh! Ya got me. I had to put the horn down and rewrite my chart in treble clef in order to save my brain. 

At the same time that I recorded the audio, I also set up the camera and recorded video. 

Anyway, editing took some time; some wrong notes from the whole transposition thing, some sloppy entrances from sight-reading, some "wait, which part am I recording right now?" things. Then I listened and tried to balance everybody's volume, and then listened to it without headphones and balanced it again, and so on.

Next up, I edited the video, trimming off the beginning and end where I am pushing the record button--stuff like that. From there, I dumped it into iMovie (and tried to remember from the last time I used it) how the work flow goes. Getting four shots in one movie was tricky--I put the first video in a quarter of the screen, saved it as a completed project, imported it back into iMovie, added another shot in another corner, saved it as a completed project, imported  it...you see what I mean. Plus I experimented with trying to highlight each of the solos while they were happening, and that didn't work, so I had to scrap all that and begin a new edit.

Once I had the four stitched together, I added the recorded audio, as well as the beginning and ending slides. And hello 5 AM! It's finished!

Here's what I did:

The Yacht Rock Revue also recorded a version for this. Check it out, too! I played organ for most of it, and then stood up and blew a little saxophone at the end.