David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock played the Sundance Film Festival in Utah last Saturday. It was a loooooooong day, faaaaaaaaar away, and I was tiiiiiiiiiiiiired when it finally ended. Got on a plane in Atlanta around noon... Watched all of Mission Impossible: Fallout  and half of Gone Girl.   Mission Impossible  was pretty good. Gone Girl was kind of slow at the beginning. Nice views.  Landed in Salt Lake City three and a half hours later. Got in a van and rode forty-five minutes out of town with our driver dude, who talked to Zach for the whole ride about things like "totally shredding the gnar." We might have egged the conversation on a little, too (brah). Got to Park City, dumped our bags, and hung out around all of these people who were working/networking/being seen/hanging out. We also ate a bunch of food, and then they brought us the food we had ordered, and we were too full to eat that too.  More hanging out. Someone brought a dog (Eckie) to t...

This week was our first intense week of gigs for 2019. Monday was the first day of recording some originals, Tuesday was a gig in Indianapolis, Wednesday was another studio day, Thursday was a gig in Florida, and Friday and Saturday were both back in Atlanta at Venkman's. Monday: We have begun a new project, recording an album's worth of original songs. Day one of recording involved a lot of checking to make sure everything was making sound, balancing mixes, and later in the day, some recording. I haven't been involved in any of this; I spent the day as a spectator. The song that the guys recorded today will eventually have string and horn parts, which I have mostly written. Once my arrangements are finalized, they'll be added as overdubs. Tuesday: The whole TSA/government shutdown thing cost me some extra sleep, as we decided to play it safe and get to the airport extra early for our flight to Indiana. The traffic on the interstate ended up being more of an ...

Yacht Rock played the Georgia Theatre in Athens last Saturday night, a sold out show without the drunken football madness. We managed to sell it out for either the third or fourth time. It was good to get back on the horse, gig-wise. My brain didn't start to crumble until the last four or five songs--all of the sudden, I was missing parts and playing string lines that were a fourth away from where they were supposed to be in All Night Long . Raspberry Beret  was ok, but then I crashed through most of I'm So Excited , and then snapped back to normal. In other news, I almost got I Just Wanna Stop  completely right. That string part is tough.

Yacht Rock played a weird corporate gig in downtown Atlanta Wednesday afternoon. It felt like a concert in the food court at a mall. Surprisingly, the monitor mix sounded really good, but the vibe was pretty lame. Home by 9:30 PM. Not bad.

I was thinking about it the other night--this is my twenty-fourth consecutive New Year's Eve gig. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I guess that if I didn't have a gig:  1. I'd be incredibly jealous of everybody who was working when I was sitting home; 2. probably not do anything different than I usually do--practice and stay up late poking around on the internet. So yeah, I'll take the gig and the money. Yacht Rock was back at Park Tavern again, where we've played the overwhelming majority of NYE gigs. There's nothing great to say about this one, but it was pretty easy, and it was over by around 12:15 AM. Our gear was even loaded in and out for us. Not a bad night.

Things have slowed waaaaaaaay down since mid December, but I did play a few more gigs here and there. My church gig continues to chug along, and because Christmas Eve was during the week, I got an extra service out of it. I also got a call to play two services after that with some friends at another church, so three on the night, which was pretty cool. All on flute, which was good...and tiring! I made the mistake of doing a normal day's worth of practicing at home, then playing all the prelude Christmas carols, and then playing the mass, so by the second service, my face was starting to get pretty fried. I recovered by midnight mass, but if this happens again, I guess I have to either play more leading up to the big day, or play less and literally save face! On the Friday after Christmas, the Yacht Rock Revue played a show at the Alabama Theatre in Birmingham. What a beautiful place! Lots of places to explore... It's a really cool building--kind of rem...

This week of December is usually one of the busiest of the year, with Saturday usually being the pinnacle. There's even a term for this--#gigmas--which is slung around social media. In Atlanta, it seems to be a favorite of trumpet players, but my quick search of the internet indicates that it is also shared with oboists. Interesting. Anyway, beyond this date (this year it's the 15th), the calendar slows down for most musicians. For us at Yacht Rock, we were fortunate to have two mid week gigs before our big holiday special on the 15th. Tuesday: The Miller Theatre in Augusta. Beautiful room, easy load in, multiple dressing rooms, great acoustics. We played some sort of fundraiser that was not particularly well attended. Still, what a great room! I would love to come back here for a regular Yacht Rock show. Excellent on all counts. Thursday: Stamford, Connecticut. We had an early flight--9:40 AM--which meant that the carpool meet up was at 7:45, which meant tha...