David Freeman Music

Dave and I played a brunch at Venkman's, once again jumping on stage immediately after the puppet show ended. Rough gig.  I couldn't get anything going, and I had more than a few mental errors.  Not my best playing.

Thursday was another corporate event--this time, a fundraiser for a recycling center in Atlanta.  Pretty painless, though we did have many familiar faces in the crowd to help us along. The vendor meals came in plastic boxes, the beer was in cans and bottles, the cups were paper, and the water was bottled.  To the best of my knowledge, we recycled none of it.  Not off to a good start. Soundcheck.  Kip demonstrated his singular drum technique. Ready to go. Hanging out between sets. photo cred:  Peter Olson! On the way back to Marietta, I got stuck in a massive traffic jam at I-75 and I-285.  This lane closing, the rain falling on my gear in the back of the truck, my urgent need to pee, and the fact that the "need gasoline" light had come on a while ago called for evasive maneuvers, so I bailed onto 285 to Cobb Parkway.  At least that solved some of my problems.

Woo!  Tuesday night gig! But first, a little bit of gear maintenance:  my Nord (the red keyboard) has been jumping out of the cleats that hold it in place inside the case, so I added some extra foam to the inside of the lid to hopefully hold it down.  I also made two blocks of foam to add to The Great Bencuya's Nord keyboard case.  Hopefully that will keep the keyboards from banging around inside the cases. So...we had a gig at the Aquarium, in the ballroom.  The belugas are doing well. This was another one of those low excitement corporate gigs.  They pay really well, though, so I can only complain so much.  It was weird to me, though, that they used the entire ballroom (which is pretty big), but they only had a couple of hundred people there. As I was dragging my gear out at the end of the night, some dude from the party asked if I was the drummer. "No." "Wait--you play the, uh, skin flute!" (and pantomimed playing the...

Yacht Rock travelled to Birmingham, Alabama for the first time to play a show at Saturn, a really nice room in a gentrified neighborhood on the east side of town. This is a great place to play!  Easy load in, big stage, good size room. To add to the great performance space, there is a large apartment upstairs that serves as the green room, complete with pool table, kitchen, two and a half baths, couches, a record player, and lots of beds.  For a hundred bucks, the band can spend the night there.  Wow! I remember this thing from my childhood, but I don't remember what it did.  Now it's a lamp. We ate around the corner at a restaurant called Wasabi Juan, which was (as you might guess) a sushi and Mexican restaurant.  Total stoner food.  I had some kind of Thai-spring roll-burrito thing, with a chips and salsa as a side.  It was different, but good. The was an entertaining gig.  My only really bad moment was on (ironicall...

A dud of a gig last night for a bunch of doctors.  A couple of sets of us playing while they stood around in the back of the room and talked. nobody on the dance floor for "Power of Love" Highlights: 1.  Easy load in 2.  Monkeyboy's new amp logo (designed by Kip) 3.  Easy load out

Yacht Rock was recruited to close out the ceremonies at Georgia Music Day at the state capital building Wednesday.  I really don't know exactly what the specifics of the day were--as usual, I showed up and did what I was told. photo cred:  Peter Olson We played  Brandy acoustically (acoustic guitars, bas, shaker, saxophone, and a single keyboard), most of us planted in a line on wooden stools.  As we launched into the song, I noticed that everyone except Nick had a microphone.  He strode directly to the podium and performed the entire song like he was delivering a speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  It was amazing.  In a room full of big time music people, Nick laid claim to being the baddest motherfucker in the room.

Yacht Rock ended the weekend with a nice afternoon gig at Park Tavern, part of a food and music festival for 500 Songs for Kids.  It was a really comfortable show, playing for a crowd sprinkled with friends and familiar faces.  On top of that, there were twenty-something restaurants present, and I did my best to eat all the tacos and gumbo available. It was really weird to load out of the Park Tavern when the sun was still up, though.

David Ellington and I played an afternoon duo gig at Oglethorpe University Saturday afternoon.  I'm not sure what the occasion was.  We were background music for some type of reception in the student center (which is beautiful, by the way). Special thanks to the student who, with a mouth full of food, leaned across the organ to tell Ellington we needed to stop at 4:30 so her boss could do something.  He spent the break wiping that off. Also thank you to Mr. Enthusiasm, whose dragging claps on two and four almost brought one tune to a halt.  Later on when he yelled for Mr. Magic  from across the room, I knew we were in trouble, and soon after that when he sat down in front of us a sang Oye Como Va  at full volume while I was soloing, I almost screamed.  I bet your teenage son was really proud of you. Anyway...most of this is really good.  Check it out.

Yacht Rock was back in Athens Friday night, this time for a private party at a country club.  We were there plenty early to set everything up, soundcheck, and eat (we headed out to an excellent Mexican restaurant).  By the time we returned, the audience was pretty drunk and disorderly--lots of really bitchy demands for the hand percussion, people falling onto the stage, people trying to get on stage, one girl swinging a guitar cable like a jump rope while the guitar was being played, and a woman who repeatedly slapped Pete in the leg with a party favor while he was trying to play.  When we're the sane ones who are scolding people over their behavior, that's saying something!   There's a special sort of attitude that comes around when alcohol meets affluence, the kind of thing that makes you wonder how they'd like it if we came to their jobs during the week, sat on their desks, spilled a beer, yelled at them when they were on the phone, and insisted on using th...

The keyboard stand thing continues to frustrate Mark Bencuya and me.  In Houston last week, my eyebolt solution took a hit when one of the bolts failed--the threads had once again flattened out in one spot, and thus would not tighten properly.  We swapped it for a fresh eyebolt and played the gig. However, I'm still wondering: why?  I brought Bencuya's stand home, retapped the threads in the stand, cleaned up the threads on the eyebolts, and reinstalled everything.  I could already see, though, that the threads were beginning to flatten out in one spot just from one gig, so it is only a matter of time before it needs more repair. In checking my own keyboard stand, my eyebolts began to hop off the threads right then.  It made me wonder:  if the threads in the stand are good and the threads on the bolt are good (and their sizes match), what is causing the bolt to deform when they are tightened? I now believe that the root of the problem is a stron...

Yacht Rock was hired for a particularly cool gig last weekend in Houston, performing revival-style for a corporate concert at Minute Maid Park in Houston (home of the Astros).  They built a stage over the third base dugout and we played facing the stands.  We backed Elliot Lurie (Looking Glass), Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss (Player), Matthew Wilder, and Eddie Money, and Ambrosia played their own short set as the opener. I've never been to Houston before, but I've heard that the summers are pretty miserable.  The weather on this day couldn't have been more perfect. The grounds crew spent much of our set up taking care of the field, which equated to water everywhere, including these puddles perilously close to the power supply. Ambrosia's soundcheck.  Every time they came to a spot that was originally a sax solo, I wanted to throw stuff.  Greg subbed on bass for them and NAILED IT! So...a run down of the show:   Nights on Broadway...