David Freeman Music

Here we go...super quick recap of last weekend's Yacht Rock gigs. Thursday: Played Purple Rain  again at Venkman's. We played the record in May, I believe? I had maybe 80 percent recall when I started trying to play it again--it took a few days to get it back together in my hands and head. Overall, I did pretty well. There were maybe two spots of "Does it do that right here?", but no major disasters. Here's the show, in case you missed it. Friday: We traveled to Birmingham to play a regular ol' Yacht Rock gig at Avondale Brewing Co. It looked to be hot, but by the time the sun went down, it wasn't too bad. I went for a run before the show, guessed wrong on the distance of the loop I had chosen, and had to book it back to the brewery. TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR THE GIG. Holy hot damn. One of our most impressive sell outs. I had some seriously bad brain farts on this one, most notably leaving the octave pedal on for the solo i...

Another wedding! A year ago, I was certain we'd priced ourselves out of the wedding band market, but here we are, playing another wedding, with the bonus for this one being that the gig was in Atlanta. This was a WILD one, and included several Buckhead wedding stereotypes; the flock of Ivankas in bridesmaid dresses, to pushy people who wanted to get on stage or make suggestions about what we should be doing, and the guy Nick dubbed "Buckhead Mr. Bean." We played this gig (one big set) under duress, trying to keep the downtime between songs to an absolute minimum. Most of the madness faded by midway through the gig, and then came roaring back at the end, with the bridesmaids on stage for Don't Stop Believing  (one of whom accidentally popped Pete in the face while stealing his microphone). There was some very angry confusion about whether or not to play an encore (with us hiding in a back hallway while they sorted it out), a call of help (someone had thrown up mor...

Another weekend with the Yacht Rock Revue. No Saturday gig, which was weird, but also nice to be home for a change. I think we all looked at it like it was a weekend's worth of work with a little gap in the middle. Besides, with flying home on Monday and then playing a gig on Tuesday, everybody's just trying to keep up. Friday: Back at the Park Tavern! This used to be our big gig of every month in the summer, but now it's just "where are we this Friday." We have this date in May and one in June, and I think that's all our schedule will allow. We played three new ones on this gig: Jackie Blue, Shakedown Street,  and Lady (by Styx--not to be confused with the Little River Band song or the Commodores song or the Kenny Rogers song). I really like Jackie Blue --it's fun and the vibe is cool; Shakedown Street was unexpectedly enjoyable; Lady  is pretty over-the-top, but definitely a 70s classic. The rest of the setlist was pretty much our standard stuff the...

Back to the Northeast to complete our run of shows up there. Thursday: First stop, NYC! We were supposed to be back at Irving Plaza, but there was some sort of mix up in the booking, so we ended up at the Playstation Theater in Times Square. On the one hand, cool--bigger room, bigger stage. On the other hand, Times Square... Pictures from my pre-gig run... Not a bad gig, by any means. The room felt kind of sterile, but we still had a pretty good crowd (in the 500-600 range) for a Thursday night in a part of town populated by tourists. I'd have no qualms about coming back here. Plus, any time a crew moves the gear for you, I am thankful (or maybe it's the other way around--any time we have to drag our own gear, I'm not so thrilled). A solid warm up for the weekend, let's say. Drove to Yonkers after the show. Didn't get lost. It's a lot further from the city than I thought it would be. Friday: Woke up and drove four hours to Boston...