David Freeman Music

Sunday was a two gigger.  I played a House Live gig at the Georgia World Congress Center.  It was pretty cool--I ran into Nick Longo over there, playing in a band opposite of us.  He's doing well.  We were laughing about how often someone pays one of us a compliment, and we know they're talking about the other guy.  I guess we kind of look alike, but Nick is stout--he's nearly a hundred pounds heavier than me! I discovered a bad cable in my rig, but I cannot see where the problem is (it's not at the plug), so I'll have to pitch it.  Fortunately, Wayne had a cable so all was well. Immediately after the House Live gig, I boogied over and did my church gig.  Not much to report there.  The leader is on maternity leave, but that band plays on! Monday morning we had another rehearsal for the big Yacht Rock gigs this weekend.  I found lots of abnormalities in my horn charts--missing measures and such.  It's an annoyance for sure.  I ...

The Yachting continues... Friday, I played with the Yacht Rock Schooner at the Wild Wing in Alpharetta.  It was a pretty decent gig. I shook hands with the same drunk guy after nearly every song in the first set.  He couldn't get enough, I guess.  I felt like I was running for mayor. The band did ok.  I would not say it was our finest performance.  First, a word about the monitor.  I was sharing a wedge with the stage left keyboards and the bass, both of whom sing.  For some reason, both decided to put their instruments into it as well, as well as a general mix of the other vocals on stage.  By the time we began playing, the monitor mix was terrible--too much crap in it, turned all the way up, and guess who was directly in front of it.  Great.  I was neither pleased nor impressed with the choices made there.  If I'm not mistaken, Mr. Bassist and Mr. Keyboardist, that's why you have lugged an amplifier to this event. Kevin Spenc...

Last night's 10 High gig seemed like Broken Bottle night...lots of glass on the floor (in the restroom, around the bar, you name it).  No fights, though! Here's my latest disaster...yesterday I set my rig up to practice before the gig, and all of the sudden my new laptop would not run my old version (7.1!!!) of Logic.  What the hell!  It worked fine at rehearsal Wednesday morning, so I was freaking out.  I uninstalled Logic and reinstalled it, but still no dice.  I couldn't for the life of me figure out what had gone wrong, so I grabbed my old laptop (which, by the way, has not flipped out in over a month, which either means that not turning it off is the solution, or it's fixing to erupt again) and headed out the door. In the back of my head, I spent the whole night wondering why it suddenly would not function.  There's obviously a compatibility issue (the program is so old and the OS is so new, I have to force quit Logic to get out of it), but it's a...

Yacht Rock conquered Spinnaker last night in Panama City Beach.  The gig could not have gone better.  Kenny, the sound guy, was terrific, the crowd was good, the weather was nice, the load in/out was easy.  I dug it.  We played from 11 PM til 3 AM.  It sounds worse than it was.  I sweated more than I'd ever sweated on a gig.  By the end of the night, the leather pad on my neckstrap was spongy squishy wet. Other than the bridge to Baby Come Back  and a hiccup in Stayin' Alive , things went well for me personally.  The sound guy bumped me up so loud on a couple of sax solos, I'm sure I was heard in Tampa!  I dug it.  I sat in the dark (no light on my part of the stage), but I'd trade that any day for a sound guy that was paying attention. davidfreemanmusic.net

So...let's see.  It's been a few days since my last post. Wednesday:   we (Yacht Rock) had a big rehearsal in preparation for our upcoming two night stand at the Variety Playhouse.  One night is regular Yacht Rock stuff, but the other night is the Reagan Rock Prom , so we're spending our time learning lots of wretched early eighties stuff.  Yuck...stuff like Break my Stride  and True .   We tackled eight tunes in about two hours. Wednesday night I played a Rolling Stones tribute rehearsal.  That was pretty easy--a couple of solos and I was done.  It was deafeningly loud, though.  I bought a little Mackie SRM150 as a baby monitor (if you recall from my previous blog post ).  It worked really well at throwing some sound back towards me.  Up against 2 guitars, bass, drums, and a keyboardist (plus vocals in monitors), I needed some help. Thursday:   Yacht Rock night.  Evidently, it was fight night at the ...

I played a short trio gig at the Loews Hotel in midtown this evening.  The group consisted of myself, Tyrone Jackson on keyboard, and Kevin Smith on bass.  I can't remember off the top of my head who the client was--I suppose it doesn't really matter. We had a wonderful time, and though we all played well, I think Kevin has probably never played better on one of my gigs.  He was super groovy, had a great sound, and played logical solos.  Tyrone had an exceptionally good night too--we've played together for so long that he knows exactly the right thing to play.  He never fails to amaze me.  This was one of those gigs where I loved every second.  My dream would be for this to happen every time I played a gig. The first twenty minutes of the gig were played to an empty room--I guess the guests were still in meetings.    Good for us!  We could hear each other, and the result was a really relaxed performance. After our set of an hour an...

Last night (Friday), I did a wedding with Yacht Rock at King Plow.  I arrived determined to avenge myself for Thursday night's fiasco, and I must say that things were much better.  Neither song got me, though Stayin' Alive  is still very confusing at the end.  I knew where I was (I was reading my chart), but I could have easily been pulled off course.   You Should be Dancing  was fine--back to normal for that one. I got in a couple of good sax solos last night.  Both horns felt good and I was directly in front of my monitor, so I was really comfortable.  We began the gig with Reminiscing , and right before we went on Bencuya dared me to quote Hava Nagila  in my solo, which I did-twice! but he never acknowledged it. After the gig Greg Lee gave me some unnecessary B.S. comments--something to the effect of me being exceptionally slow at packing up.  Hopefully Greg can figure out a way to scale down my setup so I can finish sooner.  A...