This is not a huge gig for me, playing-wise. There are some horn parts--I guess you never really think about the Rolling Stones having horn parts, but Bobby Keys has been playing with them forever! (the current band also has Andy Snitzer on saxophone). There are some things to play. That said, I probably have more responsibility as the percussionist.
Here's the solo on Miss You. It's a typical chart for this gig--wait, wait, WAIT!!, eight measure solo, and you're done.
The crowd was horrible! Or should I say, "What crowd?" I don't think there were ever more than ten people in the audience. Because of that, we played kind of a low energy/rehearsal kind of show. It was sad.
I personally didn't have a bad night (none of us did), but I did step on the wrong pedal for Bitch, so all my stuff was a fifth apart instead of a fourth. Oops.
I'm leaving this morning to go on the Zac Brown Sailing Southern Ground cruise, on our way to Grand Cayman. I'll have a blog update early next week. davidfreemanmusic.net
In my continuing quest to find an alto mouthpiece that can get me closer to David Sanborn's sound, I have mingled with many hunks of metal, but today I think I found a winner! The ARB metal (#6) fits the bill.
I have played approximately one dozen Dukoff 8s in the past two weeks. None of them were great, but I did pick one that was pretty good and had Will Grizzle reface it (along with the D7* that I've been using since the Vegas trip). The D8 has been on my desk, and I've been playing the D7*. What I've noticed is that it starts out fine, but somewhere during the gig things change--I don't know if it's my reeds drying out or warping off the table, or if the mouthpiece is heating up and changing shape, but the thing never feels as good as it does for the first couple of notes I play. Regardless of the reason, I've got to keep looking--I can't deal with a piece that is never the same thing twice!
Saxophonist fans of David Sanborn know that before the Dukoff, he played a Brilhart Level Aire--this is from the late sixties up until some time in 1975, when he made the switch. I don't think he sounds that different, so I started investigating the Level Aire. At some point, Arnold Brilhart was working for Beechler, and put out the ARB mouthpiece (his initials) for them--but it's really just the Brilhart Level Aire. Ah ha! I ordered one, and it plays great (I played along with Young Americans a few times), and it's made out of stainless steel so I know it's not going to morph the way the silverite Dukoff is. I won't know for sure until I play it on a few gigs, but I played on it this afternoon and it did everything I wanted it to do. I got the sound I was looking for, the range, the volume, and the articulation was good. It's bright and edgy, but stable.
I went to bed around 2 AM, got up at 6:45 AM, and got to my church gig at 8 AM. Somewhere in the down time at that one I took a nap. I played lots of clarinet on this one--we kind of slid from gospel/soul to more of a New Orleans/soul thing. Maybe it was just me--I probably played pretty much the same thing I would have played, but on clarinet. Anyway, they asked for clarinet, they got clarinet.
I took a nap as soon as I got home. After I got up, I hung out with Jack for a while, practiced, and then rolled on to my second church gig. I played mostly flute on this one.
I got home, ate, and fell asleep watching the football game.
The first was a Yacht Rock gig. We played a wedding (ceremony and reception) at the Aquarium. Mark Dannells and I played the ceremony--flute and acoustic guitar. It was never clearly stated to any of us, but it turns out we played the gig for free. Booooo. It was all connected to some sort of radio program--I guess the bride and groom won a free wedding on the radio, and all the vendors (band, photographers) traded their services for promotion from the radio and the Aquarium. We'll see. I think we got screwed.
Saturday night was a smooth jazz gig at Londzell's with Madoca and Company. It wasn't too bad, though I did have the thought at one point that it was two and a half hours of watching "your local weather." It was difficult reading, though! Here's what the charts looked like:
The solos were always wide open--one or two chords.
I played at the Wild Wing in Suwanee with the Schooner last night, with Greg Lee subbing for Ganesh Giri Jaya, and Dustin subbing for Mike Bielenberg. They were a bit flat compared to last night, I thought.
The monitor that I shared was a bit grumpy. During soundcheck it was fine because I wasn't quite standing on top of it. Once we started playing the gig, however, my microphone began feeding back--a low end thing that kept cycling until it would roar. The soundman fixed it pretty quickly by removing me from the monitor completely! No more feedback. No more audible saxophone on stage, either. Thanks, dude. A bit drastic, I would say.
I got bored pretty quickly and ended up overplaying--lots of saxophone in spots (intros, bridges) where it didn't belong.
My horns are getting a bit leaky. I can always tell when my tenor needs to be looked at because the altissimo A and Bb become much easier to miss. Last night the Bb was going low--I had to kick it to make it come out. I switched over to my backup for today's events.
I'm off to an early Yacht Rock wedding--8 AM load in at the Aquarium! Ouch.
Here are two extra cool pictures from this past Tuesday's Greater Vavoom gig.
Tonight the members of the Yacht Rock Revue had the band version of an office party. We gave up our usual 10 High gig to the Schooner so we could attend the "Dukes of September" concert--Boz Scaggs, Michael McDonald, and Donald Fagen--at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre.
The concert was pretty good. With those three guys, you'd think you'd hear more of classic songs. Instead, it was about half covers--maybe more than half. For instance, the only Steely Dan song Fagen did was Reelin' in the Years. Michael McDonald did I Keep Forgetting, What a Fool Believes, and Takin' it to the Streets (and on that one he only sang the first verse and chorus before turning it over to a background singer). Boz Scaggs did Lowdown; maybe he did one other that I can't think of right now. The rest were covers. It was cool hearing Walt Weiskopf again. He's awesome.
Immediately following the concert, somebody had the terrific idea that we would go crash the 10 High, presumably to show up the B band. I drove like a wild man back to my house to get my saxophones and flute, and then flew down to Virginia Highland. When we got there, the Schooner was playing and sounding great. We got up there on their break and tried to play What a Fool Believes, I Want a New Drug, and Lido Shuffle. It was not pretty.
I played my keyboard parts on What a Fool Believes that I've been working on. Disaster. I couldn't hear very well what I was doing, and I wasn't comfortable with the setup of the keyboards. I could go on with an excuse for every wrong note I played. I Want a New Drug was fine because it was my usual sax part. Lido Shuffle was really bad--I usually play the brass part on EWI, so I f...fumbled it. Over and over, I might add. Even worse, with the usual keyboard wizard, Eric Frampton, close enough that he could spit on me in disgust. Mercifully, we finished with that one and I could leave.
I drove home as fast as I drove down there, furious and embarrassed. I know it's my fault--if I was better and more consistent in my keyboard playing, I wouldn't have made such a fool of myself. I really looked like an amateur in front of a room full of people, and with the entire band and the Schooner watching. This cannot happen ever again, but I'm sure it will.
Please Pleaserock Me, our Beatles tribute, stormed Smith's Olde Bar again last night. I think the show went really well, even though there were hardly any people there. I guess the Juliette Lewis crowd wasn't interested.
(Just as a side note, I want to mention that the dressing room that Dearly Beloved used twenty-four hours previously still smelled atrociously bad. It was all armpits and litterboxes. They admitted/apologized to some of us that they hadn't bathed in a while. No shit! I think their previous encounter with soap must have been back in Canada.)
The big tune of the night was When I'm Sixty-Four. It went pretty well. I'm flat (of all things--after years of being twenty cents sharp, I'm finally going flat!) and the other two horns are wild with the tuning as well. I 'm guessing that when I'm playing straight clarinet, my throat and embouchure aren't as wide open as they are when I've been playing saxophone full blast for an hour. Thus, I'm a little low. The clarinet wins again!
I recorded it:
Other than that, it was our usual stuff. Jason Pellett nailed Penny Lane. The sound was really good, particularly for the horn monitor. I think that it helped that Greg was not there when we set the monitor mix--Jason and I want us and probably nothing else, and Greg wants everything else and us!
We always laugh that the Please Pleaserock Me gig always looks like a music store...three keyboards, a Wurly, drums, hand percussion, six or seven guitars, five amplifiers, omnichord, laptop, plus the horns--me or soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone sax, piccolo, flute, clarinet, and kazoo, Jason on piccolo trumpet, Bb trumpet, flugelhorn, and trombone, and Greg on alto sax! We use all thirty-two channels at Smith's, and we could use more if they had them.
It's a drag that Youtube took down the video of Bowie (with Sanborn) playing Young Americans live on the Dick Cavett show. One of my favorites. I did find it here.
Speaking of David Sanborn, I got my Dukoffs back from Will Grizzle already. He put them back together for me. Yay! I played my normal one last night--it's a 7* that Mojobari opened up to .85, so it's really a D8 now. It felt great. I had been using a Dukoff vibracom D8 (my backup mouthpiece). The silverite one has more bite and balls. I love it.
