David Freeman Music

Yacht Rock just returned last night from a triumphant tour of the Midwest!  Ok, really it was just a couple of public shows and a corporate event, but we played to a full room in Chicago--good enough for me! taste the rainbow in Kentucky Wednesday:  much driving.  Las Chalupas (Elizabethtown, KY) is not good.  Avoid it, lest your face look like this. We got as far as the north side of Indianapolis.  On this trip, we were able to stay with the Cobb and Olson families around Indy, so we saved a ton of money on hotel rooms.  I snagged a very nice couch. Thursday:  we slept late, and after a painfully long lunch, headed north.  In spite of the fact that it's almost June, northern Indiana was cold, overcast, and windy.  My wardrobe of shorts, t shirts, and sandals was…a poor choice.  Oops. wind farm, northern Indiana Gary, IN Gary, IN Anyway…Chicago! I need a Kamera Marina City--the Yankee H...

I had a great time recording horns tonight at Madison Studios, adding horns to a New Orleans inspired project called Sazerac.  Led by Greg Lee, the rest of the band is Mark Cobb (drums), Mark Dannells (guitar), and Mark Bencuya (keyboards).  Great stuff! A few of the tunes had horns on the original recordings, but mostly these are my horn arrangements. For this session, I played alto, tenor, and baritone sax, and a little bit of clarinet.  Everything sounded and felt good horn-wise (clarinet felt ok--does it ever feel really good?).  Good reeds are everything. Four tunes in four hours is pretty good.  In a couple of weeks we'll go back in and record the four other, plus any solo stuff. I was working up my arrangements last week at home.  Here's a little practice solo:

The Marriott Marquis atrium After the late night at the Marriott Marquis and then Smith's Olde Bar, I went to bed around 3 AM.  Four and a half hours later, I was headed out the door again, this time off to my AM church gig.  Ugh. The gig turned out to be pretty good.  For one thing, they've scrapped the V-drums and returned to an acoustic kit.  I don't think anyone was on in ears, either.  Whatever the sum of all those little things was resulted in the band digging in a little more and playing more cohesively, and the results were much more satisfying.  I played saxophone on two songs (both with some solo room) and one on unamplified/inaudible flute (not Matt's fault).  I also played clarinet on the closer. We did two services…extra money!  though it did delay my nap. Sunday night, I was back at the Marriott Marquis in the same room in the same spot (probably on the same stage) for a House Live gig.  The one on Monday was pretty fu...

The gig train just keeps rolling.  Yacht Rock was at a corporate function last night.  Typical stuff--we've played this same gig two years previously, so I guess we were undeterred by the absence of any crowd response whatsoever until the last hour.  At the end, they were really into it.  And the mayor gave us a shout out, which is usually probably hopefully cool. A couple of other things… Jovita Moore is even better looking in person.  Wow. We loaded in at 4 (all seven us with all our gear), and were set on the stage by 4:40.  Then we waited as the sound guys did their stuff (miking things and running lines).  Waited…waited…waited…at 6:40 we finally had to bail on the first ten minutes of our soundcheck so we could eat and change and start playing at 7 PM.  Not cool.  Not impressive. Moontower! From this gig, we ran over to Smith's Olde Bar to close out Five Hundred Songs for Kids, performing James Brown's Sex Machine . ...