Thursday stuff

Yesterday (Thursday) was WAAAAY better than the previous week.

I began the day by running a slew of errands.  First, I took a few mouthpieces and put them in the mail--some to be returned, and some to be refaced.

A few weeks ago I replaced my old beat up Vandoren 5RV clarinet mouthpiece with a new 5RVlyre Series 13 mouthpiece (which plays much more in tune for me--I have always been sharp, even with a longer barrel).  Anyway, I ordered three mouthpieces to try, picked one, and sent the other two back.  A few days later, I got a call saying that they'd accidentally refunded me the money for all three, and so they needed my credit card to charge me for the one I kept.  Fine.  A week later, the two mouthpieces I rejected showed up in the mail again, along with a bill for them.  So...I called, they straightened it out (I hope), and I sent them on their way yet again.

While at the post office, I also sent out two Dukoff alto mouthpieces to Will Grizzle for refacing.  One was a new guy, and one was an old guy that I messed up by tinkering with it.  Oops.  Will can straighten it out (I hope).  I've never kept a single mouthpiece that I've had Will reface, but I keep hoping that it's me and not him.  Since his claim to fame is working on David Sanborn's Dukoff, I thought I'd take another chance on him.

I also picked up this beautiful wig for the show tonight:

Oh yeah.

I got home and tried to troubleshoot what I thought was a cable problem, but what I now think is a buzzy tweeter in my powered speaker.  It only buzzes when I use the EWI to play flute, and only on a certain note in a certain volume range.  I think I've figured out something that will work--turning it down and then playing louder to get past that "spot" of distortion.

Somewhere in all of that, I was forced by Mark Bencuya to start thinking about next week's Beatles show.  He was calling to check the key of When I'm 64...in C#.  I agree.  It got me wondering how I can arrange that little clarinet choir for one clarinet, one alto, and one trombone (or trumpet).  We'll see.  I'm thinking trombone will cover the bass clarinet part, and the alto will hopefully stay beneath me on the other clarinet part.

The gig last night...(finally!)...much better than last week.  I really wanted to have a good time and kick butt, so I tried to force some enthusiasm at the beginning of the gig.  That worked.  I was having fun and playing well (cue the music!)...until...I had AN EWI PROBLEM!!!!!!!  I know--who'd have guessed that the EWI would trip me up?!    Here's how it all went down:  we were playing great until we got to Peg.  I play the intro thing (Tom Scott on lyricon, I believe):

When I cued up that sound, I got nothing, and the tunes was blowing by, so I used another sound until I could get to the verse and have a look.  I looked at the screen and it was lighting up like it does when the thing is receiving MIDI info, so I was really confused...and here came the second verse thing, so I had to play something for that, even though it was the wrong sound...and then back to the computer.  It turns out that the sound source (in this case it was the EXS 24 sampler) was missing from the channel strip.  Hence, no sound.  That sucked really bad.  Peg was a disaster.  When we got past the synth part, I didn't have the phasey clav thing set up on my keyboard, so I had to stop and do that, and then my head was splattered all over the wall and I kept playing wrong notes.  It was not a pretty moment (and I'd been kicking ass up to that point!).

On set break I learned that the 10 High is now carrying Newcastle in bottles, so I had a big ol' bottle and felt much better about myself.  No one even mentioned my disaster--evidently the bass rig was malfunctioning at exactly the same time my EWI stuff was taking a dive.

The second set featured Mark Cobb sitting in for My Love is Alive.  That was cool--we rocked it.  I luuuuuuuuv me some Mark Cobb, though Ganesh held his own.  He even got 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover right after weeks of pysching himself out about it.

We skipped Lonely Boy.  I'm just going on record to say that I disapprove.  I guess the trade off was Mark Cobb on My Love is Alive.  I can live with that, I think.

It took me forever to load out last night.  I don't know why.  I was dragging.

I will now madly cram for Thriller.  Wish me luck!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Thriller rehearsal

Yacht Rock is dusting off Michael Jackson's Thriller for a performance this Friday night at the Park Tavern.  Yesterday we wandered through a quick rehearsal of it.

We originally had learned the entire record for Halloween of last year (perhaps you will recall this).  We also played it on The Rock Boat this past January, and haven't thought about it since!

Video from the boat:



I'm pretty lukewarm about playing it.  I made charts of everything I have to play, so I just read it down.  I have no love for it.  I bet that I'll have more fun playing the clav part to Peg in the first set.

Anyway, rehearsal was fine.  Bencuya assigned me a few parts that I need to grab before tomorrow night, and I need to tweak a few of my laptop sounds that didn't do what I expected them to do.  I also discovered that my cable from my computer to my little mixer is going bad--I had some crunchy static that went away when I used my crappy emergency cable.  It's always something!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday

It's been a slow weekend.  I had no gigs at all last week or this weekend except for my Thursday night thing.  Even so, I've been busy with lots of stuff --teaching is coming back since school started, plus I have been cranking out charts trying to get ahead of the next couple of weeks' gigs.

Today (Sunday) was my bookend church gigs--one at 9:30 AM and one at 7 PM.  I was a little more awake than last week.  The morning gig went well--it was more of the regular service, so a bit less bombastic than last week's thing.  No choir and almost no pipe organ.  Same stuff for me, though--show and blow.  Afterwards the next service began frantically setting up, and they wheeled out tympani.  The big show must be at the 11 AM!

Sunday night's gig was the usual story--not much happening.  I dedicated my performance to adding the interval of a perfect fourth to the lines I was playing.  I fell asleep during the homily.  The hot (female) usher was there.  I started breaking in a new soprano sax reed.  The pianist played more wrong notes than usual.

Here's a picture from last Friday's Yacht Rock gig at Andrews Upstairs/8 Trax.  That's me up at the top of the picture.  You can get a pretty good idea of how tight the stage is.

I've got a busy week coming up.  Stay tuned.
davidfreemanmusic.net

E.D.

I have not been that bored on a Yacht Rock gig in a long time.  I could tell early in the night that we were all pretty flat and there would be nothing that could pull us out of it.  At that point it became a dreadfully long march through almost two full sets of music.

Musically speaking, I was able to neither achieve nor maintain...!

Increasingly I find it difficult to play with musicians who aren't listening well.  I thought last night I would be able to push past it and focus on the people who were, but I couldn't get away from it.  There were multiple spots where the soloist would wrap up his solo and most of us could hear it, but we would keep playing.  The opposite happened to me, where I was just reaching the top gear on my solo, but the song ended.  Am I misreading the signals?  I don't know.  My feeling was that some of us were just going from point A to point B, and the hell with the in between.  

All I know is I can't play when I know it doesn't matter.

Oh well...we survived.  Here's hoping for better music next week.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday church gigs

Yesterday (Sunday), I did a couple of church gigs.  The first two were new gigs at a nearby church.  Pretty easy, straightforward stuff--I just showed up and blew over the top of what was going on around me.  For these particular services, around was a choir, four singers, two lead singers, piano, two guitars (acoustic and electric), bass, drums, and three piece horn section.  The only bummer was that I had to be there at 8 AM.  8 AM!  Geez.  I slept during the sermon on the second service.  I also slept at the pool after that.

Sunday night was my usual church gig.  Nothing great to report.  My face and hands were really tired.  I was glad to get home, where I immediately crashed on the couch.
davidfreemanmusic.net

Saturday in the Park

Saturday night I played a really relaxed wedding gig with Constantly Awesome.  The four guys that comprise that band used to be a terrific original band called Y-O-U.  They are also the principal members of Yacht Rock.  I played melodica (theme to The Office), flute, alto and tenor saxophone, and keyboard.  It was fun and easy.  Why can't they all be like that?

Someone has posted a video from last night's gig.  You can hear me playing the synth and string parts that I worked on Thursday.  Weird...I didn't like the way the synth sound worked with the rest of the music when I was on stage, but now that I hear it on the video, it sounds right.  Maybe I need to live with it for a few gigs.

davidfreemanmusic.net 

Oh What a Night!

The Yacht Rock Revue played four sets at whatever they're calling Andrews Upstairs last night.  The first two sets were a private party for Groupon, and then they opened the place up to the public.  The Groupon people were pretty lame--they just sat there like it was a concert!--but we had 500 presales for the public part of the gig, so we nearly had a stampede when the doors opened.  Since there were only about 75-100 tickets left, I'm pretty sure it sold out before we started.

Mark Cobb returned to the band for this gig.  It's been a few weeks since we played with him since he no longer plays the 10 High gigs on Thursday nights.  I think we were both excited to play.  He was on fire, especially through the first three sets.  Awesome stuff!

Mark Bencuya is still my hero.  Sitting next to him is the best part of playing Andrews--I pick up so much from watching him play.  I feel bad that he has to listen to me!

By the time we reached the midpoint of the public gig, we could have made the crowd do anything we wanted.  They were loving everything we did.  It was insanity!  We were able to keep it going.  Nick did an amazing Bono impersonation during Don't You Forget About Me.  We probably would have caused a riot if we'd stopped right there.

The only bad part of the gig was that so many people stayed after we finished, loading gear out across the dance floor was a major pain.  Usually people clear out, but last night most people hung out for another hour.  We need roadies!
davidfreemanmusic.net