David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock played a Friday night wedding on the west side of Atlanta at some event space called Summerour .  Not a bad room by any means, but it was kind of a strange location for a wedding--kind of tucked behind Ikea. The gig went really well.  We were discussing last night maybe recording some of our weddings, since we tend to play them with a bit more control than some of our live shows.  I agree.  This one was fun and sounded good, and we were spaced far apart on stage that I could hear and nothing was too loud. The first dance for this one was Just the Way You Are .  I decided to tackle the solo on alto--I'd figured it out on tenor while playing in another band, but never tried it on the smaller horn.  It went ok;  my earlier attempts (at soundcheck) were a bit more accurate.  My pitch is not too good, either.  I wonder if I'm getting more sensitive to intonation, or getting more out of tune?   Just the Way You Are sax so...

A friend of my wife's called from Coke a couple of weeks ago and booked my trio for a lunchtime gig at the world headquarters on North Avenue.  "What's this for?" I asked.  "Think of it as a random act of kindness" he said (for me or for Coke?).  They gave us a corner of the cafeteria, two hours, and a check.  Can't beat that! I am here to say that there's no vibe in a cafeteria.  Our gig was a little flat, I thought.  Too early in the day and too many florescent bulbs.  Here's the audio…check it out: Thursday night was Yacht Rock at the 10 High.  It was funny, but not much fun. Here's some videos from last week's Park Tavern show: davidfreemanmusic.net

Yacht Rock got up early/stayed up late to play on the CBS Better Mornings Atlanta show yesterday.  We loaded in at 3 AM, set up, and played a couple of times between 5 and 7 AM.  I stayed up. I think we played better this time than last time.  It felt a little more comfortable.  I was also too tired to care.  Our person at the station said they had to remove the videos of us performing because of copyright issues, but they let us do the weather TWICE!  Here's the only one I could find today: http://www.cbsatlanta.com/video?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=6129424 CBS was cool enough to let us stay after the morning show and hold our rehearsal there, so rather than tear down, more to our rehearsal space, set up again, and play for an hour, we just blew through the things we need for this weekend and we were done. I was so tired I nearly fell asleep while driving home.  I got home and ran to bed. Big show this weekend...

Here I am, parked at my computer at 1:22 AM Monday morning…my alarm is set to "wake me up" at 2 AM so I can drink some coffee and head to CBS to play with Yacht Rock this morning--promoting our big Revival this weekend.  If you're up, we're playing some time between 5 and 6 AM, and then again between 6 and 7 AM. Church gig number one today was pretty easy.  I showed up about five minutes earlier than usual and there was no one there!  Kind of freaked me out.  I wondered if maybe I wasn't supposed to be there. The gig was waaaaaaaaay easier than the previous week.  Almost every chart was a one-pager.  Ahhh.  No big deal. I played my back up tenor.  It's not the same!  It's funny how the notes seem more locked in on this horn--the way a trumpet player would describe the notes as "slotting well."  On my horn, everything seems like "this note, this note, this note."  I'll probably get used to it and it feel normal in a few day...

I have sweated profusely on more gigs this summer than any other summer of my career.  It seems like all the gigs are un-air conditioned/outside (to which I pose the question:  why are we EVER playing outside in the summer?) or the venue is always hot and stinky (10 High), or the load in difficult and in direct sunlight in the middle of the afternoon. Every week has another hot and sweaty gig.  Hydrate or die. Thursday night …about what you've probably come to expect if you read this blog with any regularity.  The first set was pretty decent/solid.  The crowd was extremely ambivalent about what we were doing.  I played pretty well, except my tenor stuff.  Since last week, I've been thinking that my playing was going to hell--everything in the left hand seemed to choke when I would really push it.  I thought that maybe I was doing something with my tongue position that was changing the airstream, or my reeds were going soft, or something…anyway,...

Thursday:   Yacht Rock Revue at the 10 High.  It was an ok night;  I can't remember anything specifically about the way we played at this point.  I mean, the set lists came out a few hours before the gig, so I didn't even do any preparation.  We played Lonely Boy .  I remember that.  Mark Cobb came by and sat in on Biggest Part of Me . Thursday night was the last night in Atlanta for our merchandising genius, Gina Niespodziani .  She's taking her vast talents to New York City.  Someone as creative as her will do very well there, I think.  Great ideas are always pouring out of her.  You can check out some really hip examples of her work on her website  and see some of the Yacht Rock stuff she made here .  We're gonna miss her. Friday:  I traveled to Macon with the Yacht Rock Schooner for some kind of semi-private gig.  We played at the old Armory.  Neat building, neat room.  Acoustically unatt...

I did a House Live gig at the Georgia Aquarium last night.  It's been a while…Wayne dubbed it our reunion tour! As usual, it was a super easy gig.  We played in the Atrium overlooking…the atrium.  I don't know how else to say that.  Party Nation was in the ballroom (great to see my old friends in there:   Steve Cunningham , Maurice White, and Allen Cook ). The entire aquarium was open to the crowd.  It seemed like there were only about four hundred people there altogether, so we probably only played for a hundred and fifty people.  Very sparse.  Check out these pictures, taken DURING the gig!  Nobody out there! They delayed our start by a half hour, so we wandered around for an hour an a half before doors opened. When we left, the gate was up, so free parking to top it off!  Yay for that! davidfreemanmusic.net