David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock played a private event at the Tabernacle last night.  I've done a few private/corporate gigs  there, and I guess it's just where I'm at that this show wasn't nearly as big a deal as the previous ones.  I remember that the first couple of times, the room was huge and the stage was huge--it was like Madison Square Garden to me.  Now, it feels about right for us.  A neat place to play a show, for sure. We played a good gig, though it took me almost an hour to finally get comfortable with the stage sound.  The room is pretty boomy and loud, and I kept messing with my stage volume until I found the right spot.  Once I got there, everything was cool. We're headed out TODAY!  Upcoming gigs: January 10, Jefferson Theatre (Charlottesville, VA) January 12, Maryland Live! Casino (Hanover, MD) January 13, Orange Peel (Asheville, NC) January 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA) January 24, Lincoln Theatre (Raleigh, NC) Ja...

Sunday was the usual AM/PM church gig day. The AM service was pretty thrown together, though we did play a very cool tune that had Stevie Wonder kind of changes…Ab, Db/Ab, AbMaj7/C, Db, Gb13, Fm7, Bbm7, Db/Eb for the verse.  Very hip! The PM service was decent.  My mix was pretty good and my tuning was pretty good.  I didn't play anything memorable, though I my attention was divided between the gig and monitoring the football game on my phone. Yacht Rock is headed out this week, with upcoming gigs in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina.  Plus, we're sort of gearing up for another big show at the Variety Playhouse .  Here we are doing the beginning of Dark Side of the Moon . Upcoming shows! January 10, Jefferson Theatre (Charlottesville, VA) January 12, Maryland Live! Casino (Hanover, MD) January 13, Orange Peel (Asheville, NC) January 19, Variety Playhouse (Atlanta, GA) January 24, Lincoln Theatre (Raleigh, NC) January 25, Visualite T...

My trio (with Kenny Banks Jr on keyboard and Kevin Smith on bass) played a corporate reception Saturday night at the Aquarium.  The usual stuff…background music.  With the exception of the first tune, we played my originals. I'd never played with Kenny  before.  Very cool!  I played at a jam session with his dad years ago when he first moved to town from Ohio.  Faced with the difficult task of sight-reading all night, he fared well.  We had a great time.  You can also hear him on Darryl Reeves' newest CD, titled Mercury . Here's the audio from our gig : davidfreemanmusic.net

Yacht Rock closed out 2012 with one last near-riot of a gig at the Park Tavern.  Everything you'd expect from 1,804 drunk people.  It's always amusing for a minute:  girls crying, guys trying live up to being the biggest douchebags ever.  Then they're just people in the way while I'm trying to load out.  The Park Tavern is a great place to play and the fans are pretty incredible, but I think it's time to invest in some security people to keep everything cool. The gig itself was pretty great--we had a good time and everybody played well.  I had (I think) the best solos I've ever played on Reminiscing, LA Lindsay, and  Good Thing .  I was feelin' it! We finished at 12:15 AM.  Yay!  I was home an hour and a half later.  Not too bad. 2013 looks good…here are upcoming public shows with Yacht Rock: January 10, Jefferson Theatre (Charlottesville, VA) January 12, Maryland Live! Casino (Hanover, MD) January 13, Or...

My AM church gig didn't happen…they were reinstalling the carpet in the sanctuary.  The current carpet was "defective." My PM church gig included the service before ours--a doubleheader.  Nice.  Two shots at everything. Not much to report playing-wise.  Evidently, the church is trying to save money by not turning on the heat (thank you busty coed in the third row for reminding me of our chilly situation for an hour).  Yesssssssss.  The cold made tuning difficult--every time I picked up a horn, it was ice cold and twenty cents flat.  Nooooooo. davidfreemanmusic.net

I played two Christmas services at the church where I play my PM services, both in the parish hall/deadest room on the planet.  It's the one with the band in the little nook off the main room, and the band plugs into the wall and the sound comes through speakers in the ceiling. Both services were fine, but in the second one, I started playing around with the reverbs on the mixer, especially with the "cathedral" sounding one.  In one song, I had one of the vocalists at a normal reverb level and the other (who was singing a counter line) totally wet, and the piano somewhere in the middle.  As vocal one gradually made her way to the same part as vocalist two ( Silent Night ), I washed her and the piano out, too.  The song eventually distilled down to the two vocals.  It sounded great in my headphones.  I was pretty happy with myself, even if no one else in the room noticed it.  Dan ( Lanois , of course) would've been proud of me. davidfreemanmusic.net...

Yacht Rock returned yesterday (Sunday) from a couple of holiday shows in Nashville. Friday:  we played a private party at The Bridge Building , just across the river from downtown.  Super cool venue that's only been open for a couple of weeks. The room where we played was an acoustical nightmare.  We were surrounded by floor to ceiling windows in a two story box with exposed I-beams and a concrete floor.  Needless to say, it was loud and washy.  Looked great, sounded not so great. The attendees made this gig look like a Carrie Underwood look alike contest.  What do they put in the water to make all of the women blonde? Speaking of which, this gig created a new rule for me, effective immediately:  NOT UNLESS SHE'S TOPLESS.  Some dude requested Hey 19 , and we obliged him.  While we were playing, he then tried repeatedly to get his date to get on stage and stand next to me while I was playing for a picture, like I'm the...