David Freeman Music

Thursday: We drove up to Asheville from Atlanta for our show that evening at the Orange Peel. Remember that first time we played the Orange Peel back in the summer of 2012? ( it's right here ). Still pretty great to play here; big stage, big fan, big room. And hello! Back to the Indian food! There was a place around a half a mile away, so I went for it...and then the rain came, and I got wet. The food was really good, and even though the waitress wouldn't let me order what I wanted (telling me it was too spicy...but how can I find out if I can handle it if you won't let me try it?), I got over that. I was sincerely pissed for a while, though. Their stuff is definitely spicier than average, so...ok. potatoes and cauliflower = aloo gobi photo by The Kippen Conner Asheville! Sold out. It was kind of boomy, and 1,050 people are pretty noisy, but it was a fun first show of the run. Man, it was hot, though. The feeble air conditioner just couldn't keep up. We...

Friday: Yacht Rock traveled up to Nashville for a show at Marathon Music Works, a venue that I was excited to see. We've been searching for a better room to play for quite some time, and this looked to be a winner--good size (1500 capacity), big stage, nice green rooms. Post-soundcheck, I walked a couple of blocks over to a vegan place called Vege-licious, which was a weird whole-in-the-wall kind of place behind another shop. I had a vegan Hot Chicken Sandwich and roasted potatoes. Excellent! Very spicy (also, a near-lethal amount of sodium). Still, it was nice to try something different. I still had plenty of time after eating to go back and warm up, and hang in the really nice backstage area (apparently the owners of Exit/In also own Marathon Music Works, so there's lots of memorabilia here). On to the gig! Yay! Big crowd, good vibes. This is definitely the best place we've played in Nashville.  We were told that the guy who owns this place als...

I got a last minute call/text to sub in the bari sax chair for Bumpin' the Mango's regular Monday night gig at Cafe 290. Sure, of course. I got the set list early enough that I was able to go over everything once before heading to the gig. Weird gig. First of all, I was not the only sub, and it sounded like they were all pretty last minute--both saxes (Luke Weathington and me), one trumpet (Rob Opitz), and the guitar (Grant Reynolds) were all doing our best on short notice. Secondly, early in the second set a woman passed out in the back of the room, so we paused to ask if there was a doctor in the house. No? The paramedics were called, and the band played on! Once they arrived, we did take a short break while they loaded her on a stretcher and carried her out, and then...here's an original called Cold Drink (Shots!) ! Not even ten minutes after the ambulance had left, there were flashing lights again, this time because the apartments across the street were possibly on fi...

As the title says...non-Yacht Rock stuff this week. Also, no Steve Gadd. Thursday: I played with the Atlanta Latin Jazz Orchestra this week down by Georgia Tech (4th Street and West Peachtree) on a private gig for the opening of a building. I was kind of stressed out about this one, mostly because Rob had scheduled three sets of potential tunes and I hadn't found much time to prepare (and the music is hard). I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of work on it last week in San Francisco, but really, I just wasn't as ready as I'd like to be. Fortunately (?), the gig had some really loose scheduling--like two thirty minutes sets with thirty minute breaks--and then an incredibly isolated rain cloud soaked the stage and killed our final set. Kind of a bummer, though--I really do enjoy playing with this band. Saturday: After forty-eight hours of of desperately trying to get my flute chops back in shape after this week of bari playing, I was down at my church gig fo...

...and just like that, we're back on the road! As noted in the previous post, we flew home from Houston Sunday morning, and we were back at the airport Monday evening, this time headed to California.  I tried to watch Green Book , but after about an hour, it felt so predictable that I had to give up on it. Tulsa, Oklahoma The next movie I tried was The Thin Red Line , which I was forced to watch for an hour because my screen froze and I couldn't turn it off. I didn't make it through more than forty-five minutes of this one. Several hours later, we landed in Sacramento. Tuesday: Our man Hans, who drove the gear from Colorado to California, flew back to Atlanta. shitty hotel coffee in the parking lot After a good night's sleep, we had much of Tuesday to kill before the show, so I went for a run around town. Sacramento has a nice path along the river, which is sadly also a campground for the local homeless. Old Sacramento disp...