David Freeman Music

Cool gig of the year for Yacht Rock: we were invited to play a birthday party for about a hundred people at a house (manor?) in Windsor, GB, just outside of London. Built into that was a couple of days to overcome the jet lag/hang out in London. Vacation time! I was able to bring my family to experience the trip. Wednesday: we took an evening flight directly from Atlanta to Heathrow. No changing planes (some of the guys took a flight that had a connection in JFK and were delayed for hours). I watched two movies: The Post  and Hostiles.  Both were excellent. Thursday: We landed in England on an hour or two of sleep, took an expensive cab ride to our hotel, and then headed off exploring. the British Museum the Rosetta Stone Piccadilly Circus Buckingham Palace Thursday evening, the entire band took a field trip to Royal Albert Hall for a special concert--the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra and the English Chamber Choir performed the score ...

Here we go...super quick recap of last weekend's Yacht Rock gigs. Thursday: Played Purple Rain  again at Venkman's. We played the record in May, I believe? I had maybe 80 percent recall when I started trying to play it again--it took a few days to get it back together in my hands and head. Overall, I did pretty well. There were maybe two spots of "Does it do that right here?", but no major disasters. Here's the show, in case you missed it. Friday: We traveled to Birmingham to play a regular ol' Yacht Rock gig at Avondale Brewing Co. It looked to be hot, but by the time the sun went down, it wasn't too bad. I went for a run before the show, guessed wrong on the distance of the loop I had chosen, and had to book it back to the brewery. TWO THOUSAND PEOPLE SHOWED UP FOR THE GIG. Holy hot damn. One of our most impressive sell outs. I had some seriously bad brain farts on this one, most notably leaving the octave pedal on for the solo i...

Another wedding! A year ago, I was certain we'd priced ourselves out of the wedding band market, but here we are, playing another wedding, with the bonus for this one being that the gig was in Atlanta. This was a WILD one, and included several Buckhead wedding stereotypes; the flock of Ivankas in bridesmaid dresses, to pushy people who wanted to get on stage or make suggestions about what we should be doing, and the guy Nick dubbed "Buckhead Mr. Bean." We played this gig (one big set) under duress, trying to keep the downtime between songs to an absolute minimum. Most of the madness faded by midway through the gig, and then came roaring back at the end, with the bridesmaids on stage for Don't Stop Believing  (one of whom accidentally popped Pete in the face while stealing his microphone). There was some very angry confusion about whether or not to play an encore (with us hiding in a back hallway while they sorted it out), a call of help (someone had thrown up mor...

Another weekend with the Yacht Rock Revue. No Saturday gig, which was weird, but also nice to be home for a change. I think we all looked at it like it was a weekend's worth of work with a little gap in the middle. Besides, with flying home on Monday and then playing a gig on Tuesday, everybody's just trying to keep up. Friday: Back at the Park Tavern! This used to be our big gig of every month in the summer, but now it's just "where are we this Friday." We have this date in May and one in June, and I think that's all our schedule will allow. We played three new ones on this gig: Jackie Blue, Shakedown Street,  and Lady (by Styx--not to be confused with the Little River Band song or the Commodores song or the Kenny Rogers song). I really like Jackie Blue --it's fun and the vibe is cool; Shakedown Street was unexpectedly enjoyable; Lady  is pretty over-the-top, but definitely a 70s classic. The rest of the setlist was pretty much our standard stuff the...