Almost Back to Normal

Yesterday was the first day in a week that my hands weren't sore when I woke up.  I guess it's from pounding on a keyboard more than usual, but I could hardly stir my coffee in the mornings.  After an hour or so, the strength would return to my hands.

A recap of the past few days!

Friday:  The big Yacht Rock Holiday Special at Park Tavern.  Two shows, both sold out.  Maximum awesomeness.  The venue was cool…we were upstairs in that acoustical nightmare;  Schooner was downstairs in front of the fireplace;  ice skating outside on the patio.  I think all our fans had a wonderful time.

Nick had a new white three piece suit.  I'm so jealous.  It's got me shopping.

That room…ughhhhhh…we were set up in front of all that glass, which always makes for a horrible musical experience, and Friday was no different.  It looks great with the lights and the city in the background, but it felt like somebody had a screwdriver jammed in each of my ears!  I had two choices on stage--turn down and hear everybody else (and guess at what I was playing), or turn up and hear myself, but not be able to hear the band over my amplifier.  I tried both, and failed at both!

Bencuya said he had so much trouble hearing that he had to take his ear plugs out.  I noticed that Cobb actually put some plugs in!  His mom would be happy.

It definitely made me aware of how much my ear is involved in playing--even the keyboard stuff, where I'd/you'd think that I would be playing more literally "this chord, this chord, this chord."  I thought that's the way I was doing it, but in subtracting the sound, I couldn't remember if I was supposed to to hold a G or F on the chorus.   I think I played some really horrible stuff!

The other oddity of playing in that room was that some of my stuff sounded really out of tune, and I am not talking about saxophone issues (I only played sax on two or three songs per show).  The upper octaves of my synth sounded horribly out of tune--like more than a quarter step.  How is that possible?  It was an acoustical problem, not wrong notes.  It really freaked me out.  Things that I knew I was playing correctly sounded so wrong that it would make me second guess myself.  It was really bizarre.

my ice skates

Mark Dannells!

Anyway, everybody said it sounded good out front, so I guess that's all that matters.  Hopefully Bencuya's recording of the performances won't get me fired.

Nick is having a good time

In between the two shows we all went out on the ice rink and sang We Are the World.  I did two laps before we sang.  Not too bad!

All in all, an awesome night for us.  Nick and Pete really put together a great show.

Saturday:  Yacht Rock played a wedding at Greystone in Piedmont Park, a new venue right on the lake.

The room looked like it could be another problem (shoebox, hard surfaces), but the it turned out to be a great spot for us.  The stage was big (so we weren't right on top of each other), and the acoustical panels on the walls ate up the bad reflections.  Everything sounded great.  It restored my faith in my playing!

For their first dance, we were asked to play Supertramp's Give a Little Bit.  Cool with me!  It's got a nice little sax solo in there:

I hope we keep that song--if Nick can stomach it.

The batteries on one of my sax mic transmitters died…changed those out.  Later on in the gig, my EWI started blinking, so I had to change those out.  Six batteries just like that!  I was kind of relieved that the EWI batteries finally gave up--I spent too much energy worrying about them dying during the Friday show (but strangely not enough to just switch them out for fresh ones).

The gig was over at 11, and we were out of there at midnight.  Yay!  That was great.

Mark Dannells is blue but awesome

Sunday:  Church gig number one is finally finding a groove!  No disasters, no confusion.  I think it helped that we played Christmas carols for prelude music, so there was no guessing about what we were playing or where we were in the music.  Cool.  We played more than usual, but it was no big deal, and I was more awake since I'd gone to bed a little earlier than usual.

Church gig number two was fun.  There were two songs sung over drones--it's Advent, and so there seems to be lots of minor key drones.  On one, I played flute--lots of bends and flutters and sound effects to kind of fill it out.  

On the second drone, I played soprano sax--lots of false fingerings and overtone kind of things.  I must be in an overtone kind of mood.  We played The Biggest Part of Me on Saturday night, and my solo at the end had the same sort of overblown/overtone kind of stuff happening.  I guess it's kind of in my ear at the moment, though I don't know why.

One more big week of gigs and then things slow down.  I'm looking forward to practicing more regularly again.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Thursday Night Tune Up

Last night was supposed to be the final tune up for the Second Annual Yacht Rock Holiday Special, but Nick felt himself getting sick and decided to take the night off (turns out Cobb had diarrhea and projectile vomit happening last night, too), so it ended up being just another night at the 10 High.  K Spence in on lead vocals and Ganesh on drums.

Is there such a thing?  This one was really good, especially in the first set.  We were really going for it.  I was having a great time, playing well.  Everybody was playing well.  All my stuff sounded good and felt good.  I got through Lonely Boy with no issues (mental or otherwise).   Even Dannells seemed satisfied with himself.

Dannells is awesome.

Just like last week, the cold arctic air coming down the stairwell made my horns unhappy.  Both instruments had potato chipped reeds when I picked them up, and I had to quickly rehydrate them to return them to normal.  Why is it that I only have to do that once, and then they're ok?  The potato chipping thing only happens one time per gig for me, no matter how long they sit after I flatten the tips out.

We went on break and I sat down and got really sleepy.  Not tired, but sleepy like my contacts were bugging my eyeballs and I wanted to take them out and go curl up somewhere.  Alas, the show must go on!

The second set was pretty good, too.  I remember Bencuya playing a really cool synth solo on Lowdown, and evidently Han's pitch shifter mutilated what I was playing in the PA on Baker Street (I couldn't hear it over my on stage sound).  People stayed until the end, and they were not disappointed.  It was fun, and we made good money.

Tonight's show at the Park Tavern should be awesome.  Usually I kind of dread these special ones because I feel pressured and unprepared, but I'm confident I'm going to nail it tonight.

davidfreemanmusic.net

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.



davidfreemanmusic.net

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):



davidfreemanmusic.net

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