David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock played the surprise birthday party of one of our friends/fans last night.  Happy 40th to one of the coolest people we know!

Yacht Rock played a small party at the Buckhead Theatre last night.  I really have no idea what we were celebrating, but then again, I guess that doesn't affect my job. As is often the case these days, I have little to say about the gig.  Mark Cobb was particularly inventive and creative in the first set, and Mark Dannells had a really weird/cool solo on How Long .  My personal excitement reached its peak when I began Africa (of course) in the wrong key (using my Bobby Kimball down-a-whole-step set of patches).  Once I realized what was going on, it was an easy fix and I went back to work.   At the end of our show, I ended up in the middle of a conga line on  Call Me Al . There's not much vibe at the Buckhead Theatre (it feels like a nice high school auditorium), but the sound on stage was very good.  After the show, Cobb and I found out that the front of house guy had recorded the whole thing (they were listening to it as they...

Yacht Rock played a gig for Stewart Cink's Cink It Challenge , a Pro-Am golf tournament to raise money for The Pregnancy Resource Center of Gwinnett and the Gwinnett Medical Center Newborn Intensive Care Unit. Another relaxed gig for cool people.  The most difficult part of the gig was navigating from the clubhouse back to the main road in the dark. We had Kip and Zach on sound two nights in a row (Saturday and Sunday).  What a joy it is to work with these guys.  I hope we can make it full time at some point in the future.  Having good, reliable sound men is becoming more and more important as we do more high profile gigs. For the second night in a row, we received gifts!  No t shirts on this one, but we got Parker's Pickles .  Yessssss!

Yacht Rock played a party at a home near North Druid Hills Country Club--a gig we've also played three times before, I think.  The hosts are huge fans of the band, so the gig is always really cool.  Plus, there's forty pounds of candied bacon.  Bacon, bacon, bacon…I had at least twelve pieces.  It's amazingly good.  This is one of the best gigs we do, and the bacon is one of the reasons why.  We set up in a long, narrow tent on a plateau in their backyard.  The first year, the gig took place in early December (night of the SEC championship).  It was so cold that might EWI froze up and stopped working.  Since then, it's been a few weeks earlier, and therefore not nearly as cold.  It's a weird set up due to the space;  drums all the way in the back, then the two keyboard rigs facing each other (Dustin subbing for Bencuya tonight), and then the Nick and Pete flanked by Greg and Monkey across the front.   Here'...

Please Pleaserock Me played a show at Smith's Oldest Bar last night to a packed house.  The wrinkle in this one was that Mark Bencuya was out of town, so Nick successfully picked up a bunch of his keyboard parts. For the horns, I took a solo on Don't Let Me Down (instead of the Billy Preston wurly solo), and I arranged the strings on I Am the Walrus for the horns.  Tricky stuff. Greg Lee brought his new 12 string guitar to the gig.  Very very cool. Smith's feels like it's on the verge of closing…in addition to the usual smells and the non functioning restroom, they were out of good beer (they gave us the choice of Bud Light or Yuengling), some menu selections, vodka for Monkey…hope we're not loading out when the back stairs finally give way. That said, it sounded great on stage and out front, and everybody played really well because of it.  Good gig! We finished at 11 PM.  Another band was slotted to play at midnight, so we loaded out...

Hey…it's Monday again!  Another weekend has blown past. Thursday:  Yacht Rock played at the Georgia Theatre for Halloween, performing all of Michael Jackson's  Thriller and then a set of 70s/80s stuff. We wore the Ghostbusters outfits for Thriller . Oops!  As we walked on stage, I noticed that my stack of charts had been blown onto the floor by the air conditioner.  Aaaaagh!  I think I could probably make it through the album without them, but I like the short term memory bump.  Thankfully, there were enough 10 second spaces in the first few songs that I gradually got them back in order. I actually played a really good sax solo on  Lady in My Life  for the first time in years. The Yacht Rock set was our usual stuff.  We've been playing  Kiss You All Over  and  Love Will Keep Us Together , both of which I enjoy playing (though I bombed the solo for the latter). Nice...