David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock played three gigs in New England this past weekend; Thursday night in Providence, Rhode Island, and then two nights at The Royale in Boston.  Thursday: There aren't a lot of flights between Atlanta and Providence, so we had to go early, landing around noon. After lunch, there was still plenty of time to kill, so I went for a run. Chilly, but not freezing. The gig was at a club called Fete Music Hall, and it seemed to be in a warehouse district, but that whole part of Providence looked a little rough. The gig was mostly a war of attrition--we were all pretty tired and fried from a long day. Even though the turnout was good for our first time here (286 in a room that could hold 730) and it sounded good, we were all ready to go to bed. Video evidence of our gig: Friday: Night one in Boston. A pretty slammin' gig! We had Keisha and Kourtney Jackson joining us as background vocalists, and Robbie Dupree came up to sing a few with us as well. Just o...

Monday night (now a week ago), Scott Glazer's Mojo Dojo played at Elliot Street Pub, just blocks from where the Falcons were playing the Giants on Monday Night Football. The entire area was choked with cars, either parked or searching for parking. What a mess. I tried a lot near the pub, but turned away when the guy wanted $60. I ended up in a street spot about ten minutes away. The band was Scott, John Sandfort on tenor, Nick Johnson on guitar, Nick Rosen on keyboard, Jon Chalden on drums, and me (also on tenor). Pay no attention to this photograph. It was a little bit like Mardi Gras--the band set up on the sidewalk, people standing around in the street with drinks, obnoxiously loud tailgaters across from us, and a constant stream of jerseys into and out of Elliot Street. The playing was fun as always--Nick Johnson pretty much destroyed the other three of us who were also charged with soloing--and the hang was great. We finished just after 8 PM. I walked back to my truck...

Buckhead is weird, man. Weird vibes. I don't get it. Thursday night , I played a trio gig in Buckhead--strictly background music for some kind of corporate mixer. Maybe 200 people in the room, and several of them seemed to be going out of their way to stand as close to band as possible while holding conversations, all the while seemingly oblivious to us. Later in the evening, a man, armed with a small PA and a wireless microphone, shouted over us (and the indifferent crowd) instead of asking us to stop for his announcements. Very strange. Sometimes it feels like people don't know what live music looks like up close, so they treat us like furniture, or catering. Anyway, enough about that. The gig was with Nick Rosen (keyboard) and Robby Handley (bass), and once again it's been way too long since I've done a jazz trio gig (maybe a year at this point), and I was anxious about whether or not I could remember any tunes and/or play over changes. Much to my surprise, thing...

I had two gigs this past weekend; Thursday night, I played with Rob Opitz's Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra, and Saturday night was a Yacht Rock gig, though different because we had several subs. I guess that I should mention my third gig of the weekend as well--I've been back in the church gig scene. Thursday's gig with the ALJO was their monthly show at Venkman's, and we all squeezed onto the stage and hammered out complicated big band charts. Fortunately for me, I got the set list a week and a half before, so I'd played this show ten times before the day of the show, and was therefore very comfortable with all the syncopations and awkward licks. I held down the bari sax/bass clarinet chair for the night, a nice change of pace from my other gigs. The band is stacked with some of the heaviest guys in town, so there is understandably A LOT of solo time, but the charts are really hip, and the band crushes it. Check out how well the ensemble plays together. Thou...

Three gigs last weekend. Thursday: We played a fundraiser for a recycling center in Atlanta. The usual corporate gig level of energy and enthusiasm. Pretty painless, and we finished at 10, so I was home by 11:30 (which was amazing). I'm a big proponent of recycling, and this fundraiser was aimed at helping a center which handles hard-to-recycle stuff (paint, tires, styrofoam, weapons grade plutonium, etc). While this is all super awesome, it was extremely disappointing that there was no recycling bin in the band's dressing room, which means that all of this more common and easy-to-recycle plastic is probably going to the dump. Plastics are now in the food chain, people. It's a serious problem. Friday: Country club party. Another low energy easy one. This one ended at 10 PM as well, and we had some grumpy dancers. Evidently they messed up their scheduling, and they should've done 8:30-11 instead of 7:30-10. We'll try again next year. Saturday: Of...

Two more gigs to finish out this week. Friday: We played The Fred (the Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater) in Peachtree City for the third time, and for the third year in a row, we had rain. The crowd persevered, though, and it stopped just in time for us to begin. This was not our usual show--for one thing, we had Ganesh Giri Jaya on drums, plus a horn section of Rob Opitz, Sam Skelton, and Wes Funderburk. Additionally, we played an entire first set of Beatles songs, something we haven't done in a few months. Everything turned out great. Good gig. Saturday: Our Saturday gig was a private party in Louisville, so another airplane ride, another tent, another pair of backline keyboards. This was a good one, though--the backline was excellent, the tent sounded pretty good, the weather was just about perfect, and the crowd was into it. All in all, it made for a pretty easy night. pretty dog halfway through my run country club gig=brushing and mouthwash The roughest...

This week, the Yacht Rock Revue went to Florida for a couple of gigs before returning to Atlanta for a Saturday night gig at Venkman's.  Thursday:  The Beacham in Orlando. I'm pretty sure I saw Tower of Power play here in the early 90s.  While I'm happy that we're in a venue closer to Orlando (previous gigs at the House of Blues next to Disney are far away from most of our target audience), I don't think The Beacham is going to be our new favorite place to play. Decent crowd for a Thursday. Friday: Tallahassee. we hit a lot of bugs Friday's show was a street party before Saturday's FSU game. We'd played one of these maybe three years ago, and it was enough of a success that they've been trying to get us back every year since then. Quite a party! Even if they had no idea who we were, the crowd was good and enthusiastic, and pretty entertaining. We had one drunk girl climb the barricade, pull herself on stage, get esco...