Monday night I played with the Schooner on a gig for Sam Adams, brewer/patriot. These gigs are super easy for me, because my only responsibility is to show up and play saxophone. The Schooner guys pack all the sax songs into the first set, so I usually show and blow, and I'm home before the gig's over!
Once again, I played very well with these guys backing me up. I could hear really well, and I just went for it on every song. It was really fun. The band sounded really good. Shannon Pengelly in particular played some really rippin' stuff, especially on the second solo on Peg. Yeah, man!
After my set, I stayed because they had free Sam Adams. I drank at least a six pack. I was very entertaining. davidfreemanmusic.net
I found this clip of us playing Careless Whisper at the Reagan Rock prom .
Saturday night I played with the Yacht Rock Schooner (our b band), covering the second keyboard part as well as the sax/flute duties. Also subbing in were Mark Bencuya and Greg Lee. I asked Greg if it was difficult to sing without playing bass at the same time--I remember Sting saying that some songs are very difficult to perform if he is used to playing at the same time. He said no--it was difficult to sing songs he's never sung before!
Since it was the Schooner, we got to play Lonely Boy, which as you might know is one of my personal favorites. It's a fun song to play, and I like the fact that I get to be an essential part of the band on that one. The usual mode of operations is for Bencuya to handle the most essential keyboard part; I am am much better suited to string parts and things of that sort which cannot derail the band when I suffer the inevitable disaster. Lonely Boy is a rare moment when I get to be "the man" and Bencuya's responsibility is in the strings.
So...last night? Three mistakes--nothing horrible. In the first verse, the piano fills in between the chords in the progression with a repeated A. I started thinking about it too much and tripped a little bit. The other two mistakes were a bit uglier--between the guitar solo and the final verse is a break down to just the piano. I was sailing along just fine, and then I started thinking about the chords (up until then I was just playing, and not consciously thinking). Once my brain (and its annoying little voice) started in--right in the spot where I REALLY wanted to be perfect, I was toast. It was kind of like the GPS on my phone, which is messed up and tells me to turn right as I pass through an intersection. "You are currently playing an A minor triad, though the chord here is really F# half diminished." This little monologue caused me to play and E Major triad and then a cluster of some sort, instead of B sus to B. My apologies. Just like my Sailing episode, I can play it just fine twenty-nine out of thirty times. You caught me at number thirty.
That was a little disappointing, but nothing that crushed my soul.
I got into some pretty good sax solos last night--I wonder why it is that the Schooner inspires me to better stuff? My guess would be two things: #1, we are on a small stage and nowhere for me to move, so I focus more on playing and less on showmanship; #2, we are on a small stage and I can hear my monitor well, so I tend to not overblow.
One thing I've noticed in the past (and again last night) is that the drummer tends to end songs in the middle of my phrases. I think in eight measure phrases, and I assume that everybody can hear the "sentence structure" of what I'm doing. On more than one solo last night, things were brought to a halt on the third measure of a phrase--it feels like I'm stopping in the middle of a word! Very strange. I don't know if he cannot hear me or maybe is listening to something else, but ending in the weird spots like that is very uncomfortable.
Tonight's church gig was a medley of frustrations. When we were setting up, the hand drummer informed me that he turned himself way up because a member of the congregation said he was inaudible. I'll check it out, I said. Once the mass began, I was making my adjustments (one of which was cranking him up even more because I could hardly get any sound from his microphone). When I walked past the band to go hear how things sounded in the middle of the cathedral, I noticed he was playing his drum with two fingers. No wonder he cannot be heard! The solution is not to turn him up, but for him to play a little harder. I was flabbergasted. He usually wears headphones--he's hearing the main outputs from the board--so how can he be unaware of whether or not he can be heard? I have his microphone so hot it was picking up more of the piano than him. If you want to be heard, you've got to give me something to work with!
There were multiple vocals solos last night that came without warning. Is it really that difficult to turn around and say "I sing a solo on verse two." Can you give me a heads up? Do you want me to bump you up or not?
The evening was too amateurish for me to tolerate.
The clincher came at the end of the mass when the priest gave away gift certificates to two dads--one with the youngest child and one with the oldest. I had the youngest child, and then a man in the front row volunteered that his child was younger--still in the womb! So, of course, being a Catholic church, the father of the unborn (and thus younger than my five year old) won the prize. Ain't that a bitch? That guy should be ashamed of himself--as my wife pointed out, the only thing that guy's done at this point is impregnate his wife, and there's a big difference between that and fatherhood. Afterwards, the priest said to me "you almost got it!" I should have kicked him in the nuts--he doesn't need those to be a "father." davidfreemanmusic.net
Yacht Rock played a post-rehearsal dinner party at a place in Buckhead called The Pool Hall. A pretty grungy place it was--no door to the men's room--you just walk around the corner and there's a urinal. Nice! The back room had four pool tables (only three functioning last night). It's the kind of place where trash is dropped on the floor and picked up at the end of the night.
The stage was approximately thirty feet wide, but only about eight feet deep, so we set up shoulder to shoulder. I assume Mark Bencuya played the gig, though I never saw him when we were on stage. Actually, the set up was not bad. I could hear everything ok. I'm not sure how it sounded to someone walking the length of the stage. You probably got a good shot of whomever you were standing near.
We played the same set list that we'd played the previous night. Not much saxophone--I think I played sax on two songs in the first set and one in the second. It was mostly keyboard with some EWI thrown in.
We had to load out down a hallway next to the bar because going in or out of the front door was impossible. That worked great for us--the hallway spit us out right in front of our vehicles. Greg Lee helped me pack up.
While we were waiting for the gig to begin, we hung out at Bencuya's car, listening to the board tape from our gig last Saturday night. Pleasantly surprised were we! Everything sounds good. Nice to know that sound guys took us seriously and gave us their best shot. When we played the Variety Playhouse last December, they acted like we were on our first gig--too much telling us what to do (instead of the other way around). This time, they were much easier to deal with.
After that, we did play pool. Mark Dannells and I were doing well in our first game against Greg Lee and Mark Cobb, but not so hot in the second game. We were unable to finish because of the gig, however, so the Dannells/Freeman combination remains unbeaten!
Last night was the usual 10 High gig for Yacht Rock. All in all, not a bad gig! The crowd wasn't interested in what we were doing, and I think that kind of wore on us after a while.
We went through some of our Reagan Rock stuff again. Still got it! davidfreemanmusic.net
I did a gig last night with Full Tilt at the Intercontinental Hotel in Buckhead, for the same people for whom I had played Sunday night.
The first set (the "dinner" set) was totally bizarre. The keyboardist and bassist are a duo, and they would play the keyboardist's original smooth jazz tunes--the rest of the band was ignored or just expected to wander along with them. Very strange. The keyboardist would tell us the key, but most of the time it was not the correct key. We finally played a standard (Wave), but they played it in C instead of D. Fly Me to the Moon was on the setlist, and when we got to it, the bass player didn't play anything--the keyboardist played left hand bass. It was a very frustrating hour and a half. Lots of glissandi. Bad news.
After we came back from the break, we went into the dance set, and things were much more normal. What a relief! I don't think I could have taken another hour of dinner music.
Here a few more Reagan Rock prom pictures from last weekend.
I played a quartet gig at the Intercontinental Hotel last night. Unfortunately for us, it was an outdoor gig--yet another opportunity to sweat profusely! Other than the heat and humidity(which was only bad for the first hour), things were pretty good. The band for this one was Tyrone Jackson on keyboard, Fuji Fujimoto on bass, and Kinah Boto on drums. For whatever reason, I felt like I was struggling to light a fire under Kinah. I played with all the intensity I could muster, but I don't think he had much to say about it. I felt at odds with the band--the more I tried to lead them in the direction, the more I was pulling against the vibe of the group. Should I have laid back more and gone with them? I don't know. I didn't say anything to him because I would rather not tell him how to play; rather I would expect him to listen to my playing and follow me (at least when I was playing). Ultimately, the fault lies with me. Either way, I was kind of frustrated.
My previous post was probably a bit dramatic...I'm not dying, or folding, or in need of therapy. Last night was the Reagan Rock Prom at the Variety Playhouse--our second night there, this time playing music from the early 1980s.
Writing in my blog about my disasters and frustrations is cathartic. Once I put down how disappointed I was about Friday night, I felt much better and was able to focus on kicking ass Saturday. I let it go.
So here we go...I got up around noon on Saturday and started cramming for the gig that night, mostly going over a couple of tunes that were bugging me: the Top Gun anthem, True, andHello. I headed over to the Variety Playhouse, set up, soundchecked, and practiced some more. It was really hot and muggy in there, but I assumed they hadn't begun cooling the room yet.
As we got closer to show time, we heard that the air conditioning was not working! It was unbearably hot. Everybody was sliding around on their instruments, and we were sweat soaked by the time we STARTED! The crowd was awash in runny mascara and hairspray. Everybody was uncomfortable. At intermission, Pete and Nick spoke with the head of the venue, but he was totally unapologetic about it. The argument from our end was "the first thing anyone will mention about this event was how awful the heat was." His argument was "people are enjoying themselves and nobody's complaining, so deal with it." Nice. Way to work with us, dude.
I played much better. I had fun and felt really in control of what I was doing. It was a disaster free night! That said, I did have a few funny things happen with my EWI set up. In the second song, I was playing keyboards and I tried to wake my laptop up, but it would not--it had come unplugged and the battery had run out! I plugged it back in and hit the power button, thinking it would wake back up, but instead it made the Mac start up chord (through the house PA during the song!!!!) Oops! I didn't think about that. Once I got it booted up, things were fine.
Towards the end of the first set, I started hearing weird noises coming from my amp--a low rumbling noise. I woke up my my computer and noticed a sound was still playing. Weird....I hit the space bar to kill it, but it came right back on. I played something on EWI, and then there were two sounds playing (one much softer). My laptop is screwing up! But no--it dawned on me that it was so super hot and super muggy, the EWI was playing itself! I picked it up and fingered notes, and it played without me blowing into it! The heat and humidity were so much that it was activating the breath sensor. I turned down the sensitivity and everything was fine. How crazy is that?!
We all looked like we'd played in the rain--everybody was soaked! Even an hour after we finished, sweat was still rolling off of me. When I got home two hours after the gig, my shirt was still wet. The heat was nearly unbearable.
