Enjoying the Weather

Yacht Rock had a couple of outdoor gigs this weekend.  Fortunately, the heat of the summer is finally beginning to dissipate, so they were both pretty comfortable.

Our first show was a wedding in Birmingham, AL.  Our set up was delayed by passing showers as the cold front moved through, but things eventually dried out and we soundchecked.

The reception was easy--I'd guess 125 guests--and the bride and groom are big fans.  The evening was pretty nice, even though the mosquitos were pretty intimidating.

We ended the festivities with Born to Run (one of the groom's favorite songs).  I hadn't played it in over a year, but it seems like that song is burned into my brain.

 Born to Run sax solo by David B Freeman

We drove back to Atlanta on Sunday, headed straight to Stone Mountain for the Yellow Daisy Festival.  More easy stuff--one ninety minute set in pleasant weather.  A week earlier, and we'd all have drowned in our own sweat.

We played well, though Dannells had a little cussing fit after he broke a string, which forced him to play his slide guitar (with the really high action) for the remainder of the gig.  Things sounded good on stage, and I could hear myself in the PA on the saxophone stuff.  Once again, we finished with Born to Run.

This was a great weekend!  Three successful gigs in a row, and it looks like the calendar is revving up for the next couple of months.

davidfreemanmusic.net

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

Revival Rehearsal

Yacht Rock had our big rehearsal with all the guys for tomorrow's Greatest Yacht Rock Revival in the Universe.

First up, Elliot Lurie from Looking Glass.  We went through Brandy and Jimmy Loves Mary Ann.  We tried to convince him that our ending for the former would work, but…no.

After Elliot, we ran through Baby Come Back and This Time I'm in it for Love with Peter Beckett.

The guys from Starbuck came in next and ran their songs while we ate lunch.  Their marimbist, Bo Wagner, totally stole the show.  He's still a pretty captivating soloist.  Afterwards, we talked for a couple of minutes (he's going to email me transcriptions of his solos on Moonlight Feels Right and I've Got to Know)--he's a really nice guy.  I showed him my EWI set up and how I deal with the marimba solo ("play as fast as you can in E minor!").

I ate lunch with Walter Egan.  I get the impression that I weird him out.

Walter was up next.  No problems with his songs Magnet and Steel, Only the Lucky, and Go Your Own Way.

Next up was Gary Wright.  Gary was very particular about his songs--wanted to know what parts everybody was playing, what the guitar and clav effects sounded like, and checked the vocal harmonies.  I didn't play much (only played the string part, doubling Gary, on Love is Alive), but his scrutiny definitely made me unsure of myself.

I had Gary sign Brandon Still's keytar.

The last guy of the day was Robbie Dupree.  We rolled through his two tunes, Steal Away and Hot Rod Hearts, with no trouble.  He was exhausted from traveling, so we touched on a few things quickly and wrapped up the rehearsal.

All set for the big day tomorrow!  John Ford Coley, sorry we missed you!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Sunday

I was fortunate that we were able to come home instead of spending the night in Kiawah Island--I was able to make my AM church gig.  I had lined up a sub at the beginning of last week, but they said they would rather not have saxophone if I couldn't make it (I'm not sure if they're being nice or lazy).  Anyway, I showed up and played and things were fine.

Things were once again pretty thrown together--we rehearsed for all of fifteen minutes.  One singer and a couple of single page hymns.  Easy stuff.  We spent more time on break than on the gig.

My PM service was more organized, but just as easy.  Nothing to talk about.  I played fine.  The mixer came unplugged right before the last song, but that was an easy fix.

This is a big week!  Time for Yacht Rock's Greatest Revival in the Universe!

davidfreemanmusic.net

Just a Van Ride

Yacht Rock was supposed to play a show on Kiawah Island during the PGA Championship there last night.  When we arrived, we found the stage off in a field next to a small shopping village.  Unfortunately, we had driven through some bad weather to get to the island, and the weather was headed that way.

We never even got our equipment out of the van.  We sat in our green room and ate sandwiches, and at a certain point (after it'd rained for a half hour), they called the event off.  We got back in the van and headed back to Atlanta.

davidfreemanmusic.net