Preparation

I've spent the past few days preparing for the Second Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special coming up this Friday at the Park Tavern (tickets still available for the early show, but the late show is sold out!).  We learned some holiday songs and some new Yacht Rock songs.  It's gonna be good.

We did a rehearsal Tuesday night.  What a difference a year makes!  Last year, I was struggling in my attempts to do anything useful on the keyboard--very much gritting my teeth and holding on for dear life.  This time, I am a much more comfortable.

I practiced the new stuff a ton--I pretty much had it all memorized going into the Tuesday rehearsal, so I had no problems.  Things went so well, in fact, that I impressed Bencuya with one of my synth parts!  I was showing Cobb two missing measures, and I ripped off the bridge for him, and Bencuya said something like, "Holy shit!  That sounded REALLY good!"  How 'bout that!  I feel like I never have to play it perfectly again since he heard me.  I almost called Brandon on the way home to tell him the good news.

Wednesday morning, we did a live performance on the Regular Guys show.  It went well, though in the back of my mind I was cognizant of the fact that I was playing keyboard on the radio, and if I crashed and burned, many many many people would hear it.  However, it went fine.  I had no mistakes that I can recall.  We did Wonderful Christmastime and Imagine a Jump (Dannells sang the hell out of it!).

Wednesday night I did a Schlock Rock performance--my first years.  Schlock Rock is Jewish musical parodies of popular songs.  So, there was La Bamba with Hebrew words (about something Jewish).  There was a song built on Lady Ga Ga's Pokerface.  There was a song by "The Kosher Police" about keeping kosher, sung to Every Breath You Take.  There were Beatles melodies with Hebrew lyrics.  It was bizarre.

Lenny Solomon played an old DX7!  I texted Bencuya "A working DX7!"  and then it cut out during the first song.  Oops.

Thursday morning was another Yacht Rock rehearsal.  Same kind of thing--I feel better about this gig than I have about any other Yacht Rock special event.  I'm ready to kick ass.

davidfreemanmusic.net

So Schoon Me

I played another Yacht Rock Schooner gig last night--a holiday party at a country club.  Hans on sound!  Not much I can say about it.  This one was three sets of music, so the sax stuff was really spread out.  I think I only played two tunes in the last set.  It was super duper easy.  In a way it was kind of boring, but it was nice to take it easy.

I had lots of people asking me why I wasn't playing.  "Putting out the vibe."

Earlier in the day I played my morning church gig, which seems to have kind of calmed down from the chaos of a few weeks ago.  We were spread out along one edge of the stage due to an orchestra concert that night, so I was very far from the piano.  It was me and drums, as far as I could tell.  At least I finally found a place to sit down!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Saturday Schooning

I played a gig last night with the Yacht Rock Schooner--just saxes and flute--for a holiday party at the Cobb Energy Center.  It was really sweet being that close to home.  20 miles round trip!

It was pretty easy, but as always, it's really weird to not play the other parts of the song the way I'm used to doing in the Revue.  I spent about half the gig sitting off to the side of the stage, playing games on my phone.

The band sounded pretty good, though the mix could have been better.  You'd think (if you were a sound guy) that a band with two keyboards must have a significan amount of keyboard stuff going on in the music, and maybe you'd want to hear that in the mix?  The times that I was out front (when not playing games on my phone), it was all drums and bass.

Other than my lack of faith in the sound production, it was good.  I played pretty well, and I was home before midnight.

I took my attire inspiration from this video of David Sanborn playing with Paul Simon.



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Thursday

Usual Thursday...I redeemed myself on Lonely Boy.  I experimented with the difference between vibrato  and leslie on my organ stuff.  Not too much else happened--my awe inspiring setlist (complete with clip art) was about all I had.  It was a weird night where it seemed like I couldn't get my levels set quite right--too much of this, too little of that.  I'm trying not to set my stuff up wide open, but when I stand up (to play saxophone, for instance), and I don't get the feeling that I've got any kind of volume happening.  Even Nick asked me if my sax mic was on.  Hmm.

I will say this...my reeds are old and soft, and I played Baker Street sooooo flat.  I would've needed a hacksaw to get up to pitch.  Soft reed, and then all the cold air blowing down the stairs hit my horns.  Boo.  Time to start breaking in a new batch!

So much for that.  In the mean time, check this out (with fellow IU alum Sara Caswell on violin):



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Beatles vs. Stones

We played a AWESOME gig last night.  The Main Street Exiles were rockin'--best gig I've ever played with that band.  Please Pleaserock Me then took the stage, and played the best gig we've played in a long time!  Great stuff, great set list.  Even the crowd was great.  I had a wonderful time.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Protec's Secret Glue: Vomit

I had a rehearsal yesterday for the upcoming Yacht Rock Holiday Special (Friday, December 10).  We also went over the Beatles stuff for the Please Pleaserock Me show (tonight at Smith's).

I used my bari sax at rehearsal...I opened the case for the first time in probably six weeks, put the thing together, and got ready to wail.  As I drew my breath for the first note, I was nearly killed by the smell of...puke?  I don't know.  My horn smelled like somebody/something had thrown up in it, and then baked it.  I nearly died.

When I got home, I washed the mouthpiece, the neck, the mouthpiece cap, my hands.  Total sterilization.  I squirted some mouthpiece disinfectant into the neck and left it there.  But where was the smell coming from?  It turns out my new Pro Tec baritione saxophone case is glued together with barf.  I Febrezed it and dumped an entire box of baking soda in it, and it's currently outside sunning itself.  Here's hoping the odor is eliminated, or there may be trouble.  Funny that I did a google search, and I'm not the only person who has dealt with this particular problem.

I did a House Live gig last night at Ventanas.  The usual stuff...how many more pictures of that place do I need?  Nothing else of note happened, though I did notice my effects pedal was very uneven--some sounds were much louder than others.  This morning I checked it out--I used a TRS (stereo) to XLR (microphone) cable, and only some of the effects were only coming through on one side of the stereo, while others were both.  Oops.  Gotta use a TS (mono) cable to a DI to an XLR, even though the quarter inch output says stereo.  I guess you've gotta be stereo on the other end, too.  Live and learn.

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Usual Sunday

I got home from the trip to Athens at something like 4 AM, unloaded the truck, and went to bed around 4:30 AM.  Ouch.  I was up three hours later to chug some coffee and head out to church gig number one.

Church gig number one was the typical circus that I've described in the past few weeks.

The service began a half hour later (10 AM), and last week I asked if rehearsal would be a half hour later.  Yes was the answer I got.  Of course, I showed up at 8:30 this week and they were knee deep in the music, making me look late.

Other than that, it was the typical one song of this, one song of that, one song with a choir I'd never seen before, one song with handbells.  I didn't get any preparation emails earlier in the week this time, so there was nothing I could have done differently.

I've been wearing my glasses to this first gig so that I don't have to force my contacts into my face so early in the morning, and once again I noticed how much I need my peripheral vision--a little cue, or eye contact with someone.  That's too bad.  My eyeballs aren't in the mood that early in the morning.

I don't know if it's by design, but when I began this gig we were playing a lot more gospel sort of stuff, and now it's turned more towards the contemporary christian stuff--less tenor and now more soprano.  Less blowing for me (and more sneaking around in the music).  It remains to be seen how this will play out.

I went home and went back to bed.

Church gig number two was also the same as it has been.  Fewer singers than past weeks...drummer plays too softly--he should take off his headphones and balance his volume to the rest of the band acoustically...drummer should mic the suspended cymbal...some of the regular music has changed with the liturgical calendar, which is nice after playing so much of the same thing all summer/fall...my infatuation with the tight clothes usher is waning...

davidfreemanmusic.net