David Freeman Music

This week, the Yacht Rock tour headed through Colorado. Originally, the plan was Boulder-Denver-Aspen, but a private gig in Houston won out, sooooo...here's three days. Thursday: Headed to Boulder (via Denver) on a middle of the day flight, which actually proved to be quite comfortable. We left Atlanta at 1:30 PM, and with the time change, we landed in Denver and made it to the Boulder Theatre in good time. I finished up Can You Ever Forgive Me? (see the previous blogs if you don't know what I'm talking about). There was nothing else I wanted to see, so I tried out the documentary on Ruth Bader Ginsberg, titled RBG.  Hot damn. It's really good. Anyway. The weather for Boulder was supposed to be snow/rain, high of 38. Nooooooo! Not in May! Fortunately, there was no snow, and other than a few sprinkles, no rain. After soundcheck, I squeezed in a short run (including picking up my order at the closest Indian restaurant). This Aloo Saag, which is a spinach and...

This busy week continues! Thursday night, I had the good fortune of playing lead tenor in the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra. It's always a challenge--sometimes I'm on bari, sometimes second tenor, sometimes lead tenor--and the setlist changes just as frequently. It's super fun, though, plus it's good to hang out with a bunch of guys I don't see every week. And I didn't totally suck! Great gig. Here's the video from Venkman's, in case you missed the gig. Friday night was the Yacht Rock Revue's annual performance of Purple Rain.  This year, we were lucky to avoid dragging all of our stuff out to a tent deep in Piedmont Park, instead performing at The Roxy (fifteen minutes from home!). I'm not sure if it sold out, but it was definitely packed. This was another really fun show, and it felt like we zipped through it. We've played this album enough times that the performance is really relaxed. I'm as cool with column t...

More airplane hangers! This time, though, we were in Atlanta at the Delta Flight Museum for a little jazz trio gig, playing background music for a small group checking out the planes and eating dinner. I still can't decide if it was just a super easy-no pressure gig, or they forgot that they hired us. We got there, set up, and hung around for about an hour. No word from the client. Finally, I called and said "We're here! Just checking in." They were like, "Cool, it'll be great," but no directions or timeline or anything. Do your thing! Use excellent corporate jazz judgement! People started to trickle in, so we played for about forty-five minutes. Just super casual--calling standards out of a fake book. I once had a handler/agent tell me that any longer than ten seconds between songs was too long. This was not one of those gigs! At that point, the group meandered into the other room. Soooooo...now what? I tracked down the contact--"Whe...

Last weekend: relatively easier in comparison to the previous weeks' travels. Friday: We played some sort of hospital fundraiser at the community airport in Covington--the usual "stage in an aircraft hanger" situation. Right? One would think this would be a boomy sounding mess, but it was a surprisingly good stage sound. In typical corporate fashion, the first several songs were played to an empty dance floor, but after about thirty minutes, we broke through, and the dancers were plentiful. Very easy gig. Really, the only tough thing was sitting in traffic on a Friday afternoon to get out to Covington.  Saturday: Noon flight to Connecticut.  someone left their breakfast in the Park and Fly This gig...maybe some kind of fundraiser in Darien? I guess I wasn't paying attention--I have no idea. Anyway, we flew up there, set up, sound checked, and still had four hours to kill. I went for a run around town. This gig (I mean the...

Off again! This week's run was Wednesday-Saturday, starting off in Michigan. Wednesday: Grand Rapids! Not where I thought we'd first dip our toes into the gigging...waters..of Michigan? I thought that was going to work, but maybe not. Anyway--you'd think we'd begin our midwestern expansion in Detroit, or maybe Ann Arbor, but...no. Grand Rapids it is. Second largest city in Michigan. Home to several breweries. Awww! The Great Bencuya in his home state Step one: lunch! And wouldn't you know it, there's an Indian place right up the street. I hit the buffet for some chana masala.  The evening's gig was at 20 Monroe Live, a newish concert venue in town (capacity 2,600!). Big room, but really nice and clean and well run. They had some sort of private event between our early soundcheck and the gig. After a nap (thought the pollen was bugging me, but I guess I caught a cold), I didn't really feel ready to eat dinner, so I went for a shor...