My Life

My Life practice rig!

This past Wednesday, we (Yacht Rock/Please Pleaserock Me) had a big rehearsal--5 Beatles tunes (I Want to Hold Your Hand, Back in the USSR, Ob-La-Di- Ob-La-Da, Taxman, and Revolution) and 2 Yacht Rock tunes (My Life by Billy Joel and Thunder Island by Jay Ferguson).  The Beatles stuff was easy--I make charts and play them, plus it's lots of tambourine and clapping.  I was really pumped about playing My Life--not only is it a big song for me personally, but once I started listening to it, it sounded like piano PLUS rhodes (and synth on the main riff).  So…Bencuya plays piano, but I double him on the rhodes, which turned out to be a terrific challenge.  I have to BE Bencuya for a couple of minutes there.

Pete's facial castanets for Thunder Island

Anyway, I practiced it like crazy.  We played a couple of times at rehearsal.  I was fine.

We weren't going to play it last night at the 10 High gig because Mark Cobb was not there, but Ganesh said he wanted a shot at it, so we did do it.  Awesome.  I did well.  Plus, it went over really well--everybody was singing along (which is always a cool feeling).  We probably got two keepers out of that (Thunder Island was good too, but I just play organ pads, so it was no biggie).

Speaking of the 10 High…the first set was good and inspired, and then we came back from break and not one of us could have given a damn.  It was a pretty boring second set.  I sucked on the sax solo to Caribbean Queen.  Such is life.  I wore my new suit, so at least I looked good doing it.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Super Bowl Sunday

I did my two church gigs.

The first church gig was a circus.  The usual sound guy was not there, and we had all kinds of trouble with the headphone mix (except for me, of course, because I do not wear them).  Static, instruments disappearing, screaming acoustic guitar.  All there.

We were asked to stay and play half of the next service, which featured the adult choir, the children's choir, and the "orchestra" (which was really the church's community band).  It was chaos.  We had so many tunes stuck in the music books, and some were for the second service and some were for the first, and nobody was sure what belonged to what.  We rehearsed everything (but without the adult choir, children's choir, or "orchestra") that morning, but not in any kind of order--more of "Hey, can we play through this one?" kind of thing.

My second church gig began a half hour after the Super Bowl.  From my position, I counted sixty-eight people in attendance.  The band was about the same.  After the first song, I had comments from the band--"can't hear the singer."  They probably didn't notice that I was dealing with the fact that nobody had plugged in the piano mic!  Once I got the stuff up and running it was fine.

I had good cell phone service in the church, and didn't miss a second of the game.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Pat Boone and Debbie Boone Were There

Yacht Rock played the Taste of Dunwoody party at the W Perimeter last night.  It was probably not the best venue for us and the event--we were jammed into a pretty tiny ballroom (I guess it's the only one in the hotel, come to think of it).  They had tables with local food samples lining the walls all the way around.

Everybody was back for this gig--Nick was fronting the band, and Mark Cobb was kicking it in the ass!  It was a really relaxed event--we were loaded in plenty early, soundchecked, and then hung out in a suite on the top floor until it was time to eat.  We ate, we played, we drank.  Gradually, we took over the party.  I don't think the local food people were too thrilled that we sucked all the attention away from them.  Before the end of the first set, it had become a concert.  In fact, it seemed like most of the vendors bailed before the end of the night.

I played really well.  I'm (thankfully) still in a good groove.  We did most of the same stuff as we did Thursday night, so I was really comfortable.  I was loud, though (I guess we all were).  I could really hear myself slapping off the opposite wall.  I kept thinking "maybe I should turn down," but then I thought better of it.

Mark Cobb pushed us along the whole night.  Ganesh played faster tempos than he usually does on Thursday, but Cobb leaned forward.  Some of it was just flat out fast.  It was good, though.  I like it.  He also set a personal record for playing the "Pat Boone Debbie Boone" fill in the first set.  All over the place.

Nick had four people ask if he was wearing a wig.  Nobody asked me.  Does that mean my wig looks bad, or really good?

davidfreemanmusic.net

Molly

Last night's Yacht Rock gig was a little different from the past month--no Nick (Kevin Spencer in his place) and no Mark Cobb (Ganesh in his place).  It was still pretty smooth, but the banter is not of the same quality!

Just like last week, I prepared for the gig like it was some kind of exam.  This week's big addition to my performance was playing all of my parts to Baby Come Back on keyboard.  Impressive, non?  Mais oui.  Bencuya's over there having a good time with the rhodes part, so I'm playing strings.  On the verse, I'm playing piano;  on the choruses, I'm playing clav (with the strings).  Then on the bridge, I'm playing the synth part, complete with the big pitch two octave pitch bend.  Who's the man!  I mentioned my newfound keyboard prowess at the end of the first set, and Bencuya mentioned that he heard everything I played, and it sounded great.  I think he was trying to make up for the fact that he repeatedly mentioned how bad I (and he) sucked at the holiday show on Greatest American Hero (Believe it or Not)!  The recording from that show needs to disappear.  Damnit!  I guess when you suck real bad, you suck real bad.

Hmm…past that, let's see.  My tenor reed was really soft, and when I stood up to play the solo on Takin' it to the Streets (which we dedicated to Egypt), it completely closed up.  Not good!  I relaxed my embouchure and got through it, but it felt bad.  Too bad, because it sounded good.  I just couldn't push it.

On the break, I was standing there talking to Pete and some guy walked up and tried to sell us drugs--"Molly"--which I was later informed is high quality Ecstasy.

Second set was fine.  I started Lonely Boy, and I guess I hadn't set the gain on my mixer correctly, because it was SUPER LOUD!  Holy crap!  I played one handed once the band came in and turned knobs with the other.  Other than that, it was the most relaxed I've ever played it.  I even anticipated the spot where I (mentally) freak out and forget the chords, so yay for me.

Somebody stole Dannells' set list, so he and I shared mine.  While we were in between songs, the girl in front of us pulled his list out of her purse and checked to see what we were going to play next!

Things were going so well…then we started Jive Talkin' and I noticed that my laptop had died.  I'd forgotten to plug it in, and it'd been running on batteries the whole time--until now.  I thought, "I'll play the synth solo on something else," but I knew I'd need the EWI for the song after this (Peg) too, so I got up and walked across the stage, through the merchandise booth, and over to the corner where my cases were (the band playing the whole time).  I missed the first synth solo, got my power supply, walked back, plugged it in, woke up my laptop, and was back in time for the second synth solo.  Talk about stupid.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Wedding Ceremony Music

Mark Dannells and I are unveiling our new flute and guitar demo!  You can hear it on my website.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Video Roundup

Here are a few videos from the Variety Playhouse show a few Fridays ago:





Here are a few videos of me from last night:





davidfreemanmusic.net

The Weekend That Was

I got so busy gigging and sleeping that I was unable to blog!

Early last week, I got the set lists for the weekend's gigs.  After enduring a few weeks where I felt totally directionless on stage, I decided that I was going to be very prepared.  I set out practicing everything--no surprises!

Thursday:  A really good night at the 10 High.  Nick picked a great set list, and we were on it.  We had a good mix of oldies and new stuff, and the crowd was more responsive than any other Thursday in January.

Right before we started, the little voice in my head threw me a curve ball--what if I was so prepared to play the gig, I couldn't focus on playing, and instead spaced out?  Hmm.  Fortunately, it never happened.  I felt really good about everything.  Greatest American Hero was the second song in, and I nailed the synth thing in the bridge!  Woo!

Friday:  We returned to 8 Traxx Disco (Andrews Upstairs).  Sold it out--six hundred forty people, I think?  They pre-sell five hundred and then offer a hundred  tickets at the door, and they went over that.  It was nuts.

I altered my set up a little bit--I got my laptop and my speaker on my left like I do for every other gig.  I liked this set up a lot more.  It felt a little more normal, and on a crappy stage like that where everything feels like I'm all alone, familiar is good.

Of course, the Andrews gig is (for me), a two set exam with Mark Bencuya as the proctor.  Normally we are on opposite sides of the stage, and if I flub a couple of notes, I might be able to get away with it.  At Andrews, he's sitting right next to me, and I know he can hear me really well--too well?  Anyway, it was the best I've ever played sitting next to him.  I'd give myself an A!  I can't think of anything I ruined, and lots of stuff where I came through--Greatest American Hero was good again, and I finally slayed the synth build up thing in Lido Shuffle!  Woo!

Since it's Buckhead, there was weirdness, though.  I packed all my stuff and stacked it at the front of the stage.  Upon returning from taking a load of gear out, I discovered that someone had stolen the base of my laptop table.  What the hell?  Some drunk idiot made off with a chrome tripod?  I don't get it.  Maybe it will turn up, but I am not optimistic.  The base of a folding music stand will do for now, but I'd really like to get that back.  So weird.

Saturday:  Yacht Rock went to the 40 Watt in Athens.  Probably the best sound we ever have on a gig.  The 40 Watt guys are on it!  I ran my sax separate from the rest of my rig so the sound guys could have a little more control (and I could have it coming out of the monitor in front of me).  When the sax is only in my little powered speaker, it's really hard to hear as I walk away from it.  This solution is way better.  Hopefully the front line guys will put a little sax in the monitor.

Great crowd in Athens.  They were nuts from the beginning.  It was really fun to play.  We did two encores!

Our old second keyboardist Brandon Still was at the gig.  I'm glad I didn't know ahead of time.  It probably would've messed me up to know he was listening.

While setting up my stuff, I noticed that my EWI had something rattling around in it!  Not good!  It turns out that one of the octave key rollers had come loose.  I taped it into place so it wouldn't touch the roller below it (or fall out completely).  The thought occurred to me that I might be able to take the thing completely apart and fix it backstage, and then I had thoughts of NOT being able to get it back together. Taping the roller in position worked fine as a band aid.

Sunday:  We got back to Atlanta at 4:15 AM.  I was in bed at 5, and probably asleep twenty minutes after that.  I was then back up again at 7 AM so I could leave at 7:30 for my church gig.  Ouch!  I slept in my clothes--including my jacket and shoes.  Basically, I stood up, drank a cup of coffee, and left for the next gig!

Church gig number one was normal.  I tried wearing headphones like the rest of the band, but the mix was really bad (and super loud), so I decided to just without.  I can hear everything fine, anyway.  I could use more bass (I'm only hearing the house), but the headphones sound horrible, so I'm going to deal with it.

I was asleep again by 11:30 AM!

I got up at 4:30 PM, took a shower, ate, and left for church gig number two.

The sound was back to normal--the old spot on the main fader was the right one again, after two weeks of it sounding like we were outside the church.  What the hell?  It sounded pretty good.  I messed around with the EQ on the piano to try and get a little more clarity out of the left hand.  That was about it.

I got home, ate again, and took my EWI apart.  It turns out the top and bottom rollers were BOTH loose.  Not good.  Two nuts rolling around inside there.  I turned the thing around like a piggy bank until both came out.  Reinstalling them was pretty painless.  It's all back together.

Easy week ahead.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Big Weekend!

Friday:  The big XTC/Sgt. Peppers/Dark Side show at the Variety Playhouse!  It was very cool to play a gig without a wig.

We were all pleasantly surprised to see a pretty full (700+) room on Friday night.  All the work that had gone into learning that music deserved a good audience, and we got it.  Very cool!

The efforts of Cobb, Bencuya, and Nick were amazing--the three of them played a TON of music.  Not one of their heads exploded.  Dannells carried a ton of (musical) weight in The Dark Side of the Moon, and was brilliant throughout (even if he's still pissed about the solo in Time).  Every solo on that album is a classic (and David Gilmour's stuff is always so melodic that it sticks in your ear!), and Dannells' tone and technique were spot on.  My hero!

For my part, I was mostly just reading charts and trying to stay in tune.  I don't know if the charts are the problem or what, but for me the gig felt more like a sideman than a part of the band, and I couldn't get that into it.  I think I played well and I was more than happy to help, but I felt that my contribution was miniscule, and that's really all I was doing--helping.  This project like it was mine--I was just along for the ride.

Peter Stroud played in the XTC band Nigels With Attitude.  What a neat guy!  He plays great, he's super nice, he looks like a rock star.  He's royalty around us.  When Peter speaks, everybody listens to what he has to say.  After the show, I he spent a couple of minutes praising my playing--really cool of him.

Saturday:  Back to Yacht Rock.

We played a private party at the Westin Buckhead.  It was a pretty bland event, and twenty-four hours after the Variety Playhouse, were came crashing back to earth--ignored by a couple of hundred people more interested in two minutes in the money cube.

I played well on this gig, though I had a lot of trouble finding the right volume level.  Everything felt too quiet or two loud.  At one point I turned my amp all the way down and tried to play off the room sound.  Weird.  I mentioned how I could hear my sound slapping off the opposite wall, and he said he couldn't hear me at all.

It was a super easy gig, though--three sets of the usual stuff.  No equipment catastrophes, no drunk idiots, no cigarette smoke.

We had a lot of down time in between soundcheck and the gig.

Sunday:  church gigs.

My first church gig of the day was strangely cohesive, considering how seat-of-the-pants it was.  I think the band is getting better about reading the leader.

Where as last week I think I played almost exclusively soprano sax, this week was all flute and tenor.  This week also had the children's choirs singing along to tracks and standing WAAAAAAY to close to my horns.  With this I can never be happy.

The band played one of the leader's originals--some kind of frenetic samba--that I had to chart out because he didn't have any sort of lead sheet on it.  The leader asked the organist to play on it as well (because church organ sounds really good on a samba), but the organist didn't have a chart, so he made a photocopy of the chart, so suddenly my chart has been donated to the church?  Why'd I just let that happen?

In between church gigs we went to Cobb's house to celebrate Nick's birthday.  That was really fun!

My second church gig was ok.  Since the sound has been weird the past few weeks, I tried running mono instead of stereo.  There's a mono out on the board, so we used that.  First song was full of static.  What the hell?  I moved it to the "left" channel of the stereo out, and it sounded better in the room (cathedral) than it has in weeks.  I cranked it up--it makes me think someone's messing with the amplifier settings.  Anyway, I went out in the house to check the sound, and when I walked by, the drummer was playing with four fingers (two on each hand)--like drumming with your palms on a table.  Check the technique!  More what the hell!

Drummer tells the band leader to tell me (since he's wearing headphones of the main mix) that the overall mix is louder (duh--we went from 12 on the main volume fader to 5!), and the drum mic is too hot.  I turned down the headphone output and cut the gain on the drum mic by twenty-five percent.  It seemed like he was pouting after that.  I don't know what to do with him.  Perhaps he should do some reading.

davidfreemanmusic.net

My Mojo Returneth

I'm finally all the way back from the funk that has plagued me for the past few weeks!  I felt good and confident about everything I played last night.  It's about time.

We had a great gig last night at the 10 High.  The crowd was pretty good--better than last week, but not overly enthusiastic about what we were doing.  Maybe it was the number of people out there, but I thought the onstage sound was much better, and that made a difference for me--who wants to do anything but go home when it sounds like crap.

Remember how I was working on picking up the bass part on Steal Away?  I listened to it this week--the piano/synth guy (my role on this song) doesn't do that at all!  Instead, the piano kind of doubles what the synth does.  Way easier.  Stupid me.

Earlier in the day we had a final rehearsal for the big show tonight at the Variety Playhouse.  This rehearsal concentrated on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  We're adding a trombonist (Jill Freeman) to make the horn section bigger and brassier (and more french hornier, but french hornists are hard to come by, so we're using a trombonist).  All my charts were good except for one--she's doubling the alto part, and I forgot to transpose it from Eb to C:

Oops.  It sounded super bad when she was playing a minor third away from the rest of us.

We also ran The Dark Side of the Moon one more time.  Bencuya's got the synth solo in Any Colour You Like really happening.

It should be a great show tonight.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Rehearsal and the Radio

We (Yacht Rock) had a Tuesday morning rehearsal for this Friday's big gig at the Variety Playhouse.  For this one, we focused on Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.  It sounded great.  I don't remember what it sounded like the first time we played this album, but with the second guitar (Greg) and Nick playing more second keyboard, it's really happening.

Speaking of guitar--Mark Dannells was totally unprepared for rehearsal, and still pulled the entire album out of his butt.  You can do that when you're awesome.

I got most of my stuff right.  I screwed up a little on Money.

Wednesday morning we played on The Regular Guys show (Rock 100.5 FM).  We did Time (off The Dark Side of the Moon).  It sounded pretty good.  Dannells was beyond awesome.  Cobb's electronic drum pad took a shit in the corner.  I played the three measures the female vocalist contributed.  Here's my chart:

Pretty easy!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday Sunday

Yesterday was Sunday, a day for performances in houses of worship.

The first gig was pretty cohesive.  It's finally coming together--no big disasters or anything.  They're limping towards everybody on in-ears, which would be cool.  Right now it's one monitor mix and a six channel headphone amp!  Not quite cool.  Somehow they've not been able to find a headphone extension long enough to reach the eight feet over to my position, so I get nothing, which really hasn't been that bad.  I'm playing acoustically against the piano and drums.  I'm told that eventually they'll start using an Aviom system, which would be sweet.

Speaking of sound, I don't know what the hell's going on with the sound at church gig number two.  The sound coming out of the board (listening with headphones) does not equal the sound coming out of the main speakers.  They've changed something between the jacks on the floor where I plug in and the PA.  My best guess is that the right channel has been turned off and it's mono, and I'm still trying to run stereo.  After the mass, I took my mic and tried panning it hard left and then hard right, and I couldn't tell the difference.  I'm not saying I'm a good sound man, but stacking everything in the band on a mono send (as opposed to spreading it out in a stereo mix) is not going to give better results.  We'll see.

davidfreemanmusic.net