David Freeman Music

It's time for another "way-too-late" blog update! Only two weeks behind schedule! World class procrastination! May began with night two of our shows at The Fred Amphitheater in Peachtree City, GA. Maybe not as electric as the evening before, but still a very solid show. Sort of business-as-usual with a lazy soundcheck, a livestream performance of With a Little Help from My Friends  for the 500 Songs for Kids Beatles show, chips and salsa, some sort of vegan concoction of rice, beans, and veggies that I brought from home, and solid playing on stage. The following weekend, I played in a concert production (no acting, just the singing) of Nine  at the Cobb County Theatre. The orchestra was stretched all the way across the back of the stage, with the conductor on  one end and me on the other. Luckily, we were all on headphones and the conductor wore a microphone that she used to count in tempo changes. Sill, check out this picture. The conductor is the last head at the end of...

As live music begins to pick up momentum, it seems I'll have to go back to updating this blog more than once a month. Until that happens, thought...here's what happened in the month of April! The first big live Yacht Rock gig of the year was to be in Orlando on April 10, performing at the Hops and Hogs Festival at the Central Florida Fairgrounds. We were all curious about playing for people instead of cars, and maybe what sort of a risk we'd be taking as the COVID stuff begins to recede.  The fairgrounds has a nice stage and plenty of room for social distancing! Maybe it was too early to expect to see much of a crowd. I mean, look at all those people! We were stuck in an afternoon lineup between several southern rock bands (the collective love-children of Lynyrd Skynrd and Warrant) and Sugar Ray. Uhh, ok.  Unfortunately(?), a vicious line of the thunderstorms came racing across the state. The winds started blowing gear around, and there was a rumor of a tornado--Old Testam...

Here's a quickie post: This is my transcription of an Instagram post by saxophonist Ryan Devlin, and it looks like a chorus of rhythm changes, maybe in a hotel room. Excellent bop vocabulary!

March was pretty quiet. I played a couple of weddings, made a few videos. It feels like things are moving in the right direction, though. On the first Saturday of March, I played a wedding reception at the Atlanta History Center. It was kind of a pick up jazz sextet with a vocalist, playing standards in really distant keys to accommodate her range. In spite of that (and being unfamiliar with most of the musicians), the fun of winging it made the night fairly enjoyable. I wore a mask for this (pretty much the only way I was willing to play indoors with a hundred and fifty strangers!). Having to open the flap to insert the mouthpiece was a little bit of a hassle, but it was so much fun to play a gig!  After about an hour and a half, we handed the room off to the DJ and split. Home by 10 PM. Love it! A few weeks later, I was invited to play in a jazz duo in Decatur for a wedding--this one was for the ceremony and the cocktail hour. Similarly, this one came together at the last minute,...

Things are very slow right now in the local music biz, so I haven't much to report. A few livestream concerts have been broadcast--the Yacht Rock Valentine's Day Prom, and also the performance of Hot Dads in Tight Jeans , which you can watch on Facebook and YouTube. The Prom was a pay-per-view thing, so I can't share the video, but here are some cool pictures from it: Since then, my time has been focused on recording horns for another Ladies of Soul livestream, cranking out a couple of songs each day. Here's one: Who's Loving You  by the Jackson Five was going to be on the Ladies of Soul show, so I wrote a horn arrangement, and then it ended up getting cut from the setlist. My arrangement didn't really work anyway, so whatever--there's no place to breathe! On a real gig, I/we'd have died. At the very least, we would've needed a time out. Anyway, I made a video out of it. My original plan had been to to just record the background horn parts and maybe ...