Down Time

I'm really enjoying the down time I've had in these few days after Thanksgiving. I have no gigs this weekend, so I'm practicing. Specifically, I am practicing slowly. There are two ways that I am doing this.

First: I am playing things slowly and really focusing on getting a good sound and connecting the notes with the air. I'm not worried about maintaining any technique. I want to really think about the sound of the instrument.

Second: I am practicing without an end time. Since these few days are pretty wide open, I am taking a slow pace in my work. You can't practice in a hurry--that only works against you. Instead, I am taking my time and enjoying myself.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Turkey Eve

Yacht Rock survived Turkey Eve at Andrews Upstairs last night. The big news was that our old buddy (and second keyboardist) Brandon Still played with us. It was super cool hanging out with him. He's having an awesome time with Blackberry Smoke. They're headed to Europe for twenty dates.

We played really well in the first set, but the second set was pretty sluggish. I was glad when it ended. Also, I don't think the saxophone was loud enough in the house. That sort of killed the gig for me.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

XTC/NWA

I played last night at the Earl after I finished teaching. My friend Geoff Melkonian has an amazing R.E.M. tribute band called The R.E.M.akes, and they sound just like R.E.M. The final song of the evening was Can't Get There from Here, which has a saxophone part. It's pretty easy stuff.

Following us was the XTC tribute band NWA or Nigels with Attitude. It's a couple of Yacht Rock guys (Mark Bencuya, Mark Cobb, Nick Niespodziani, Kevin Spencer), plus a couple of guys from Sheryl Crow's band (Peter Stroud, Tim Smith). The talent on stage was staggering. I can't say I know anything about XTC (in contrast to the R.E.M. stuff, which I'm all over), but the music seemed really complex in the number of interwoven parts. Those guys nailed it. In particular Mark Cobb might have never played better--the complexity and fire required for this gig are right up his alley, and I think his focus really made the whole thing come together.

We've got Yacht Rock tonight at Andrews Upstairs (Brandon's back!), and then I am DONE.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

White Plains, NY

Yacht Rock had our first ever fly gig this weekend--we traveled to White Plains, NY to play a 40th birthday party. Except for the lack of sleep, it turned out to be a really fun weekend.

Our flight up was scheduled for 8:30 AM, and I'd bet nobody in the band got more than five hours of sleep before it (I would know because we were all emailing back and forth right around midnight). I fell asleep before the plane had even left the ground, and finally woke up right before we landed.

Nick and Pete rented a van and drove all the equipment up, and we met up with them at the house where we were playing. The set up was in a tent on their back porch. After setting up and checking, we went back to the hotel and crashed for a few hours. Then, back to the gig.

The gig itself was pretty good. Nobody got too silly or sloppy. We made a bunch of new friends and got lots of verbal offers to play in the area.

I went back to the hotel and slept HARD until 9 AM this morning. We got up, went back to the airport, and flew home. It was pretty uneventful.

My tenor rode in the van, and I carried my alto and EWI in a gig bag. I lucked into some key clamps via eBay, and so I tried them on my alto. They're not something I'd use day to day, but I figured on a trip like that where I had my horn in a bag and it could get jostled around a little more, it might be worth it. I like the idea. I don't know if they really do more harm than good, but there's definitely some peace of mind in it. We've got some more traveling coming up in early January, so I'm going to go ahead and order a set of clamps for my tenor, too.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Thursday, eh?

Yesterday (Thursday) was another two gig Thursday.

The first was a trio at Neiman Marcus in Lenox Square Mall--some sort of private party for big spenders. The trio was myself, David Ellington on piano, and Tommy Sauter on bass, sandwiched in between glass cases of expensive jewelry.

Once again, I had a lot of difficulty with the time. It felt to me like it was all over the place, and at times it made playing uncomfortable and frustrating. Here are the mp3s:

I ran from Lenox over to the 10 High for Yacht Rock. In honor of our last night with sub (and favorite Canuck) Kevin Spencer fronting the band, we had Canadian Tuxedo night. Since I was already dressed in a regular tuxedo, I represented for America! (in other words, I didn't change into denim). Dig this fine picture of Gordon Lightfoot, a fine Canadian in his own right, and sporting a damn fine tux. We broke out his tune Sundown last night, and we watched Strange Brew as the warm up. The winner of the Canadian Tux contest won a bottle of maple syrup.

I think we had a pretty good night. We did the same set we'd played last week on Thursday and Friday, so there were no surprises. The only wrinkle was the fact that we played the gig on borrowed gear because all of our equipment left on Wednesday morning for a gig in New York. We managed just fine. Bencuya and I managed to borrow the more or less identical keyboards, so the sounds were pretty much the same. I was super tired and super hungry by the time we finished, though.

Tomorrow's flight to New York leaves at 8:30 AM, so I'll be leaving home around 6. Ouch! No sleep for me.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Keyboard Percussion

Jack on keyboard percussion...

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MP3s of Quartet Gig

I had an interesting conversation with Mark Cobb yesterday. He has been doing some very creative things to shake up some of the older Yacht Rock tunes. Many songs have been on our setlist for over a year now, and in order to keep them fresh, he has been slightly altering the groove and/or the tempo. His creativity keeps things fun for all of us.

Here's the mp3s from my quartet gig last Thursday night. It was Louis Heriveaux (piano), Tommy Sauter (bass), and Wayne Viar (percussion). We played in the Day Hall at the Botanical Gardens, a room acoustically similar to a high school cafeteria. You can probably hear the difference in saxophone tone in the second song for the out head--the volume was enough of a concern that I stuffed a towel in the bell of my horn and kept it there for the duration of the gig.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Wild Wing

Yacht Rock played the Wild Wing Cafe in Alpharetta last night. It was the smallest stage we've ever boarded. Mark Cobb took the night off, so Ganesh sang and played drums.

Everything that I crashed on last night went well tonight (i.e. Love Will Keep Us Together and Magic). I was also a little more comfortable with the transitions from instrument to instrument on A Lotta Love (I'm playing sax, flute, and keyboard on that one). I even got some strings happening on Lowdown with a little help from a sustain pedal. Yay for me.
Kevin Spencer fronted the band last night, and he was twice as good as the night before (though I guess he wrote down some of his schtick to say in between songs, and he was obviously reading it in some parts!). Ganesh played great--impressive that he can sing lead and play drums at the same time. Mark Dannells played well. He did something really slick in the middle of the second solo on Peg that made me stop in the middle of playing piano--it was that hip. I don't even know how to describe it, but I'd never heard him do it before. Fantastic lick. Alyssa came out and sang some with us, and she sang even better than the night before.

Unfortunately for Mark Bencuya, the sound man got confused about which keyboard was playing what at any given time, and I ended up louder than God for most of the night, with Mark's stuff significantly lower. I got so loud at the end of Doctor My Eyes that my organ covered up the guitar solo. Oops. I had ear plugs in...it seemed loud, but I couldn't tell what was going on out front. I guess it wasn't my fault per se, but I feel bad that his stuff didn't come through as well because I was hammering away on the other side.

There's lots of talk about the B band doing the Wild Wing the next time we play there. I hope if the main guys are available that we do it again. To me, it was not any different than playing the 10 High, and the money was just as good. I don't really get much (energy-wise) from the crowd in either place, so as long as the vibes on stage are good, I am not concerned about who's in the room. We'll see...

I have a Platnumb gig tonight. Time to reload!
www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Thursday

I did two gigs yesterday.

The first gig was a quartet gig at the Botanical Gardens in Piedmont Park. The band included Louis Heriveaux on keyboard, Tommy Sauter on bass, and Wayne Viar on percussion. We played in the Day Hall, which could easily be mistaken for a high school cafeteria. Acoustically, not a good fit for a musical group and a bunch of people trying to mingle! I played the whole gig with a towel shoved into the bell of my saxophone. The crowd was loud, and we did our best to stay underneath them (and not be able to hear ourselves). Playing-wise things were fine, but it was a bad call to try and put a band in that room.

After that I ran over to the 10 High for Yacht Rock. Nick and Peter are out this week on a business trip--they're investigating a cruise ship thing for the band (like the Simple Man Cruise or The Rock Boat). At the helm we had Kevin Spencer and Ganesh Giri Jaya. They did a great job filling in. We also had Alyssa Olson singing a few with us.
We added A Lotta Love by Nicolette Larson last night. It went well. A couple of other songs she sang did not go as well. I had a brain fart on Love Will Keep Us Together a started the song half step higher than the band..."Why does this sound so bad?" Magic also kicked my butt last night.

I had two reeds die on me last night. The tenor reed I started the quartet gig on did not make it past the first few songs (much like the reed I started on last Thursday). When I got to Yacht Rock, I encountered a bad alto reed. I guess it's that time where my reeds are on the way out and I need to break in a few more.
I've tried multiple ways of breaking reeds: playing them out of the box; playing them in short spurts to welcome them to the new world until they're ready; soaking them for a little bit; soaking them over night. In the end, I'm not sure that it makes any difference. The soaking seems to settle them down--I get more keepers that way. My latest thing is to soak them for an hour or so, then let them dry for a day or two (I learned the hard way not to put them back in the plastic sleeves or the get really moldy). I then soak them again for a hour and let them dry for a day or two. Then I begin the playing and checking.

Yacht Rock is playing the Wild Wing Cafe in Alpharetta tonight. I'm not sure what to expect.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Wednesday

I had a gig last night with a DJ and percussionist at a place downtown. The building had a helicopter pad. Not something you see every day. We went up and checked it out. Not much to say other than that. It was a pretty easy gig. I see sliders are the exciting event food of the moment, much like the grits bar was a few years back, and the chocolate fountain before that.
Anyway...some pics from my phone. www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Tuesday Sextet

I had a sextet gig at the World Congress Center yesterday--a closing reception for somebody. I don't think I've ever had a sextet gig before, but it turned out to be fun. We ended up playing my originals for the entire gig.

The band is myself, Dan Baraszu (guitar), Tyrone Jackson (keyboard), Joseph Patrick Moore (bass), Wayne Viar (drums), and Chuck Bithorn (percussion).

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Sunday

Yesterday I did something I have not done in weeks...I warmed up before my church gig. It made a HUGE difference. The forty-five minutes I spent doing my flute stuff and the fifteen minutes on soprano sax completely changed the way I played. Lately it seems like I spend too much time adjusting my pitch as my face settles down through the first half of the gig. This time, I was able to play comfortably from the beginning. I was a completely different player.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

November 5 trio mp3s

Here are the mp3s from my trio gig last Thursday. It's me, Tommy Sauter on bass, and David Ellington on piano. As per Ellington's "suggestion"/throwdown, we ripped into all the Chick Corea tunes I have in my book. It made my head hurt. I think you can hear that.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Atlanta History Center

Yacht Rock played a gig at the Atlanta History Center.
It went ok. I had a difficult time locking into the time last night.
I played keyboard (along with my other crap), and I was a little uncoordinated in moving from part to part. Along with this was the fact that the stage was so small my horns were not on stage, and it kept me permanently out of sorts. At one point, Mark Cobb had already counted off the next song and I was still trying to get back to my spot across the stage.

Kip Conner ran sound again. He had my horn really loud a couple of times. I love that.

The load out of the History Center is pretty miserable if you have to use the loading dock. There's no ramp off the dock, so if you have anything on a cart (like myself), you have to wheel it to the dock, take everything off the cart and set it on the dock, reload your cart and continue. Also, there's always two or three other people (caterers, furniture people) trying to do the same thing, which makes for a mess. Couple that with the slow freight elevator, and it's a real drag.
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Doubled Up

I played a trio gig last night in front of the usual Yacht Rock. The gig was a private reception for the Penn State College School of Nursing Alumni (or something like that). The trio consisted of Tommy Sauter on bass and David Ellington on piano (subbing for the injured Louis Heriveaux).
We were a little rough, in my estimation. Ellington made a comment about Chick Corea, and we launched into all the Chick tunes I had with me. Pretty brutal. We also tried Strode Rode (which looks so simple on paper, but frustrated me) and Work (which I used to know, but evidently not as much now). To top it off, the reed I started on felt like it was warped, so I bailed on it and switched to a reed that felt like a 2x4.

I moved over to the 10 High for Yacht Rock. We played a few of our usual tunes, and then reprised Thriller for the people who didn't get to hear us play it on Halloween. I'm not sure how it went. I stand in a back corner of the stage and only hear clearly Mark Bencuya (keyboard 1), Mark Cobb (drums), Greg Lee (bass), and myself. I can hear the vocals ok, and I can hear trace amounts of guitar and keyboard 2. I thought we were doing ok, but I heard comments from other band members that it did not go well. I know that I personally played a lot better for this show than I did on Halloween. Last Saturday I was so burned out by the time we got on stage, my only hope was to get home. The 10 High is much more comfortable to me. That said, it's still pretty intense, similar to recording (and trying not to screw up the end of a good take). The difference is that this take lasts thirty-seven minutes!
We came back from the break and played our usual Yacht Rock stuff. The first couple of songs were sung by Kevin Spencer, who will be subbing with us the next two Thursdays. He sang Africa, Rich Girl, and Reminiscing. Not bad, but his voice is very different from Nick's. Nick has more grit to it; Kevin's voice is more of a clear Broadway kind of thing.
I got off a couple of pretty good solos last night: Lowdown, Reminiscing, I Can't Go For That, and Lady in my Life all felt solid. We'll see if the recording backs me up. Towards the end of the night, we all started screwing around I took a couple of EWI/bari solos. The recordings of that should be interesting.

Last thing...Adam Mewherter has passed away.
He was one of a kind. I met Adam when I started playing around town years ago--we both played some for William Noll. We hung out a little; he played a gig with Platnumb in Dallas, and we hung out for an entire afternoon, just walking around and talking. Adam was an extremely nice guy, and a very good trombonist who played with a lot of personality. We will all miss him dearly.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Yacht Rock Christmas

Yacht Rock is doing another Christmas song, and last night was my turn to go in the studio and lay down a solo--this time on EWI. It took a while (with everybody sitting there waiting on me), but we finally got something useable out of it.

Nick and Pete went in afterwards and sang the hell out of it. It sounds really good.

Mark Dannells recorded his guitar tracks at home. The solo he came up with is AWESOME! It's perfect! I wish I could do something that good. It's so slick and it's so logical, but it still sounds like he's going for it. That's not an easy combination. He nailed it.

It's funny with these recordings...when we start, it's hard for me to hear if everything's going to work, and at some point I can finally hear enough of the finished product that it makes sense. We're taking a Christmas song and blending it with a well known Yacht Rock song, and I am impressed by the ability to forecast the final version.

We received pictures from the gig we played last Wednesday. Here's one. I'm going to add the others to my website. I sprinkled the three pictures in, but not on the gallery page. Hunt around at the bottom of the other pages to find them.

Thriller is making an encore appearance tonight at the 10 High. Come check it out if you missed it last weekend.

www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Halloween and Beyond

It's been a few days since I last checked in.

Yacht Rock made it through Thriller with no problems. Well...there were problems, but not of the band variety. Hosts of the party Spiral Entertainment oversold the venue by 1,200 people, and then tried to figure out how all those people would be able to hear us play Thriller, and then decided that it was not a concert and if everybody couldn't hear the band that was ok, which is funny because they had originally booked the event at Center Stage, a concert venue.
I didn't have much to do in Thriller, which was good because about halfway into the first song I noticed the red light flashing on my wireless MIDI transmitter. Miraculously, I was able to limp through the gig by turning it off every chance I got.
We ended up playing the album downstairs on the patio, and then we moved through the throng upstairs to the room upstairs to play two sets of Yacht Rock. It was a poor moment for me to lose my earplugs. I ended up stationed behind the bass amp, and I would crawl up onto the drum riser for solos. Bad luck would have it that I didn't have much to do in either of these sets--I played saxophone once in each set, plus flute on Lowdown. Other than that, it was mostly synth parts.

Sunday was a day of recovery. I played my church gig that night, and that was about it.

Yesterday (Monday), was back to normal teaching. Nothing much to say about that.

Check out this New York Times article about cool wedding bands.