David Freeman Music

Greetings! The music making continues to creep along through January. Here's what I've been up to. Two weeks ago, Yacht Rock reconvened on stage at the Roxy to record our Valentine's Day Prom show. This one leaned into the 80s a bit more than we might normally go, and it was fun to play some different songs...hell, it was fun just to play a show with a band! Also check out the light show that James did! This is from soundcheck. The disco ball was used to great effect.   Speaking of playing some different music:  we're coming up on the one year anniversary of the release of Hot Dads in Tight Jeans , so we got together last week and recorded a show of us playing the entire album. Only about half the songs have ever been played live, so it was a fun challenge to learn the other songs, walk in, sit down, and play them with the same intent that we give to Step  and Bad Tequila.  The keyboard "division of labor" (dividing up the multitude of parts on the album) nece...

It's been the slowest, weirdest December in my lifetime. Oddly enough, though, I did get several calls for gigs, but almost all of them sounded like bad ideas--a jazz duo (yes!), but in somebody's living room with twenty-five people in attendance (hell no!).  Who's taking a gig like that right now, but also, who's putting together parties like that right now? I declined all of those, reminding myself that it would not be worth it to possibly infect anyone in my family for $200.  Last Sunday afternoon, I did take an outdoor jazz gig in College Park that was a lot of fun. Louis Heriveaux, Tommy Sauter, and Ben Johnson joined me for a neighborhood Christmas party in somebody's yard. Great fun with a few old friends! Louis wanted to know if I still hated Christmas tunes--it made me think about it, and I guess my problem is that on these gigs, people want you to politely play everything on Charlie Brown Christmas. I, on the other hand, am usually so excited to be playing...

Saturday afternoon, I began making a video as part of the #GeorgiaOnMyMind campaign to encourage voting in Georgia's upcoming election for the Senate. I wrote the arrangement in an hour or two. My game plan: 1. Feature the different saxophones at different times. The alto has the melody in the first eight measures; the bari has it on the bridge; and the tenor has it for the last eight. 2. Have some sort of big band soli thing where all the voices move with the melody. This is the second eight measures. 3. Lots of rhythm in the supporting voices! I didn't want it to die with a bunch of whole notes under the lead line. Here's page one of my chart. On to recording it! One of my quarantine projects has been to try and transition my recording software from Garageband to Logic. I have enough knowledge to know what I'm trying to accomplish, but finding the corresponding button to push in Logic sometimes takes a while.  The other hurdle on this particular night was transpositio...

 The latest 2020 Yacht Rock gig was at the Porsche Experience down by the Atlanta airport, playing three songs for...something...for Porsche. At this point, I don't remember. I think it was something about maybe trying to get people to come check it out, so they used local bands to highlight it. The setting was pretty cool with the track behind us and the planes passing by, and the weather and the daylight were perfect. We played each of the songs twice for different camera angles-- Ride Like the Wind, Hold the Line, and Running on Empty . Easy gig! Didn't even play any saxophone.

 Sooooo...this shit continues with no end in sight.  There hasn't been much to write about over the past month or two. Outside of a few potential gigs that never materialized, my performances have been limited to recording a few "livestream" concerts with the Yacht Rock Revue. No one seems to mind that they're not actually live, and it allows our team to edit everything into a better performance. From our side of the production, it's definitely strange; the feeling is much closer to a rehearsal than a show, and it's difficult to overcome the reality that we're playing to an empty room. We're doing it, though. It's all we've got at the moment. A few weeks ago, we played a corporate convention in Oklahoma City, and it too was a livestream. It was set up more or less as a television show, with several "sets" in different ballrooms.  On the first night, we set up our gear, sound checked, ate, and waited on a rehearsal that never happened....

Another gig! This time, we flew to Denver to play an outdoor, socially distanced show at an amphitheater.  The flight was reeeeaaaaaalllly early--8:15 AM takeoff, which put us in Denver at 9:30 or something. Brutal! My schedule as of late has been nowhere close to this. Anyway, the van picked us up. Our first stop was a dispensary. Legal weed! Woo! I...stayed outside. Not my thing. From there, we drove to the city of Castle Rock, where the gig was happening, and would you believe they had an Indian restaurant! I haven't had Indian food since March, so this was a treat. I did eat indoors, which made me a little nervous, but the place was almost empty (one other table in use), so I risked it. Aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower). The amphitheater where we played was at a complex built in a valley. There was zip lining, an obstacle course, a soccer field, mountain bike trails, and a playground. Pretty cool. We were early for setting up gear, so I went for a little run around the trail...

Another pandemic road trip! This time, Yacht Rock headed up to Cape Cod to play another drive-in show. Lots of space on the plane to Boston. I am thankful that Delta isn't putting people in the middle seat these days. Keisha went all the way across from me to maximize the distance. Also, I am pleased to report that my mask did not affect my ability to fall asleep! The guys and the gear met us at the airport and took us to the nearest Chipotle. Then, onward to Cape Cod! Sooooo, here we go. A true drive in theater in Yarmouth, Massachusetts. Cars drive in, take their parking spots, and tune their radios to a particular frequency in order to hear the band. No PA stacked along the stage, no amps on stage. Without a radio, all you would hear is drums, a little bit of singing, and the occasional saxophone. How was the gig? Pretty good, all things considered. We recently played a few recorded shows for private events, and those were much more of a grind. This felt a lot closer to a normal...