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.

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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.

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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.

The Blahs

I was really flat last night. Not flat pitch-wise, but just flat energy-wise. It was really hard to get in a groove last night.

Thriller is tonight. It's sold out (actually over-sold by the promoters). It should be fun. I'll be glad to finish it.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com

"It's all free throws"

One of our regular Yacht Rock fans was so pumped by our performance of a few Michael Jackson songs last night, he told us "it's all free throws now!" to which Nick replied, "What if we're Shaq?"

Last night was a strange one. We had two keyboardists on deck, so I was mostly just playing saxophone solos, as well as a handful of minor synth parts. I was also back in the corner of the stage, so most of what I heard was Mark Bencuya's keyboards, bass, and drums. It's a much different sound than the other side of the stage.
A couple of the guys had off nights, and it affected the vibe on stage more than just "oops." Also, Nick is worried that he might have picked up a cold. He had a doctor's appointment this morning to try and see if he could hold off the plague until Sunday!
Bencuya threw the synth solo for Love Will Keep Us Together at me. It's been a while since I've played that one. I did ok wandering through it, but I didn't get it note for note. Also, Bielenberg didn't know the string part for Don't Go Breakin' my Heart, so I got to go over there and play it on his keyboard (when he finally got out of the way at the end of the first verse!). He has a Roland Fantom. It's really nice! The keys have slightly more weight than my Triton. There's more of a solid feel to what I was playing. Bencuya has one too.
Not much else to report. I tried to study what Bencuya was playing. When I'm the other keyboardist, I need to be familiar with what he's doing, and I can't always hear him clearly. I learned some more stuff last night. He's still awesome, by the way.

I added a new page to my website: equipment! I even included a cell phone picture someone took of me last night.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Wednesday Yachting

Yacht Rock played a "blender" for Juice Studios Wednesday night at Magnolia Hall in Piedmont Park. It was a pretty low key affair--mostly people mingling and networking. We were the band on the other end of the room. It was a really easy gig. No problems (though I think we were all pretty underwhelmed by the sound company). I was standing next to the mains while soloing at the end of Reminiscing, and I checked after the song to see if my microphone was on. It was like that.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com

Backun Barrel

I upgraded my clarinet yesterday by buying a better barrel for it. It's a ringless Backun barrel. I wasn't looking to change my sound as much as I was trying to expand it, and the better barrel did just that.

I ordered four barrels to try--two by Clark Fobes and two by Backun. I tried the Fobes barrels first and then the Backuns. It was nice, nice, yeah, WOW! This one really seemed to make my clarinet go. I can get more air into it, and yet there's less back pressure. Just what I was looking for.

I'm off on a four day cruise (Yacht Rock).
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Yacht Rock on Ice

Yacht Rock played an event for the University of Virginia alumni last night. Outside. In the cold. In a tent with almost no sides.

We thought we would die. We were sure we would freeze and be left to die in the cold at the horse farm in Buckhead.

But no! Although I did sit in my truck with the heat running for an hour before the gig started, we were ok once we got up and moving. The first couple of songs I was blowing on my hands, but beyond that we might as well have been indoors.

A couple of cold weather problems...both saxophones were pushed in about a quarter inch past usual. Other than that, they felt good. I had no trouble with reeds, and once I got the mouthpiece in the right place, the pitch across the horn was not as way out as I thought it would have been. Even the flute (pushed all the way in) felt normal.
The display on one of my keyboards was very slow in changing. The keyboard itself was fine, but the display lagged behind. Weird.

Kip Conner (soundman for Shawn Mullins) ran sound for us tonight. It was really nice. He did a great job of bumping solos up last night. It you were in Buckhead last night, you probably heard me. I was that loud. It was great.

Ganesh sang with us (Nick was out of town). He did a great job.

Mark Cobb played well. He used his small kit, and he played the hell out of it. I played keyboard facing him. It was fun to watch. I think he set a personal record for "Pat Boone Debbie Boone" on a gig.

Mark Bencuya quoted Rhapsody in Blue in Hey Nineteen, I quoted The Hustle in Lowdown and Baker Street in I Can't Go for That, and Mark Dannells quoted Black Dog in the second solo of Peg.

I played keyboards as well as my usual stuff. No problems to report, other than a wrong chord I played twice (geez! twice?!) in Reminscing. Should have been GMaj7, but I played Bb9 twice. Sorry.

Big week ahead. Thriller as well as some regular Yacht Rock gigs. It will be good, but I will be sleeping next Sunday.
www.davidfreemanmusic.com