Trio

I had a rough trio gig last night.  Tyrone Jackson, Nadav Spiegelman, and myself were booked as a trio for background music at a corporate dinner.  Great, right?  I've probably played five hundred of these--we do our thing, they eat, everybody's happy.

We began with my tune Under a Tree:



You might notice while the piano and bass are soloing, I am in conference with two ladies (agent/hand holder people).  The lady who hired them (who in turn hired me) is freaked out.  Basically, she doesn't like what we're playing and wants to know what else we can do…like…I don't know…blues was thrown out as a different genre, to which I countered that it's going to sound like a jazz trio playing a blues.  Then it went to pop music, whatever that means.  This one stumped me.  Obviously the instrumentation severely limits what we're capable of doing, and who knows what pop tunes we might know between us and be able to pull off.

The best we could do was to play the very common jazz songs that freak out lady would recognize.  Next up was Georgia on my Mind.



From there, I played it like it was wedding band first set, so we hit Route 66, Just the Two of Us, Girl from Ipanema, and What a Wonderful World.  That pretty much sucked all the energy and enthusiasm out of the band.  We continued on for a set and a half like this, bored out of our minds.  In the middle of the second set, we started easing back into stuff we wanted to play, and by the third set we were into the Joe Henderson tunes (Shade of Jade, Inner Urge, and Punjab closed out the evening).  That was really fun.

Better luck next time!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Athfest 2012

Yacht Rock headlined Athfest 2012 in Athens, GA last night.  Great crowd, good weather, nice size stage, easy load in;  bad sound, bad sound, bad sound.  We set up in a hurry (in front of everybody), plugged everything in, and the sound guys couldn't get it together.  It was one of the most awkward line checks ever.  The entire audience got to watch as the crew tried to figure out what microphone they'd just plugged in to what channel.  Not good!

Once we got off and running, the sound guys let a couple of microphones feedback just slightly through the entire set.  One was my vocal microphone, which I unplugged after three songs.  The other…we'll never know.  Obviously, they didn't.

In other news, I couldn't play the horn lick on Rosanna to save my life.  I was 0-4.

Mark Dannells had an atomic flip out after he messed up his solo on Can't Wait for Summer.  Briefly, I wondered if he'd be able to play the remainder of the gig.  After he'd kicked every piece of equipment, he was ok.

I figured out where the microphone is on my phone, so I pointed it away from the drums and towards me.  Less crash cymbal and more saxophone.  You might also be able to hear me cussing when I screw up my piano part.  The solo was not necessarily any better than Friday night.

 Takin' it to the Streets (Athens) by David B Freeman

Home by midnight.  Not too shabby.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Park Tavern Fun

Yacht Rock played our monthly gig at the Park Tavern last night to 1,600 fans.  The show sold out early in the afternoon, but they sold a bunch of walk up tickets at the door.  I'm not sure exactly how that works, but it was PACKED.

Great crowd, great gig!  We did a chronological set, beginning in 1972 and ending in 1984.

Takin' it to the Streets showed up on the set list for the first time in months.  The set list maker does not care for this song.  Naturally, I like it.  We rarely play it.  It seems really silly to me that a couple of obvious yacht rock songs (Baker Street being another) are rarely performed because someone in the band doesn't care for it.  How is any song on our setlist better or worse than any other?

 Takin' it to the Streets by David B Freeman

We slipped our originals in there.  They seem to be getting better, though I sucked on the horn section part.  Thinking in two keys will do that to you, I guess.

 Can't Wait for Summer by David B Freeman

We have a bunch of shows between now and the next Park Tavern gig (July 27).  See y'all out there!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Bon Voyage!

The Yacht Rock Revue closed out our four year residency at the 10 High in Atlanta last night.  Has it already been four years?  We're moving on because our schedule is so packed, we can't make it most of the time.  Rather than show up every five or six weeks for our house gig (to ever dwindling crowds), we decided that it was time to let it go.

Naturally, the send off party was super packed.  I went upstairs on the break, and there was STILL a line of people out the door of the Dark Horse waiting to get in.  That's pretty neat.  I can only think of one other "line out the door" night.

The crowd inside was, of course, jammed in there.  I wish they'd given out breath mints at the door.  Lots of very appreciative people--they all made it seem like we were never playing again.  Maybe they misinterpreted Jim's Last Waltz poster?  I even said to somebody, "Why come down in this dirty basement when you could see tomorrow at the Park Tavern?"

While I was standing around waiting for the show to begin, some girl asked me if I straighten my hair (I had my wig on).

"No.  It's naturally straight."

"Do you put gel or anything in it?"

"No, just shampoo and conditioner."

Uhh…the show on stage was a lot of fun.  The special guests were all prepared, and everybody played well.  Jordan Shalhoup got up and played a few section things with me, and I thought those were really cool.  I didn't get a chance to ask Nick (since he was closest to my amp), but I bet Silly Love Songs sounded really neat with multiple saxophones.  Jordan and I were pleased with ourselves.

And then it was over, and we packed up just like every other time in the past four years, dragged stuff out to the parking lot, and drove away.  So long 10 High!

davidfreemanmusic.net

The Bird

I played only my AM church gig yesterday (I took the PM gig off).

This gig was not good.  The tunes were a weird mix mash of oom-pah songs with a generic latin tune in the middle.  I don't think they hung together well.  Things we did in rehearsal (introductions and endings) did not make it upstairs to the service.  Plus, the charts weren't very good--one was in the wrong key (untransposed) and another needed editing (some rhythmic things that didn't fit).

Worst of all, though, was our sub sound guy, who had all kinds of trouble.  He couldn't unmute some of the stage microphones, and he got yelled at my the senior minister because he couldn't turn on the lights.  The biggest problem was that he couldn't make the headphone amplifier work, so the electronic drums and electric bass were inaudible for everybody on stage (including the drummer and bassist).  They were also muted in the horn monitor.  Unfortunately, they were coming through the main PA, so had to play in time with the piano, but ignore the slap of the drums in the house.  Not fun.  It was a wreck.  The latin tune, in particular, was an unnecessary challenge.

I heard that the husband of one of the vocalists was so angry with the sound that he went down to the tech guys after the service and flipped them the bird.  Wow!

Obviously, nobody was happy.  I bet there'll be hell to pay this week in the staff meeting.  Maybe it will finally be enough to get things running more professionally.

davidbfreemanmusic.net

#2

Second to last Thursday 10 High gig for Yacht Rock.

We had a pretty full crowd last night.  They were a bit ambivalent, particularly with regards to the stage banter, but most people stayed all the way to the end--it makes the gig so much easier when there's an audience!

The band played well, and we had a really good time.  We had Daniel Morrison on drums and Kevin Spencer and Ganesh Giri Jaya subbing.  The only really rough spot to me happened towards the end of the first set--I played some big time bullshit on Takin' it to the Streets, and then we crash landed on the ending.

I've been screwing around with the levels on my EWI stuff, and I think I've now gotten my ENTIRE rig totally out of wack--things were all over the place last night (mostly too loud).  I think I really annoyed Hans.

No Jim Reindel this week, but we did get a Chris Cox showing, which has it's own thing.

One more week!

davidfreemanmusic.net

One of the Guys

I played my two church gigs yesterday…usual stuff.  No problems at either one.

After the second one, I headed over to the 5 Spot for the Marsapalooza, a benefit for Steve Florczykowski and Tafee Patterson to offset legal fees involved in the adoption of their son Mars.  Will Scruggs organized the entire event.  Good music and a good hang (because of Will and Steve's combined musical associations, it was mostly people from Event Performance and Kingsized).

For me, it was super cool because I got to hang out for a little while with some of the other horn players in town--I got to be one of the guys.  Will and I hung out off and on the whole night.  Paul Poovey was hanging out and I got to talk to him for second.  I talked to Gary Paulo for a little while (we have the Indiana U. sax studio connection).  John Sandfort (who was super awesome playing with Paul Garrett's horn band Bumpin' the Mango) and I hung out for a half hour afterwards talking/complaining about saxophones, and then we moved over and talked to Tom Gibson, and then Kevin Lyons came over, and Paul Garrett was next to him.  It was so neat, and it really meant a lot to me that even though we don't play many gigs together, I can still be part of the community.

davidfreemanmusic.net