David Freeman Music

Back on the road! Friday: Chicago--one of our favorite places to be. This would be our second time playing the House of Blues in Chicago ( the first was a strange but awesome one, filled with ticket-giveaway-recipients ). This time was no fluke--we've done very well at Joe's on Weed Street and Joe's in Rosemont, and now we were moving up to a bigger, more awesome venue. Load in is an alley under Dearborn Ave, right at the river. This dude's job (evidently) is to sit in a folding chair, facing the building. I'm not sure if the plan is for him to stop people from coming out, or going in. The last time we played here, I was immediately awed by the size of the room. This time I walked in and said, "Oh, it's a House of Blues." It's about the same size as every other HoB we've played. Funny how times change. In between soundcheck and the show, I went for a run around town. Chicago landmarks! Yankee Hotel Foxtrot!   Dale...

I got to play bari sax with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra last night at Cafe 290. Good stuff! This is my third time on the gig, so now I'm starting to get the hang of it. I felt good about my preparation for the gig. It definitely helped that I'd worked at least half of the tunes up to performance speed for the previous gigs, but I still started slowly about a week ago, playing through everything and gradually revving them up to latin band tempi! It made me realize how much I like working through songs that way--I still love to practice.

That's right, just as we get all of our stolen gear replaced and maybe things are sort of back to normal, it's time to go back to Kentucky! Thursday: Flew to Lexington for a public gig. This set up is in the airport. Pretty good crowd for a Thursday (just over 250)! This was my first show with my rebuilt rack for my EWI and wireless. It worked ok--my cable coming out of my mixer vastly underperformed, and it made everything sound kind of weak--even after having Zach boost it, my mix never quite settled into anything. For some reason, my MIDI got the hiccups in the middle of the Africa solo and hung a note, so I had to stop and slap the space bar, which totally sucked. I'm not sure why that happened. Computers have bad days? Anyway...Thursday gig in an old distillery warehouse in front of a couple of hundred people...whatever. Friday: After the Lexington show, we drove the seventy-five miles to Louisville, arriving somewhere around 3 AM. People started waki...

The blog isn't dead...I just have no gigs...except for last night. We had a rare Please Pleaserock Me (Yacht Rock Revue plays the Beatles) gig at Venkman's, with a few subs--Ganesh on drums (filling in for Mark Cobb), Greg on bass (filling in for Pete), and local legend Tim Smith on second guitar and tambourine (filling in for Greg). Even the horn section was a little bit different--no Greg at all and Derrick White filling in for Richard Sherrington on trombone. Because of this (and maybe the fact that we haven't played a Beatles show since January's Variety Playhouse set), the set list was very straightforward. There was nothing for the horns to do until the last ten songs of the night, beginning with Yellow Submarine . Here are the charts: Unfortunately, we haven't played this song in several years, preceding the addition of iPads to our arsenal (and trombone to our horn section). So...in my preparation for this gig, I checked my iPad for a chart--no...

A few more gigs this past weekend, wobbling along with some spare parts in place of our missing (stolen) gear. Friday: Charlotte, NC. We've tried Charlotte a few times over the years, and it's been hit and miss. For the couple of successful gigs at the NC Music Factory outdoor loading dock gig  ( including the one where the stage light caught fire ), we've had a couple of rain outs and an ice storm. I didn't know what to expect for our show at the The Underground - Fillmore Charlotte. Good news! We had a very successful show, and eight hundred people showed up (sellout is 830, so we just missed it!). Still--awesome news. Like Birmingham and Chattanooga, it's great that another close city (within a reasonable drive from Atlanta) has finally caught fire. I'm excited to see this. pre-gig pizza party with The Great Bencuya Saturday: Gig number two was a wedding reception in Asheville, and after late checkout, we had a rather pleasant van r...