Of Ice and Gloves

I started Thursday with a trip downtown for a rehearsal.  Around fifteen minutes out, I got a call that it had been cancelled due to the icy conditions that still remain in parts of the city.

I took some pictures while I was sitting in traffic on I 75.

On the way home I stopped at Sam Ash and bought some reeds.  I grabbed a box of tenor reeds as well as some synthetic Legere reeds.  It seems silly, doesn't it?  All the technology that goes into building a modern horn--tone hole placement, metal alloys, corks vs felts, not to mention the insanity over mouthpieces--all the thousandths of an inch and the baffle shapes and tip rail thickness, and yet the sound all starts with a fickle piece of cane!  Why?

There was NOBODY in Sam Ash.  They didn't even have canned music playing in the store.  It was like I was a private shopper.

I made it all the way back home (approximately 40 miles round trip), only to get stuck trying to get back in my driveway!  Madness!  A neighbor and I spent two hours trying to chip through the ice in the street and my driveway so I could get my truck in the garage.  Beating a shovel into concrete is NOT good for the hands and wrists.

So…the synthetic reeds.  These are Legere Studio Cut reeds.  I got the same strengths that I normally use.  I really wanted these to work--most of the Yacht Rock gigs (which are most of the gigs I do these days), I'm picking up my horn two or three times in a seventy-five minute set, so the moisture on the reed has faded by the time I come back to it.  On a typical gig, I set up my stuff (including my horns), and soundcheck is over by 9:30 PM.  I may not play a note again until 11 PM, and then they might sit there through a thirty minute break, and then I might pick it up again midway through the second set, sometime after midnight.  If the reeds could feel the same as they do at 9:15, that'd be great!

I tried them.  I tried living with them for the break in period of thirty minutes.  I tried running them under warm water to loosen them up.  I tried them on alto, tried them on tenor, tried them on bari.  I didn't like any of them.  The sound is very cold and bland.  I like big, bright, fat, greasy sounds, and I couldn't get that from these reeds.  I gave up.  They don't work for me.  I opened the box of Javas that I'd also bought, put the first reed on my tenor, and it played GREAT right out of the box.  That sealed the deal.

The trip down to my gig took longer than expected.  There must have been some wrecks downtown--traffic was at a standstill--so I wandered off on 10th Street and made my way to the 10 High via flat streets and parking lots.

Yacht Rock did a silly promotion (strictly for our own enjoyment)--Glove Night--where we replaced the word LOVE with GLOVE in every song.  Mark Cobb even made break music where he "fixed" it!

Here's the set list (which included some non-Yacht Rock material for the sake of handwear, and a few "greatest hits" to quell any potential riots).  Some might not be so obvious:  I Keep Forgettin' (We're not in Glove Anymore), Caribbean Queen (No More Glove on the Run), I Just Wanna Stop (For Your Glove), and of course, a little Michael Jackson.

I played WAAAAAAAAAY better than last week.  Call off the suicide watch--I'm on the road to recovery.  I had a few hiccups--I left my chart for The (G)Love Boat Theme in Mexico last year, and every time we play I forget six more notes.  I've gotten to the point now where I only remember half the string part.  Maybe sixty percent.

My synth thing on Lido Shuffle is coming along.  There's a two handed stacking synth part that I have never played--I only play one hand of it--and I've always thought that eventually I'd get it happening.  I wasn't quite ready last night, but I usually need four or five gigs to get used to the pace of playing it live, and there were only about seventy-five people there last night, so let the sucking begin!  And I did.  First pass, good;  add left hand for second pass, a little wobbly!  third pass, disaster!  fourth pass, wobbly!  It needs some more work--at 120 BPM I'm good, but the tune's at 140 BPM, so…not happening yet.

I Just Wanna Stop hasn't been on the set list in a while--probably since I died on the string part last year at Andrews or a few weeks later at the 10 High.  I'm finally getting the hang of it!  Last night I did well on it.  I knew where I was the whole time (amazing!), and I tried my best to play the Ernie Watts I-can't-play-in-time-with-the-rest-of-the-band solo.

I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I finally fixed the little flute part in the second verse of Africa that I've been playing wrong for years.  Oops.  I saw a transcription of it--not what I was hearing!  After seeing it written out, I also realized I could do more with the solo (some spots where it's almost totally in fourths)--since I'm playing the solo on EWI, I was able to set up my sounds to make that happen.  I fixed that a few weeks ago, but last night was the best it has sounded to me.

I love playing (G)Love is Alive--I think it works well for us.  You got Mark Cobb playin' the hell out of it, Mark Bencuya rockin' the synth bass (and a crazy solo!), Nick singin' the shit out of it.  I wish we did that one every week.

We ended the night with Zeppelin's Whole Lotta (G)Love.  Nothing for me to do on that but watch.  Mark Dannells played great on that--a true rock star!  Best thing he played all night.

note the splash cymbal placement

I packed up, avoided the homeless guy in the parking lot, and made it back into my driveway without incident!

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Sundaze

I did my two church gigs yesterday.

First church gig was not what I thought it would be.  Since the leader is kind of a wuss, I kind of thought he would say something to me to try and smooth over the issue about the money, and I kind of thought I would bite his head off.  Neither happened.  I guess that's good…I mean, I still have a gig.  Afterwards the leader hung around a little bit, like he was looking for a moment to speak to one of us in the band, but I was talking to the sound man right up til the point when I walked out the door, so it must not have been me for whom he was waiting.

Chris Wilkes got into some Steve Gadd/Stuff kind of sounding thing on one tune that was pretty fun.

The second church gig was a kind of lame.  I'm not sure if the church changed the amplifier settings or what, but the sound was really weak.  The singers started complaining right from the get go.  I checked all my connections, checked to see that the sound was coming out of both speakers, and checked the channel strips.  I didn't see anything amiss, so I just turned the whole thing up.  "Way to troubleshoot it!" said the band leader.  "You fixed it!"  said the singers.  Umm…yes!  Yes I did!

P.S. Steve Gadd is God.

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Church Business

I'd like to give an update regarding one of my church gigs.

As you may recall from an earlier post, I found out that the musicians in the band are all making different amounts.  Let's say I've been making $A.  Someone else in the band is making 1.5 x $A.  Someone else in the band is making 2 x $A.  Not cool.  All three of us were surprised (and, of course, I was pissed!).

I sent the band leader an email Sunday afternoon in an attempt to get his side of the story:

Hey Xxxxx-

What's up with the money?  I heard that different members of the band are making different amounts, and I'm confused as to why we would not be paid equally.  

I would like to paid the same as everyone else.

DBF

I was hoping he'd have some sort of reason that could justify the fact that the guy next to me is making twice as much as I am.  Maybe:

1.  The other guys have been here longer
2.  They began at a higher rate
3.  They have hair

Something…anything!

I had just asked for a raise in December, so I began making 1.5 x $A last Sunday.  The middle guy (who had been making 1.5 x $A) asked for a raise last week, and the band leader whispered to him that they had just bumped me up to his amount (and what business does he having sharing this information?)!  Now middle guy wants to go up to 2 x $A like the third guy (and I can't blame him), so I'll still end up making less than anyone else in the band, and for no apparent reason.  Another scenario would be that two us make two thirds of what the third guy makes.

I sent the email to the band leader Sunday afternoon.  Friday afternoon, I finally received the following response:

You will be paid $x starting this Sunday…thanks           Xxxxx

Nice.  No explanation at all, and for some reason he is informing me about the new rate (1.5 x $A), even though it began January 2.

My point of this blog:  remember when dealing with a paid church gig that the church is a business, and playing gigs is a business.  My biggest misstep was in not asking for more money from the outset.  I wanted the gig, and I gave them a safe number instead of an appropriate price.  Now that I am on the gig, I know much more about the time commitment:  an seventy-five minute rehearsal plus a church service (plus having to wake up WAAAY too early for me).  I wish I had factored that in.

Obviously on the other side of it, I am disappointed that a church would be so indifferent about paying the musicians different rates--I guess church ethics don't extend that far!  Also, it never ceases to amaze me that a fellow musician (and band leader) would do something like this, knowing that we are all doing our best to cobble together a career.

I wonder what the vibe will be like tomorrow morning!

davidfreemanmusic.net

And Then I Sucked Real Bad

I got a last minute call Wednesday afternoon to play a cocktail hour gig the next day.  I lined up two of my favorite guys, Tyrone Jackson and Kevin Smith.

The gig was ok.  I really didn't feel that good about, but listening to it today, it seems pretty good.  I guess it just didn't feel effortless--I was conscious of how many notes I was playing and how I was interacting with Tyrone and Kevin.  When it's really happening, I think that I just close my eyes and we musically fill in the blanks for each other.  

We started with Moontrane.  You'll notice the recording fades in--it's because I screwed up the in head, I had to cut it.  Normally I try not to doctor the evidence--I can (sort of) live with my mistakes, but the first thirty seconds of the gig was so horribly embarrassingly take-me-out-and-shoot-me bad that I would rather no one ever have to sit through it.

Beyond that, things were ok.  We were near a door, and now I hear how both horns rose in pitch over the course of a tune (the soprano sounds like it starts decently in tune and then gets sharp on Andalee, and the tenor is flat at the beginning of Voyage, but later on is pretty close). 

The gig was only an hour.  I wish we could have played more because I was finally starting to settle down when it ended.

From there, I rolled over to the 10 High for the Yacht Rock gig.  Nick picked a great set list that avoided a lot of the usual tunes we've been playing week to week, and included all of our newer songs.  We set up, soundchecked, ate, and hit it.  

Right from the first tune, I could tell I was doomed.  We were halfway through Nights on Broadway when I just started to suck real bad.  I couldn't remember things I'd just played correctly in the previous chorus, and when we got to the bridge, I had no idea about the string part.  

The whole gig was like that--I was fine, and then all of the sudden I would suffer a catastrophic brain failure and play a whole bunch of terrible stuff, and then I'd kind of recover.  In the end, I was glad for the gig to end so I could stop screwing up.  

Mark Bencuya played some super good stuff in the middle solo on Hey Nineteen (right before the "Cuervo Gold" part).  He was on fire.  Mark Dannells ripped off a pretty awesome solo on Ride Like the Wind that began with a howling bent note.  

We did a small tribute to Gerry Rafferty.  We played Baker Street, of course, and the band collectively pulled Stuck in the Middle with You out of our butts.  I laid out for that.  Probably the best thing I did on the gig.

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Sunday Fun

Chris Wilkes was back at the drum position for my early church gig this week.  What a relief!  He is excellent.  I really like the way he helps to shape the song--he has such a good ear for the form and dynamics, and his groove is solid.  It's funny to me that the sounds he gets such a better sound out of the same drum set I've heard the past few services.  I like playing with him a lot.

Our leader overslept this morning and showed up a half hour late.  While we were hanging out, I came to discover that we are all making different rates for the same gig.  I cannot understand why--I think, as a leader/contractor, you're asking for trouble!   It's a very difficult situation.  We'll see how it plays out.

I had really good reeds on all my horns this morning--one of those days when I probably played more than I should have because everything felt so good.

My gig Sunday night was a little ragged.  We had four singers, but none had a particularly strong voice.  It kind of sounded like four people from the congregation mic'ed up.  The pianist was evidently trying to set some sort of personal record for wrong notes, though I must admit that some of her mistakes were kind of hip--it sounded like she was reharmonizing Christmas carols.  At one point, the vocals dropped out and it was just me and the piano, and I stopped playing because I couldn't tell where she'd gone in the song.

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New Year's Eve

Last gig of the year!  Yacht Rock ended the year at the Park Tavern.  Instead of upstairs in that hellish room that made me so miserable, we were downstairs.  They put carpet on top of the ice rink, and then put the usual stage up.  Weird…we were on an iceberg.  I didn't really notice it.  In fact, we sweated pretty good, all thing considered.

I did not play as well as the previous night.  My guess would be that the number of people made me uptight, or the fact that Bencuya was recording it.  I dunno.  The first tune was fine, except for a horrible wrong note I played--it was one of those things where I suddenly started thinking about what I was doing, and I couldn't think of the next note.  I looked at the keyboard, and just hoped I was going to hit the right key.  I was wrong.   And thus the mind games began!  The rest of the tune, I was thinking, "See!  You got the first mistake out of the way so you can relax!"

The next tune up was Believe it or Not, and so I got jumpy about the synth lick at the end of the bridge.  While I was gearing up for that (or quieting the voice in my head!), I managed to destroy the first verse…it's D, G, A, and D, but for some reason I started on A, and then I couldn't get myself in the right place--I was chasing the four chords around.  Ugh.

We got to the bridge, and I was super tense, and then I played my big lick the best I've ever played it on a gig, and the adrenaline washed over me, and then I wanted to faint!  Relief!  The voice in my head switched to "See!  You got it right!  Who cares about the rest!"

Mark Dannells  turned around after that tune and said, "I need a drink!  I'm scared to death!"  Maybe we should have played through that one in sound check.

The tune after that was More Than a Woman.  I play the strings on EWI, and I really needed to catch my breath after the previous excitement, but there was no place to do so, so then I REALLY wanted to faint.

After that, things calmed down.  We kind of settled into a groove, though I thought for a second Mark Cobb was going to flip out because he couldn't get the guitar out of his monitor. The crowd was good, though noisy, and they partied hard.  For the band, I think it was a slightly above average night.

I was a pretty good on some of my newer stuff, like the bass line thing in Steal Away, and I added a missing string thing (ok, one note) on Escape.  It was not a big sax night;  there were seven originally on the list, and we ended up only playing four.  My flute solo on Lowdown was the biggest bunch of crap I've played on that tune in weeks!  It was really bad.  I had diarrhea of the jazz flute.

I'm working towards adding another synth part in the build up on Lido Shuffle, and I've been practicing it slowly, but now when I play one hand instead of two, it sounds really lame.  That's my big thing to get together for January.

The beauty of the Park Tavern gig is that we have to stop at a certain time or they get fined for a noise ordinance violation.  I love that.  Not that the band is likely to play a meandering set of encores anyway, but I like that when people ask for more, we have a reason to say no, and there's nothing we can do about it.

I packed up and split.  Home by 2 AM!

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Mark Cobb!

my view of Mark Cobb

Wooo!  The final Yacht Rock performance at the 10 High was fueled by Mark Cobb last night.  What a ride!  From the first note, he was pushing the band along with the kind of musical aggression I love.  I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed playing last night.  It was superb.  I think the entire band responds to the drummer, and after several gigs of mellow, we really came out and attacked.

The room was as full as last week (which is to say, really crowded!  I couldn't get across the room on break).  I suppose all these people just started partying a day early.  They were well behaved, and seemed to be paying attention to what we were doing (which is nice);  not a lot of shouting out songs not on the set list.  The women directly in front of me slowly progressed from having fun to black out drunk, but they made it all the way to the end (and didn't steal my pea coat, which I'd left on the speaker between us all night--oops!).

I think I played pretty well.  Because of Cobb, everybody dug in pretty hard on their stuff, and my hands were hurting a little by the end of the night.  Not playing for a few days has left me out of shape, I guess.  My face is a little tired, too.  New reeds don't help!

I'm still tinkering with my stuff--I tried a different synth sound on What a Fool Believes, but I'm still not satisfied.  It must have some kind of a sweeping filter thing that makes some of the notes jump out.  The basic sound was good, but the spiking notes were painful.

On Steal Away, I'm trying to add in the bass line in the chorus.  It's kind of sparse, and I can do it when I don't consciously think about it.  We were ripping through that song last night, and all of the sudden I could do it!  I was congratulating myself (and mentally applauding my left hand), when it suddenly dawned on me that I was never changing the chord in my right.  Duh…that was pretty stupid.  I think I'll have it tonight.  My right hand is playing eighth notes, and I just needed to figure out where to begin the little eighth note bass line thing.  I'm real close.

Saxophone wise, I was ok.  I didn't have much going on for Biggest Part of Me or Takin' it to the Streets.  I wanted to play something great, but nothing came to me.  Same thing with my alto stuff…nothing bad, but I didn't have anything new to say.  I tried.

My man Mark Dannells was absent tonight due to a Greater Vavoom gig at Smith's.  Shannon filled in and played well, though he has some sort of mental hangup on Hey Nineteen.  He played some horrid crap in there.  It's like he's playing the right stuff on the wrong string, or he's a couple of frets away, or something.  It's all in his head--I've heard him play the entire intro to that song a whole step down before.

If Dannells had been there, the night might have been about as perfect as a 10 High gig could be.

Last gig of the year tonight!  We're at the Park Tavern.  Come see us.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday

I played my two church gigs yesterday.

The first one was pretty much just another shot at the stuff we did Christmas Eve, so that was fairly easy, though we did add God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (with a sax solo) in kind of a rockabilly style.  It's always funny to me when somebody says "we'll do it 'big band' style"--I know right then that it will be NOTHING like a big band.  I think they're trying to describe that the eighths will not be even, but it will not be a shuffle, and it will not swing.  If a guitar player says it, he's probably referring to the "big bands" like the Squirrel Nut Zippers.

This time it was doubly funny because the drummer had no idea what to do with either style (big band or rockabilly).  Nice enough guy, but the drumming part is not happening.  Also, kind of annoying how he demonstrated his commitment to the drums by carrying a drum pad and sticks with him on break so he could mindlessly bang on it.  We needed some groove out of him, but never got it.

The leader of the second church gig called me right before I left to ask if I was still planning on going.  I guess there were grave concerns about the weather.  I went and she went, and we played the gig.  It turned out to be a lot of fun!  Without the other people in the group, we were free to play.  She played piano and sang, and I did my thing.  Easy.

I cannot for the life of me play in tune right now.  I "feel" close, but not exactly in tune, but I can't hear which way I need to go.  I wonder if my sense of it is more heightened and I'm always this far out, but normally can't hear it, or if I'm just really bad at that moment?  It feels like half the instrument is flat and half is sharp.  I'm all bad.

Also, the Christmas carols kicked my butt.  I could remember most, but never all of a melody.  When we did God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, I played lots of extra notes not because I was embellishing, but because I was screwing up.  Same thing happened last night--I knew most of What Child is This, but I played lots of funny stuff around it.  I hate that.  It's kind of like screwing up The Star Spangled Banner.  Everybody knows when you play a weird note.  You can't hide.

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Christmas Gigs

What a weekend!  I did a bunch of church gigs over the Christmas holidays.

The first couple of gigs were mainly flute (and a little soprano) at a church I used to play at.  They brought me in to help cover some of the extra services they were having.  It was super easy, and a lot of fun.  Most of the songs were Christmas carols, and most of the people I played with old friends (other than the douchebag pianist who mistakenly thought it really funny to mimic my flute warm ups).  So yeah, it was cool.  We laughed a lot.

The third Christmas Eve gig was at my usual first gig on Sundays.  That one was fun, too, though a little annoying that they had us show up an hour and fifteen minutes early, and then we mostly stood around until the service began.  At one point, they turned out all the lights and everybody held candles--I was thinking, "This would be a great picture for my blog!" but I didn't take it.  It was pretty cool, though.

I was super amused by one spot where the leader said, "I'm going to play during this part.  Don't feel like you need to play.  If you want to, you can, but if you don't, that's good."  Twice he stressed being gentle.  His request sounded to me like "Don't play unless you ABSOLUTELY can't stand it."

I laid out.  The guitarist laid out.  Three BEATS into the song, the bass player was in, doing his Jimmy Haslip impersonation!  Actually, that wasn't bad, but then the drummer felt like he HAD to play, and I thought it really squashed the vibe.  I was amused, annoyed, and smug all at once.

Christmas morning, I did two more of the flute/soprano services at the Christmas church number one.  Same stuff, same fun.  There were lots of people there who were very happy to see me, which I appreciated.  Hopefully they'll be able to find some money in their budget to see me more often!

Sunday is back to normal.  It's been a nice weekend of something different.

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Twas the Thursday Before Christmas...

Weird.  I thought nobody would turn up at the 10 High.  I thought it'd be really dead and we'd play one set and go home, or we'd all trade instruments or something, but instead it was more packed than it has been in months!  I guess the "nobody has to go to work tomorrow" argument won.

It was kind of a strange gig.  Nick, Pete, and Cobb were out, so we had Ganesh on drums, Greg on lead vocals, Vanessa on Pete's vocals, and Danni on bass.  The ol' switcheroo.  That left me, my man Mark Dannells, and the Great Bencuya to hold it down.

It's an entirely different thing when Greg fronts the band.  With a different line up (say Kevin Spencer and Ganesh), there's an effort to kind of stay in the same zone as the regular guys.  Greg kind of takes it and says "I'm driving!", and away we go.  It's fun because he puts his own stamp on it.

The set list had about a million songs on it.  We burn through tunes a lot quicker with subs because there's less banter in between.  We might normally play a dozen songs in a set--last night it was more like sixteen.  It really became a grind about a halfway through.

Speaking of the set list…oops.  I didn't do any preparation (such as reading the set list) ahead of time, and there were a couple of songs that REALLY bit me in the ass.  For instance, Magic…no clue.  I knew the first two chords of the string part were A/D resolving to D, and then…hmm (turns out it was a minor 2-5 to E minor).  I really need to start over and learn that one.  The other one that I sucked on was the beginning of You're So Vain.  Remember how I died on it at Halloween?  Same issue again.  I choked real bad.

Other than that, it was pretty unmemorable.  Mark Dannells and I rocked the hell out of the bridge to Brandy.  Ganesh swamped the entire boat by turning the beat around on Escape (Pina Colada Song).  I should mention that we played one verse reggae.  Ja.  I had something to do with that.  I played Jingle Bells during the breakdown in Jive Talkin', evidently only loud enough for Dannells and myself to hear.  Good enough.

That was it.  Good crowd means good money, and good money is the best Christmas present of all.

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Creston Sonata

Not much going on…it's vacation!

Here's a video I made earlier in the week.  It's the first two pages of the Creston Sonata (Op. 19) for Eb Alto Saxophone and Piano.  I played this sucker in high school, but it still kicks my butt.





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