Back at Smith's

Please Pleaserock Me (Yacht Rock plays the Beatles) was back at Smith's Olde Bar for the first time in a long time.  It's good and bad--yay because public shows feel like we're a real band (as opposed to a group of guys who make money at wedding receptions and corporate banquets), but boo because the load in at Smith's sucks real bad.  I'm glad I don't have to drag my Yacht Rock gear up and down two bouncing flights of rusty stairs.

We loaded in really early (2 PM), but finished early (4 PM), so that Butch Walker could set up and play a show in front of our show.  Sounds like Atlanta music royalty.  His show was slammed, though.  I got back to Smith's a little after 9 PM, and I could hear the crowd from the bottom of the aforementioned stairs.  The whole room was a hot and stinky mess.    It took about three hours for it to finally cool back down.

Our show finally got rolling around 10:30 PM.  The first set went pretty well.  We added in two new ones--Happiness is a Warm Gun and Rain.  We also played our original, Can't Wait for Summer.  It felt really weird, and then it dawned on me that this was only the second time I've ever played the song in the context of a horn section (the other being with Jordan Shalhoup on the last night of the 10 High).

The second set got a little wild.  We began with our third new one, Live and Let Die.  That was pretty good--it got me wondering how often somebody plays piccolo at Smith's Olde Bar.  After that, we played Strawberry Fields Forever.  Halfway through the song, the onstage power went out, which reset all the keyboards and killed the bass for a second.  Dannells' amp wouldn't come back on--the particular quad box into which he was plugged was on a bad breaker, evidently.  So as the song was supposed to be boiling up to a climax, it instead broke down to just drums.  Uhhhh…

Strangeness.  Next up was Penny Lane.  Paul Poovey aced it.  More piccolo for me.

We followed that with Whatever Gets You Through the Night.  Yay for me!  Around this time, I realized the crowd just wasn't that into us.  A pretty lukewarm reaction.  It felt like it was too hot to leave, so they just stood there.

The rest of the night was easy.  Nothing else to report.  We forced an encore on the audience even though they weren't screaming for it.

Down the stairs we go…

davidfreemanmusic.net

Back at It

Weird…I had an entire week without any gigs.  I tackled a bunch of projects around my house--damn near killed myself--and got plenty of exercise and practicing.  I need to go back to work so I can get some rest!

My AM church gig went pretty well.  Things were reasonably organized and actually went pretty smoothly.  No problems.  We even had a monitor!

My PM church gig was also pretty easy.  No sweat.  Good flute face.

Sorry I don't have much to report…stay tuned.

davidfreemanmusic.net

No Half Steppin'

Sunday means church gigs!

The AM church gig is headed back towards some sort of normalcy.  Rhythm section, horn section, and vocalists (though this week there was a choir instead of five or six people).  The charts worked without any problems.  It's a miracle!  The horns set up on the opposite side because the choir was on a riser in our usual spot.  Sonically, things were worse--not only could we not hear the drums, bass, or acoustic guitar, but stage right we could barely make out the piano.  Hmm.  In ear monitors can't make it to this gig soon enough.

The PM church gig was a little better than last week.  Latest evidence I am headed straight to hell:  during the communion song, the pianist/bandleader played the same wrong note in the melody twice, so when she tossed me the solo, I incorporated her wrong note as a chromatic passing tone.  Did you catch that?  I did it again.  And again.  How about in the opposite direction?  Yes.  This sent me off on a little chromatic crusade to add half steps in between the diatonic notes of the melody wherever possible, rising and falling.  Wee!  Nobody said anything afterwards, so I guess file that under self amusement.  Oh well.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Johnny Loves Esther!

Congratulations to one of Pleaserock's finest, Esther, on her wedding last night!

Yacht Rock played the reception.  After a good week of practice (and a couple of more "back to normal" gigs), I think I may be coming out of my funk.  I even got Africa right.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Ping Pong

Yacht Rock had a private gig last night at the Ritz at Lake Oconee.  Nice…we spent the night there, and each got our own room.  Here's the view out of mine:

Our gig was really, really weird…like a fall at terminal velocity from the Revival back to reality.  The event was pushed back a half hour, and once we finally started playing, nobody would come into the room.  For a while, it looked like this:

In a desperate attempt by the party planner to bring people to her event, she brought a ping pong table in…uh, ok.  People began to come in finally, but they faced AWAY FROM US SO THEY COULD WATCH PING PONG!  Holy shit!  Then they broke out decks of cards, and people played cards and ignored us.

We had two people on the dance floor, but they didn't even make it through an entire song before they gave up.  That's pretty much how it ended.  Someone went to a guest room and got a clock radio so they could listen to rap while they played cards (while we loaded out).

After the event, I accidentally on purpose charged my room service to the client.  Oops?

davidfreemanmusic.net

Back to It

I left the Park Tavern around 12:30 AM with the clock ticking, knowing I had to run home, dump equipment, take a shower, sleep, and be at my next gig at 8 AM. 

The ol' AM church gig.  This one was kind of a "welcome back!" service for the main minister and the  congregation--the first one since school started, so it was more full than the previous few weeks.  The band was back to full strength (plus the horns, plus some more horns to augment that, plus a couple of violins).  There were charts and transitions that had been considered beforehand--everything worked!

We played both services…extra money.  Yes.

The PM church gig was ok.  We were light on singers, and the piano pickup was busted, but we made it through without any disasters.  My soprano has a problem (the adjustment screws on the bar behind the right hand are out of wack, and so the F key and the linked key above that--the one connected to the bar--aren't closing together).  Fun.  Quality time with my leak light and a screwdriver.

Easy week ahead.

davidfreemanmusic.net

Revival!

Wow!  Yacht Rock hosted the Greatest Yacht Rock Revival in the Universe for the second straight year.  Bigger and better!

I think it was, on the whole, a tremendous success.  Congratulations to everybody at Pleaserock (Nick, Peter, Kristen, and Esther) for pulling this together.

As for me, I think I played ok.  The first couple of tunes were fine, and then I bit it on Sara Smile.  The rest of the set was fine.  The second set had no major problems that I can think of, either, except for some overblowing on the saxophone stuff.  Nothing new there.  At soundcheck, I played the Africa solo probably seventy-five times, and I made it through it at the show, but just barely.  The solo on the outro kind of redeems me these days.

So…I don't know.  I just don't have any confidence in what I'm doing these days.  Music is not fun for me at the moment.

davidfreemanmusic.net