Variety Playhouse show

We made it!  Another big show has come and gone.  There were some rough spots, but we all got through it.  Thanks to the crowd for the great turn out, and thanks to Farrell for making it look so good.

Not much for me to do on this gig…I played on about two thirds of the first set (things like cowbell on the outro of one song), two minor things on the middle set, and most of the last set.  At least it made loading out quick and easy.  I also ate half a bag of Cheetos on stage and drank enough of a martini to make my lips numb.

I got up and did my two church gigs (with a big nap in between).  I've got nothing to say about either one.  Actually, I will say that my soprano sound was good tonight--I have a reed in just the perfect point in its life.  Also, my flute is still in the shop from the beer spill incident, so I used a different flute with much better results.  It really shows how messed up my instrument was.  Not cool, beer spill girl!  You owe me a frickin' boatload of money for the repadding of my flute!

Here are a few recents YouTube additions…Dick in a Box has a good sax solo at the end (2:15 until the end).



My Old School…utilizing my sax effects pedal to set to play in octaves.  I could afford to be louder in the mix, but damn everybody sounds good on this one.



davidfreemanmusic.net

The Ivy

Yacht Rock played a show at The Ivy in Buckhead last night.  Where's that?  It used to be Carbo's, and then it burned.  Now it looks like a two story Buckhead bar, complete with asshole parking attendant.

It was a strange gig.  I can't really say why we were there.  It was the beginning of their "Thursday Night Concert Series" (what the hell is that?), which is obviously so huge and important and worth the money that they failed to mention it on their EVENTS PAGE on their website.  I guess they made up for it with multiple Facebook posts.

I think we played alright.  The place was packed in spite of the aforementioned ineptitude.  We tested out a few of the songs from our upcoming Dazed and Confused show, which gave me a chance to sit back and do nothing.

Anyway, no big deal…

Friday was an all day mega rehearsal for the Variety Playhouse show.  A week ago, I thought we were screwed and it wouldn't come together in a week.  Now I think the show's going to be really good.  Fear and charts!

I managed to watch almost all of Top Gun while Led Zep 4 was rehearsed.  I still can't believe Kelly McGillis is a lesbian.

Big show Saturday night!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Old Friends, New Year

I'm back!

I started the year by attending a friend's wedding.  Will Scruggs played in the band (Kingsized) at the reception.  Yay!  I've known Will since he was still in college at Emory, and he sounds better than ever.  Will has done really well at creating his own gigs and finding his own "thing."  Very cool!  He's also a really nice, dependable guy.  You can see what he's up to by checking out his website.  Yay Will!

Will Scruggs!

My family took a week long trip to Disney World during the first week of the year.  Along the way, we had a little time to take the David Freeman:  This is Your Life! tour, visiting all my old schools, homes, ex-girlfriend's homes, and hangouts in Orlando.  It looks just the way I left it twenty years ago.  Has it really been twenty years since I graduated from high school?

my old house

my old school

Being back gave me a chance to reconnect with a few of the most important people in my life.  First was my old saxophone teacher, Artie Almeida.  She (and her husband John) have been on the music scene forever in Orlando, and they're still playing and teaching a lot.  Amazing people!  I love that they've stayed in central Florida and made the most of their opportunities (she got her doctorate in education and flies around the GLOBE giving seminars about teaching elementary music;  he is now the trumpet professor at UCF).  Aside from my family, they were the most influential people for me as an aspiring musician.

After that, we zoomed by my old neighborhood to check in with the Mr. and Mrs. Dougherty.  They are parents to my best friend in high school, Neil, and they often served as surrogate parents when mine weren't available!  Mrs. Dougherty has been one of my biggest fans FOREVER.  They are wonderful people--I wish they were still a bike ride away.

On Sunday, it was back to work.  Church gig number one…usual stuff.  I got a little solo on one of the songs.

 Even Now (sax) by David B Freeman

I didn't bother bringing my flute to church gig number two--just played soprano through the whole thing.  I think most of the pads in the right hand are ruined from the beer spill a few weeks ago.  Time to go see Bryan Lopes!

davidfreemanmusic.net

NYE on Ice

The Yacht Rock Revue closed out our spectacular year by playing our New Year's Eve show at the Park Tavern.  Just like last year, they put carpet and a stage on top of the skating rink…we were the greatest show on ice?

We played a really good show, I thought.  I can't think of anything that didn't sound good--it was just a really solid, even show to a sold out (1,500 people) crowd.  It was also shown on a webcast, so anybody could tune in.  How cool is that?  Very hip--I hope that continues with next year's Park Tavern summer concert series.

I played pretty well.  I had a couple of spots where I was really killing it, immediately followed by brain farts and corresponding wipeouts.  Oops.  Tim Smith was standing behind me offstage for the entire second set--maybe he wasn't listening to me?  On the whole, I think I was good, though.  Hopefully this erases my abomination of a performance the last time we were here.

As far as New Year's goes…I've never been a fan.  I think because my parents treated it like it was any other night, I've never felt like the world was crossing some imaginary boundary.  After the show, I couldn't get away from the Park Tavern quickly enough, past the puke puddles and the girls so drunk they were crying.  Some lady stopped her car in the middle of 10th Street for several minutes because her passenger had his door open, throwing up again and again (I know because I got stuck behind them).  

At the next light, I looked in my rearview mirror, and guess who was behind me, hazards on, passenger side door open.  Not impressive.

davidfreemanmusic.net

A Wedding? On a Thursday?

Yacht Rock played a wedding Thursday night.  Weird, huh?  I guess they were cashing in on every discount you could find.  Fine with me, though…instead of coming home at 2:30 AM smelling of smoke (and possibly having to wipe spilled beer off my flute),  I was home at midnight.  Plus, we made more money.  So ha!  A win all around.

The gig was pretty fun.  I mean, especially for a wedding, it was a relaxed, nobody's bugging us kind of thing.  We hadn't played together in ten days--it felt pretty good compared to the previous wedding where we were all committed to getting out of there ASAP.  Mark Cobb seemed pretty refreshed, like he was enjoying himself.  Bencuya slipped Rockit into his I Want to Be Your Lover solo again.  Good stuff.

We played Give a Little Bit again.  I screwed up the sax solo the last time we played it.  And then I heard it in the grocery store a few days before Christmas, and as soon as it started I knew I would be standing there listening to the spot where I bit it.  My shame, conveniently located in aisle six at Publix.  Anyway…the solo came back to me.  I played it fine.  I need to stop thinking about it so much.

We also hit Biggest Part of Me for the first time in a long time.  I had a pretty good solo going on that one, but the weird thing was that I was kind of doing little bunny hops and kind of moving around a bit--almost uncontrollably.  Not like a seizure;  but I the part of my brain that was not involved in the head-to-hands chain that makes the music was saying "Why do you keep doing that?  What the hell is wrong with you?" but I just kept kind of using a little body language to pound out my solo.  I don't do too much of that--there's always some "for the show," but this was more of the involuntary, electricity-running-through-me kind of thing.

Last gig of the year…Yacht Rock is playing at the Park Tavern Saturday night.  Get your tickets now!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Duo Dave

I played a GREAT duo gig last night with the one and only David Ellington.

Driving up Main Street in Woodstock, I thought "Man, it's dark here!"  My directions told me I was in the right place, but all the shops and restaurants looked closed.  I pulled into the parking lot, met up with Ellington, and we investigated on foot.  It turned out that a car had plowed into a transformer and knocked everything out!  I sent Ellington home and agreed to play the gig solo.

Right before I was to begin, the power kicked back on, so I called Dave and told him to turn around and come back.  In the mean time, I went ahead and played solo sax for about twenty minutes.  Once he was set up, we played a couple of normal length sets.

Part of it was that I was having a great night--I felt good and I had a good reed and I could hear myself--but Ellington really made me play better.  We hadn't played a gig together in over a year, and it felt like we picked right back up.  He played really well and made every tune comfortable.  It was a good gig and good hang with one of my favorite people.

Some guy tipped us a dollar for playing Giant Steps.  I think it worked out to be a penny for each of us per chorus.

Fun stuff!  I hope to see Dave again soon.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Christmas Eve Gigs

I ended up with three Christmas Eve gigs last night…two at church gig number 2, and one at church gig number 1.

The first two were in the parish hall, and turned out to be pretty easy.  I think the most challenging thing about being in there is mixing, as we plug into the wall and use the speakers in the ceiling.  From our spot in the corner, it's impossible to hear what we sound like--I had to walk out a half dozen times and check it out, usually right down the center aisle because of the Christmas Eve overcrowding.

I did help myself right from the start by unplugging all the XLRs from the mixer and zeroing out the board.  No point dealing with all the crap.  I did figure out how to use the onboard effects, so the second service got to hear us with reverb.  Yippee!

Playing-wise, things were ok.  I felt ok on flute, and my soprano felt really good (Lopes just finished putting it back together about a week ago).  Christmas carols are pretty straight forward.

I raced out of Buckhead at 7, headed to church gig number 1.  Driving and changing my shirt at the same time...what other profession does stuff like this on a regular basis?  I thought, what am I going to say when I wreck with one arm in my shirt and my pants wide open?

I made it in plenty of time.  No sweat.  I could have changed my shirt in the parking lot.

The gig went pretty well.  I did catch an audible--play Oh Little Town of Bethlehem on flute.  I was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY out of tune on that one, and fumbling the melody a couple of times made me sweat, which my flute slide around on my lip, which made me sound worse, which made me sweat more.  Turn up the suck!  I was really bad on that.  Good thing only about a thousand people heard me.

They did this really cool thing last year, so I was ready with my camera this time.  Lights out, and then they pass candles out.  It looks awesome.

No church gigs on Christmas Day.

davidfreemanmusic.net