David Freeman Music

February 17-21, 2023: Sail Across the Sun Cruise.  This Sixthman cruise, hosted by the band Train, takes place every other year, sailing from Miami to the Caribbean for what amounts to a four day music festival. We've been there since the beginning (back when it was the VH1 Cruise). It's an easy gig for the most part. Not so easy was the travel! We were scheduled for an 11 AM flight to South Florida, and due to interstate closures, parking bullshit, airport TSA bullshit, and whatever, I almost missed the flight--like I came within about 15 minutes of them shutting the airplane door and me not making it to the boat. I was almost in tears. It was awful. We landed, and this dumbass was pretending he had some kind of medical emergency or something so that he could get off the plane before everybody else. The aisle filled up before he could get out, though, and he and several band members traded verbal jabs until we could all go our separate ways. Yacht Rock was scheduled to play th...

January 15-22: Marietta, GA. It's show time! I spent this week playing the reed one book for the musical Assassins by Stephen Sondheim. All four reed books (twenty-one instruments between the four of us!) were played by wind players--a rarity for smaller theaters where at least two of these books end up being "faked" by a second keyboardist. It sounded soooo cool!  The strangest thing in my book was a harmonica part (who plays piccolo, flute, clarinet, soprano sax, and...harmonica?). After a few discussions with the music director, I got the go ahead to play the part on melodica. Yay! Here are some highlights from the dress rehearsal, beginning with one of my harmonica/melodica solos.  Here's a nifty thing I did for this show: I made a peg extension for my piccolo to bring its height up even with the other instruments. It makes it much easier to pick up and put down without having to look down in the dark.  It's just a fifteen inch piece of PVC with some bolts i...