David Freeman Music

Monday afternoon, Yacht Rock played the Atlanta Challenge at Gwinnett Arena. The main event was an exhibition tennis match between Rafael Nadal and Grigor Dimitrov. We played for about an hour while people were coming in. Easy enough. Our gear is somewhere between Seattle and Los Angeles, so all the gear was backlined (I brought my spare horns from home). The gig went fine. It felt kind of frantic in the pacing, but I played ok. After our set, I packed up my gear and went home.

Keeping things rolling, Yacht Rock flew up to the Pacific Northwest for a few gigs. We flew in Wednesday evening, so I did a little exploring before we went to the venue Thursday afternoon. Portland straddles a river, so there are many bridges to check out. We stayed in a different location from our only previous visit, and I lucked out that we were right around the corner from an Indian restaurant. Our first show of this leg was at Revolution Live, an old school that has been repurposed as a music venue (there might also be some other artsy stuff tucked into the other classrooms as well). Very cool place. This one sold out! I wish this place was bigger; it's really cool and sounds really good, but we may have already outgrown it. Anyway, we had a great show here. I did have one super scary moment--right as we launched into Africa and I picked up the EWI, I noticed that my laptop had not been charging, and was down to 1%! Holy shit! I reinserted the c...

In the midst of all the travel, I forgot to mention that Yacht Rock released an album of new material on Friday , plus a silly video for one of the songs! Check it out.

Yacht Rock spent last weekend in Colorado, playing a couple of high altitude shows. I love this place. Colorado might just be the best state in the country. But first... Thursday night, I played with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra at Venkman's. Not my best playing! I came up short in preparation, and it bit me in the butt. Several of those charts are much too difficult to sightread (or play after working through them the night before, as I attempted). Add to that a pretty lame solo, and, yeah...I was kind of disappointed in myself. Friday: We came in to Denver through what was probably thirty minutes of consecutive turbulence. Monkeyboy almost broke the armrests off his seat. I slept through most of it (though I had a dream that I was flying, but I was in a closet inside the plane, and the only other guy in the closet was eating potato chips and trying not to throw up). Anyway, the Colorado sky. Beautiful. Our show was at the Mission Ballroom, a relatively new place ...

I'm late with the blog, so this one will be quick! Thursday: I played a gig in Columbus, GA with friends (Rob Opitz, Marla Feeney, Wes Funderburk, Tyrone Jackson, Billy Thornton, and John David) at a meeting of Georgia Science Teachers. It was supposed to be a Mardi Gras theme with possibly 1,000 people in attendance, but it ended up being about 100 people drinking and sitting across the room from us. Very little to suggest Mardi Gras. For our part, Rob had a couple of books of Dixieland arrangements that were really fun to read, so we played these and a few funky/second line jazz tunes for two hours. Not a bad way to spend an evening! Friday: Yacht Rock flew to south Florida to join up on the Sail Across the Sun cruise, traveling from Miami to the Bahamas. We had three shows over four days. The rest of the time was spent watching the other bands, sleeping, eating, or running on the treadmill. Night one looked like this on the pool deck. Not bad, though I...