David Freeman Music

I played a trio gig last night at Lenox Square Mall in Neiman Marcus.  I have no idea what it was for;  they told us where to set up, and we played the gig. The trio for last night was Louis Heriveaux on keyboard and Evan Hodges on bass.  For the most part, things were cool.  It's always a pleasure to play with Louis, who brings his warm personality to every tune on the gig.  I'd never played a gig with Evan before, and was pleased to hear such a great bass sound  coupled with so much creativity. We were all over the place tempo-wise.  The first set, everything except the final tune rushed, to the point where it was really starting to piss me off.  The middle set and most of the last set leaned backwards, and then the last tune was pushing again.  My guess would be that if we played more as a unit, this would all even out.  Both guys did a good job of sightreading more charts (except for for Guitar Song  which evidently is quite...

The Yacht Rock Revue returned home to our usual Thursday night gig at the 10 High.  I guess our crowd didn't know we were back or something, because it was sparsely attended.  Maybe they thought we were the Main Street Exiles . Due to a family emergency, Mark Bencuya couldn't make the gig, so we had Mike Bielenberg filling in as the other keyboardist.  As much as I missed, it was also kind of fun--Bielenberg knows lots of the same parts that I do, so I did my best to play some of Bencuya's parts.   More Than a Woman  was alot of fun, and I was really pleased with myself for learning the tune that afternoon and playing it well that night.  I could have done Bencuya's rhodes part on  Baby Come Back  (I hadn't had a shot at it since Brandon and I covered a gig a few years ago), but it got cut.  I also enjoyed being "the man" on How Long  and Hot Child in the City --in real life I just double Bencuya as best I can.  Last night I was ...

I played with Main Street Exiles last night at the 10 High as part of our one month residency at the 10 High.  Last week's attendance was super sad...$75 split between seven guys!  This week's attendance was much better.  Too many dudes, but hopefully the women will come around. The band is sounding better and better as we find our groove and get comfortable with each other.  I can't think of any crash and burn situations...instead there were lots of "we're rockin'!" moments.  Fred McNeal continues to amaze on guitar and vocals and persona.  I think he has some of Keith Richards' DNA. Freddy told me I'm nailing the Bobby Keys thing (sax player for the Stones from the early 70s to the present).  That's cool--he said, "You don't understand!  That's the best compliment I can give!" We added Rocks Off and Heartbreaker this week, and both went well.  Hopefully we can keep the momentum through the end of the month! davidfr...

I returned relatively unscathed from the Zac Brown Sailing Southern Ground cruise.  We left Tampa Thursday afternoon in a wash of free booze and loud country music bound for Grand Cayman, and floated back Monday morning, tired and ready to go home! A recap of what I can remember: Thursday:  we flew from Atlanta to Tampa, caught a cab to the port, and got on the boat. Mark Cobb in flight. From there it was mostly hanging out and drinking. As we pulled away from the dock, the Zac Brown Band played on the Lido Deck, while the artist VIP area was full of musicians sucking up the free alcohol.  Actually, they shut the bar down because we were going through it too fast!  It was cool to hang with friends old and new. Here's Brandon Still (previous Yacht Rock keyboardist, now with Blackberry Smoke ) and his girlfriend Tiffany Cosgrove. Anyway...I drank.  I don't remember anything else happening.  I woke up in...

Tonight was the first night of the Main Street Exiles ' residency at the 10 High.  We played the same set we played a few weeks earlier . 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...

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 befor...

Sunday was a killer. 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. davidfreemanmusic.net