David Freeman Music

I dragged myself out of bed this morning and played my church gig.  No gig last night, but I still found enough stuff to keep me up past midnight. Church gig number one was fairly straight forward.  I ended up using every instrument I'd brought-flute, clarinet, soprano, and tenor.  When we were excused for the sermon I was able to carry everything but the  clarinet off stage, so I didn't spend ten minutes packing up afterwards. We had some "road map" issues on one song.  It's funny to me how differently some musicians hear music than others.  In this case, a couple of guys had trouble figuring out how to get to the last page--lots of measure numbers going back and forth--when it seemed obvious to my ears that we were playing the chorus again, and then taking the outro. The other thing that stuck out to me about the morning service was the way the drummer was playing.  He's a college student who probably hasn't played a bunch of gigs at this point...

Yacht Rock played the Taste of Dunwoody last night (Friday).  We did it last year;  I bet we'll play it again next year.  It sold out, and I think we have a lot to do with it.  A good number of our fans turn up, and I know they're not there for the food! The weird thing about this gig is that it was held in the W Hotel, or whatever it's now called --it's the hotel on the north side of Perimeter Mall.  The room is kind of small for a seven piece band, especially when it's lined with vendors trying to talk up their specialty foods.  I'm curious as to why the event is not held at the Crown Plaza at Ravinia across the street, or even at Villa Christina, both of which have significantly larger spaces. The gig itself was pretty good.  Our stash of alcohol was inconveniently located in a room on the tenth floor, so I think everybody stayed pretty sober.  Good thing, too, because the ballroom lighting options were either overhead florescent lights...

Yacht Rock played the 10 High last night (the usual guys except Ganesh in for Pete and Daniel on drums).  Pretty good night!  We did kind of a greatest hits set list because of the subs, but I was much more on it than last week when I couldn't remember anything. We had a big crowd last night--I heard it was a bunch of lobbyists.  They paid, we played.  Some of them had nice chests. Tenor reed=good.  Alto reed=bad.  Therefore, alto reed=dumpster behind the 10 High. davidfreemanmusic.net

Another busy weekend… Thursday:   Yacht Rock was back at our regular gig, the 10 High, for the first time this year!  It was just the way we left it--dark, stinky, and dirty.  Too bad.  We had everybody there except Mark Cobb , who is out on paternity leave.  Daniel Morrison filled in for him.  He was solid. Mark Dannells played really well.  I, on the other hand, just kind of spaced on a lot of stuff.  For instance, we were playing What a Fool Believes for probably the five thousandth time, and I couldn't remember whether I pedal on an F or a Bb, so I guessed (correctly).  I had lots of stuff like that--I felt confused. I'd spent most of the day rebuilding my rack.  UPS was a bit rough in getting it to Miami last week, and broke both rack rails loose.  I took everything out, put new screws in the rails, and put it all back together. I also strapped my power supplies to the power strip in there, since UPS had helped ...

photo courtesy of Julia Wallace As I write this, I can still feel the boat moving, even though I'm at home.  Here's everything I can remember… Thursday:  we got on the boat later than we usually do.  I think, in fact, that most people were already on there--we went straight through registration and hopped aboard.  A late morning flight and a stop for lunch got us there just in time for the lifeboat drill. The rooms were bigger than usual.  We even had room for a couch!   The bathroom had a countertop, which I like a lot better than the usual glass shelf above the sink. We played pretty early on in the cruise--something like 8 PM--on the stage in the Criterion Lounge.  Much bigger stage than the Candlelight, and they gave us an hour to set up and and hour to soundcheck.  I like that.  Sometimes it's a real "throw and go" thing, and there's no time to hear what things sound like until you're into the gig....