David Freeman Music

We made it!  Another big show has come and gone.  There were some rough spots, but we all got through it.  Thanks to the crowd for the great turn out, and thanks to Farrell for making it look so good. Not much for me to do on this gig…I played on about two thirds of the first set (things like cowbell on the outro of one song), two minor things on the middle set, and most of the last set.  At least it made loading out quick and easy.  I also ate half a bag of Cheetos on stage and drank enough of a martini to make my lips numb. I got up and did my two church gigs (with a big nap in between).  I've got nothing to say about either one.  Actually, I will say that my soprano sound was good tonight--I have a reed in just the perfect point in its life.  Also, my flute is still in the shop from the beer spill incident , so I used a different flute with much better results.  It really shows how messed up my instrument was.  Not cool,...

Yacht Rock played a show at The Ivy in Buckhead last night.  Where's that?  It used to be Carbo's, and then it burned.  Now it looks like a two story Buckhead bar, complete with asshole parking attendant. It was a strange gig.  I can't really say why we were there.  It was the beginning of their "Thursday Night Concert Series" (what the hell is that?), which is obviously so huge and important and worth the money that they failed to mention it on their EVENTS PAGE on their website.  I guess they made up for it with multiple Facebook posts. I think we played alright.  The place was packed in spite of the aforementioned ineptitude.  We tested out a few of the songs from our upcoming Dazed and Confused show , which gave me a chance to sit back and do nothing. Anyway, no big deal… Friday was an all day mega rehearsal for the Variety Playhouse show .  A week ago, I thought we were screwed and it wouldn't come together in a ...

I'm back! I started the year by attending a friend's wedding.   Will Scruggs played in the band ( Kingsized ) at the reception.  Yay!  I've known Will since he was still in college at Emory, and he sounds better than ever.  Will has done really well at creating his own gigs and finding his own "thing."  Very cool!  He's also a really nice, dependable guy.  You can see what he's up to by checking out his website .  Yay Will! Will Scruggs! My family took a week long trip to Disney World during the first week of the year.  Along the way, we had a little time to take the David Freeman:  This is Your Life! tour, visiting all my old schools, homes, ex-girlfriend's homes, and hangouts in Orlando.  It looks just the way I left it twenty years ago.  Has it really been twenty years since I graduated from high school? my old house my old school Being back gave me a chance to reconnect with a few of the most import...

The Yacht Rock Revue closed out our spectacular year by playing our New Year's Eve show at the Park Tavern.  Just like last year, they put carpet and a stage on top of the skating rink…we were the greatest show on ice? We played a really good show, I thought.  I can't think of anything that didn't sound good--it was just a really solid, even show to a sold out (1,500 people) crowd.  It was also shown on a webcast, so anybody could tune in.  How cool is that?  Very hip--I hope that continues with next year's Park Tavern summer concert series. I played pretty well.  I had a couple of spots where I was really killing it, immediately followed by brain farts and corresponding wipeouts.  Oops.  Tim Smith was standing behind me offstage for the entire second set--maybe he wasn't listening to me?  On the whole, I think I was good, though.  Hopefully this erases my abomination of a performance the last time we were here . As f...

Yacht Rock played a wedding Thursday night.  Weird, huh?  I guess they were cashing in on every discount you could find.  Fine with me, though…instead of coming home at 2:30 AM smelling of smoke (and possibly having to wipe spilled beer off my flute),  I was home at midnight.  Plus, we made more money.  So ha!  A win all around. The gig was pretty fun.  I mean, especially for a wedding, it was a relaxed, nobody's bugging us kind of thing.  We hadn't played together in ten days--it felt pretty good compared to the previous wedding where we were all committed to getting out of there ASAP.  Mark Cobb seemed pretty refreshed, like he was enjoying himself.  Bencuya slipped Rockit into his I Want to Be Your Lover solo again.  Good stuff. We played Give a Little Bit again.  I screwed up the sax solo the last time we played it.  And then I heard it in the grocery store a few days before Christmas, and as soon as i...

I played a GREAT duo gig last night with the one and only  David Ellington . Driving up Main Street in Woodstock, I thought "Man, it's dark here!"  My directions told me I was in the right place, but all the shops and restaurants looked closed.  I pulled into the parking lot, met up with Ellington, and we investigated on foot.  It turned out that a car had plowed into a transformer and knocked everything out!  I sent Ellington home and agreed to play the gig solo. Right before I was to begin, the power kicked back on, so I called Dave and told him to turn around and come back.  In the mean time, I went ahead and played solo sax for about twenty minutes.  Once he was set up, we played a couple of normal length sets. Part of it was that I was having a great night--I felt good and I had a good reed and I could hear myself--but Ellington really made me play better.  We hadn't played a gig together in over a year, and it felt like we picked ri...

I ended up with three Christmas Eve gigs last night…two at church gig number 2, and one at church gig number 1. The first two were in the parish hall, and turned out to be pretty easy.  I think the most challenging thing about being in there is mixing, as we plug into the wall and use the speakers in the ceiling.  From our spot in the corner, it's impossible to hear what we sound like--I had to walk out a half dozen times and check it out, usually right down the center aisle because of the Christmas Eve overcrowding. I did help myself right from the start by unplugging all the XLRs from the mixer and zeroing out the board.  No point dealing with all the crap.  I did figure out how to use the onboard effects, so the second service got to hear us with reverb.  Yippee! Playing-wise, things were ok.  I felt ok on flute, and my soprano felt really good (Lopes just finished putting it back together about a week ago).  Christmas carols are pretty straig...