David Freeman Music

I managed to survive another crazy weekend, and there are only a few days at home before I'm gone again. Friday:   Yacht Rock returned to Nashville.  We've been selling out the Mercy Lounge the past couple of times, so we moved downstairs to the larger part of the venue:  the Cannery Ballroom (the Mercy is about the size of Smith's Olde Bar, and the Cannery is about the size of the Variety Playhouse).  Cool.  We loaded in, set up, soundchecked…usual stuff.  Definitely a bigger, better stage.  The room is L shaped. Before the gig, we ate at a Thai food truck around the corner.  I had the red curry with pork.  Very good.  I could have eaten two. The gig went pretty well.  We played I Keep Forgetting , one of my faves, and we went through a string of fun sax features ( Whatever Gets You Through the Night, Your Mama Don't Dance, Careless Whisper, and Baker Street ).  The crowd was pretty into it.  Coming ...

The Yacht Rock Revue played a gig for CREW (commercial real estate women).  It was a party for their thirtieth anniversary.  So...how about a party on a Thursday night? I think they set some kind of record for use of the word "empowerment."  Definitely the word of the gig.  For most of the women at the party, it probably meant professional success.  For a few, however, it was license to be a pushy, egotistical bitch.  We had a couple of women--one who almost flipped out because we wouldn't let her play tambourine, and one who was sure she could make the party better by joining us on stage for a song (to sing I Will Survive , of all things--empowerment!).  They were so relentless in bothering us, it pretty much ruined the gig for us. To make matters worse, we had a moron running sound.  I don't think we made it through a single song without a microphone feeding back. We did our fastest load out ever.  Thirty-five minutes after the...

I had a trio gig last night…in Augusta.  I got a call a few weeks ago asking if I was available.  Yes!  Send me the details!  The reply included the times, attire, and the address for the Augusta Country Club.  Boo.  You could've mentioned that. It wasn't a big deal because the gig was really fun.  I guess the client had specifically requested a trio of sax, bass, and drums…weird.   Sonny Rollins fans?   The State of the Tenor ?  Whatever.  It was cool with me.  When I first did jazz gigs as a leader, I did a bunch of these, but it's been many years since then.  I think I played differently--it was hard to not to ear Sonny in my head. This trio had Jeff Williams on bass, and Justin Varnes on drums.  I hadn't seen Justin in a couple of years.  He's playing better than ever.  It was great to catch up with him. The gig finally ended after I got a little out on Ju Ju .  The drunk sunburned guy lo...

This has been a crazy weekend.  I only made it through by sleeping today away (in between church gigs). Friday:  the first big Yacht Rock gig at the Park Tavern this year.  We held the Reagan Rock prom there.  The years before this were held at the Variety Playhouse, and both were pretty colossal efforts in learning songs, scripting the show, doing the decorations (for the record, I never had anything to do with scripting or decorations, but the learning songs part was still really hard!).  This year's event was super easy in comparison;  show up, host the party, have a good time.  Probably the same number of people turned out as previous years, too.  I think we nailed it.  Thanks to everybody for joining us! Everything went well;  I can only think of a couple of bad spots for me--a few butchered chords in I Wanna Dance with Somebody .  My alto felt great--I keep hoping to find a video of me playing more than a few second...

The Yacht Rock Revue played a fundraiser event at the Trolley Barn  last night.  Right off the bat, we were confronted with the "barn attendant" and his decibel meter-- 90 db is the limit in that room.  Go over 90 and the client pays a fine.  Check this out:  if you want to host your event there, you have to put a deposit down to cover the 90 db fine;  the dude checks the SPL during the event, and when you're over the limit, the Trolley Barn keeps your deposit.  Nice scheme.  So…no carpet (hardwood floor), high ceiling, windows, steel beams…great place for a band.  Before we started playing, the crowd was (according to my SPL app) at 75 db. I think we ended up doing the best we could for as long as we could.  It was kind of amusing for a while because everything sounded silly, but we couldn't keep it there forever.  Late in the night, the volume went up a bit, but the dude seemed cool with it.  In fact, I never saw t...

I had a trio gig tonight with Louis Heriveaux (keyboard) and Kevin Smith (bass)--a quick two hour dinner and awards thing.  We were background noise. It was great to have a jazz gig--a chance to to stretch out and really play.  That said, I never got in a groove--it's been a month since I played a jazz gig, and I'm way out of shape.  I tried;  I just couldn't get it going. I guess my one victory was that I played reasonably in tune on soprano tonight.  Big surprise--I put my mouthpiece in the right spot (the place on the cork where I normally end up) and left it there, instead of not trusting myself and pushing the mouthpiece further and further down.  Way to go. Here's the audio from the gig if you'd like to listen:   David Freeman Trio-April 17, 2012 by David B Freeman davidfreemanmusic.net

Not much of a Sunday…once again, I was told not to show for the AM church gig (boooooo).  The PM church gig went pretty well, though I've had it with the sound of the piano in the PA.  It has a Barcus Berry pickup --sounds like crap!  I think it's time to experiment.  At the very least, I'm going to put a dynamic mic in one of the holes inside.  The pickup has no beef to it!  The church has a really great sounding grand piano, and the pickup makes it sound like it's mic'ed with a 57 on the ground 10 feet away. As far as playing goes, I did kind of go nuts on one song last night.  The harmony made sense and I knew it was in three, but as soon as I started playing, I kind of lost my place, which I think worked out OK.  I got a little wild in kind of a Branford way, and once I was out there I just kept going.  Somehow, the vocals came back in, but I couldn't get out of what I was doing.  I just kept going over the top of them until the so...