David Freeman Music

my view of Mark Cobb Wooo!  The final Yacht Rock performance at the 10 High was fueled by Mark Cobb last night.  What a ride!  From the first note, he was pushing the band along with the kind of musical aggression I love.  I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed playing last night.  It was superb.  I think the entire band responds to the drummer, and after several gigs of mellow, we really came out and attacked. The room was as full as last week (which is to say, really crowded!  I couldn't get across the room on break).  I suppose all these people just started partying a day early.  They were well behaved, and seemed to be paying attention to what we were doing (which is nice);  not a lot of shouting out songs not on the set list.  The women directly in front of me slowly progressed from having fun to black out drunk, but they made it all the way to the end (and didn't steal my pea coat, which I'd left on the speaker betw...

I played my two church gigs yesterday. The first one was pretty much just another shot at the stuff we did Christmas Eve, so that was fairly easy, though we did add God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen (with a sax solo) in kind of a rockabilly style.  It's always funny to me when somebody says "we'll do it 'big band' style"--I know right then that it will be NOTHING like a big band.  I think they're trying to describe that the eighths will not be even, but it will not be a shuffle, and it will not swing.  If a guitar player says it, he's probably referring to the "big bands" like the Squirrel Nut Zippers . This time it was doubly funny because the drummer had no idea what to do with either style (big band or rockabilly).  Nice enough guy, but the drumming part is not happening.  Also, kind of annoying how he demonstrated his commitment to the drums by carrying a drum pad and sticks with him on break so he could mindlessly bang on it.  We needed s...

What a weekend!  I did a bunch of church gigs over the Christmas holidays. The first couple of gigs were mainly flute (and a little soprano) at a church I used to play at.  They brought me in to help cover some of the extra services they were having.  It was super easy, and a lot of fun.  Most of the songs were Christmas carols, and most of the people I played with old friends (other than the douchebag pianist who mistakenly thought it really funny to mimic my flute warm ups).  So yeah, it was cool.  We laughed a lot. The third Christmas Eve gig was at my usual first gig on Sundays.  That one was fun, too, though a little annoying that they had us show up an hour and fifteen minutes early, and then we mostly stood around until the service began.  At one point, they turned out all the lights and everybody held candles--I was thinking, "This would be a great picture for my blog!" but I didn't take it.  It was pretty cool, though. I was su...

Weird.  I thought nobody would turn up at the 10 High.  I thought it'd be really dead and we'd play one set and go home, or we'd all trade instruments or something, but instead it was more packed than it has been in months!  I guess the "nobody has to go to work tomorrow" argument won. It was kind of a strange gig.  Nick, Pete, and Cobb were out, so we had Ganesh on drums, Greg on lead vocals, Vanessa on Pete's vocals, and Danni on bass.  The ol' switcheroo.  That left me, my man Mark Dannells, and the Great Bencuya to hold it down. It's an entirely different thing when Greg fronts the band.  With a different line up (say Kevin Spencer and Ganesh), there's an effort to kind of stay in the same zone as the regular guys.  Greg kind of takes it and says "I'm driving!", and away we go.  It's fun because he puts his own stamp on it. The set list had about a million songs on it.  We burn through tunes a lot quicker with subs bec...

Not much going on…it's vacation! Here's a video I made earlier in the week.  It's the first two pages of the Creston Sonata (Op. 19) for Eb Alto Saxophone and Piano .  I played this sucker in high school, but it still kicks my butt. davidfreemanmusic.net

It's been a while since I've blogged.  My apologies--vacation has (kind of) started! Rewind: Thursday:  I played two gigs. The first gig was a little trio gig at Dolce in Atlantic Station with Louis Heriveaux (keyboard) and Kevin Smith (bass).  It was a nice little gig--they had us separated from the crowd, up on an elevated floor behind the bar, which meant that we wouldn't be competing with them to hear ourselves.  I'll admit, it also makes for a better recording!  There was a clear half-wall in front of us, which helped as well. The crowd was bussed in.  They were expecting four or five hundred people (according to the contract I had), but maybe one hundred fifty turned up on a cold, rainy night.  Most of them sat down, ate, and left!  There must have been a club or something upstairs.  Anyway, two hours into a three hour gig, the bar started shutting down.  Two and a half hours into the gig I was on ...

Yacht Rock played a holiday party for Turner Sports yesterday in Centennial Olympic Park, next to the ice skating rink.  I was really worried about the weather--yesterday was one of the coldest days in Atlanta (I think we tied the record low for December 14).  Not only does my equipment not fare well in the cold, but my hands and feet hurt when it gets like this. We were in a tent (with sides) and heaters, so it wasn't too bad, though if they'd closed a few more of the flaps it would have been more comfortable.  The sound guys had the flap on their side open--why?--but it happened to be on Bencuya's side, so that was ok with me! We got dressed in the shed where they keep lawnmowers and stuff… The gig itself was super easy.  Because of the cold, nobody showed up!  They were expecting five hundred people, but Nick estimated only about one hundred fifty turned up.  We started a little late (waiting for the tent to fill up), and ended a little early. ...