Rock Boat X

Wow!
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FM

This week, Yacht Rock is headed out of town on a cruise.  We're actually headed out to play a gig on a boat!  In anticipation of this event (Rock Boat X), we added a few new tunes.  The big one for me was FM by Steely Dan, which features a humongous tenor sax solo by Pete Christlieb (who also did the solo on Deacon Blues).  Here's a look at what I wrote down.  The stuff at the end (where they band is vamping an Pete's going nuts) is a little weird because I was writing it down at 2 AM, and it wasn't easy to notate what he was playing.

When we played this tune in rehearsal, I got a massive adrenaline rush.  I mean, those first four measures are familiar to everybody with ears.  The opportunity to play it for real was spine tingling.  Plus, I was sightreading it on four hours of sleep!

As with my Maneater post, you can click on anyone of the above jpegs to view a much more readable version.

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NYE

So that was 2009...

Yacht Rock played a private party for Six Feet Under at Paris on Ponce last night. I love playing that room! Not only is the load in super easy, but there's just the right amount of space for us (and for the crowd). I can always hear well, and nothing ever gets too loud. Last night's crowd was pretty cool (with no Skynard requests!), so it made for an all around great evening.

It's tough to say who played best last night. Mark Cobb played possibly his best show ever. He just came back from NYC last night, and I think being up there for a week really energized him. Mark Dannells was his usual top notch self. I know it's unfair to compare players, but when I hear him play the gig, everything he does sounds exactly right. He also had on a nice new suit (and he helped me load out). We added Maneater last night, and Mark Bencuya's sounds were soooo spot on it sounded like they'd been lifted directly from the record. Wow!

Over on my side, I had a very good night. I spent a good bit of time shedding the piano part to You're So Vain, and it felt way better last night. I'm slowly getting the passing chords worked in there, so it's less of A minor, F major, A minor, and more of the actual part. A year ago we played Don't Go Breakin' My Heart at our gig, and I crashed really really bad on the string part. I was thinking about that last night while we were playing it again. A year of playing that has made a huge difference! I guess another way to think of it is that it's only taken me a year to get comfortable on it.

Saxophone-wise, I gacked a high F# on Who Can it Be Now. A little too tight in the embouchure. No excuse for that. Everything else was pretty comfortable. As I mentioned, we added Maneater, which was a little nerve-wracking. It's such a well known solo, so it has to be right. I'm not to the point of owning it, but I got it right last night. One thing that I probably didn't worry about enough was the stuff at the end where they're tagging the chorus. I probably need to get a little closer to the fills on the record.

Diligent readers of the is blog probably remember this post about my EWI freezing up on a cold gig. In frantically trying to get the thing to work again, I started pushing buttons...never good! In doing this, I changed the setting of what the EWI tells the computer about the breath pressure--the faders moved when I would blow. That was no big deal, but it totally messed up my settings in Logic. I lived with it for a while, but I decided that some things (specifically my horn section sound) didn't sound as good (the horns were all equal, and so it lost the trumpet dominating the top). Yesterday afternoon I got the EWI set back to the right number, and to wipe out the fader issue I reverted back to my saved sounds. All was good.

We soundchecked Nights on Broadway, and it dawned on me that my saved sounds did not include the synth bass that I play. Agh! I tried a different sound last night that I dialed up really quickly, but it didn't sound good in the context of everybody else. Oops. That was my only major malfunction. I'll get that fixed before next week.

Next week we're actually playing on a boat. The Rock Boat. It should be a bizarre experience.

www.davidfreemanmusic.net

Mercy Lounge, Nashville TN

Yacht Rock played the Mercy Lounge last night in Nashville, Tennessee. Nick and Mark Bencuya picked me up at my house and we ran up there and knocked it out. The Best Western was pretty old, and the lounge was called "Pick's." It looked like a pretty unhappening place, and we mocked it relentlessly.

Mark Dannells was in LA and Mark Cobb was in NYC, so we had Michael Wilkes and Ganesh Giri Jaya subbing on guitar and drums.

We loaded in and soundchecked, and the soundmen could not have looked less impressed or enthusiastic. I'm guessing they've probably seen everything in Nashville, and a cover band full of freaks was just another night.

Six of us (Pete went out with his family) piled into the Pleaserock van and headed out in search of food. The first place (Mexican) had an hour wait (an hour wait on a Tuesday night?). We went across the street to Ru San's, but after waiting for a waitress at our table for over ten minutes (while I enjoyed some awesome techno music), we bailed in favor of anything quick. Eventually we ended up at an Arby's. On the way back to the Mercy Lounge, we got totally lost, and Greg Lee yelled at me for calling him on the phone from the back of the van.

The gig itself was ok. I think we played pretty well, but there couldn't have been more than seventy-five people in the room, so we got no energy. Maybe next time will be better (I mean, they did like it!), but the attendance made this one a big loser in the money department.

Bencuya pointed out that no band of which he has been a member ever enjoyed each other's mistakes so much. So true! The break between sets and the ride home are full of, "...and then I f***ed that up..." or "what were you doing?" and everybody laughs at it. It's funny, but at the same time, it's noted that everybody's listening. No coasting. You're not getting away with it!

The other interesting thing (listening-wise) is that difference between what the subs and the regulars play (and how they play). I was really aware from the first note of where Ganesh was with the pulse. The way a drummer relates to the groove is a reflection of his personality. Where Mark Cobb is much more on top of the beat, Ganesh is a good bit further back. One is not better than the other--it's just the contrast between hearing the two play the same song.

Wilkes was good, but none of Dannell's Barishnikov-esque footwork. One thing I noticed is that Wilkes really boosts his rhythm guitar parts on songs that seem guitar driven. It got really loud sometimes.

We had planned to crash Pick's, but we got back to the hotel after 2 AM. The van left at 8:15 AM.

Tomorrow night we're playing a private party at Paris on Ponce. It should be pretty easy. I've got to learn Maneater tonight.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Monday

Maybe I was too harsh on the Diana Ross medley. Today I'm thinking that I'd rather deal with that crap than a crew of disinterested students. At least I can get up and walk away from the Diana Ross thing when I get sick of it. And I don't feel bad about checking my email in the middle of it.

Last night I played my regular church gig at the CTK. It was me, the pianist, and two vocalists. I spent a good chunk of the gig fiddling with the EQ of each channel. It seems that along the way I'd taken on the idea that if a little is good, a little more is a little better. Now it's gotten a bit extreme. Last night I went back to flat and started listening to it again. The cuts on the EQ are now much more subtle.

Tomorrow night Yacht Rock is playing the Mercy Lounge in Nashville. Road gig!

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Diana Ross Medley

Platnumb is playing a New Year's Eve gig where they are backing a vocalist (not of the band) in a Diana Ross medley. I am transcribing what a keyboard player played with his "brass patch." It is very painful. Doing this sort of thing and listening to this medley really pisses me off. If I get to the point where this is my career, I quit.

You'd think if the Diana Ross impersonator was really a pro, she'd have charts for this sixteen minute mash up. I hope Platnumb makes a lot of money doing this.

Diana Ross should sue them for playing this.

I should sue Diana Ross for allowing this to happen.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Christmastime is Here

It's been slow going since the Yacht Rock Holiday Special last Friday. I taught lessons Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Tonight I did two church gigs. One at my old gig, the Catholic Church of St. Ann (music department headed by Kevin Wyglad), and the other at the Cathedral of Christ the King. Both were fun.

The gig with Wyglad is always fun because I know many people in the congregation (Jack is in preschool at St. Ann's), and Kevin does a good job of putting his own spin on the usual Christmas stuff. He's got this killer arrangement of The First Noel. Yeah, good stuff.

The gig at Christ the King is a little strange because year in and year out we get stuck with the overflow mass (the people that would not fit in the cathedral). It's a drag because the room is very dead (and the cathedral is very reverb-y), so it always feels really dry and yucky. To top it off, it seems like we always end up absorbing people from other musical groups, and this year was no exception. We ended up with two extra singers (who were actually very good), a bassist (the best bassist we've had since Brian Gillette--probably nine years ago!), and a percussionist (who had a nice feel, but was afraid of the microphone). The twist this year was that we were piped into the speakers in the ceiling (in the past they've had powered speakers). Nice idea, but the room could you use some effects. Also, I, the soundman, was kind of trapped in the corner without headphones (I forgot them), and no time to really experiment with the room (I came running from St. Ann's). I think it sounded pretty good, but I could have used a soundcheck. The main issue was that the back of the room was no turned up as loud as the front zone of the room, so we felt really loud near ourselves but pretty weak in the back. My apologies. There's always next year!

I'm back at St. Ann's tomorrow for two more.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com