HOME FREE | INTERVIEW
If you love baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet (as the song went in the nostalgic car commercial), you’d dang better get your country on for a down home night of feel good music at the Glee Club. Fourth season winners on US TV show The Sing-Off in 2013 (garnering $100, 000 and a Sony recording contract), vocalists Home Free will be in Dublin, Cardiff and Birmingham. Selling out their shows again for a second year in a row, they’ll also be appearing at the London A Cappella Festival.
They’ve notched up nine albums, including 2015’s Country Evolution, which reached No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Country chart. Their latest, a Christmas CD, Full Of (Even More) Cheer, debuted at No. 2. The band, formed in 2000 by Chris Rupp (who left in 2016), will have a new album out later this year. They’ve already graced the venerable Grand Ole Opry stage and have released over 50 music videos (9 To 5, Ring Of Fire, Thank God I’m A Country Boy). The multi-talented quintet have over 100 million YouTube viewers and also write their own material.
Home Free, the first ever country a cappella band (average age 32) is composed of: Austin Brown (high or first tenor), Adam Chance (baritone harmony), Tim Foust (bass), Rob Lundquist (tenor harmony) and co-founder and original member Adam Rupp (percussion sounds/beatbox/tenor range). Lundquist called Buzz from -2°C (which he said is considered not that bad) snowy Minneapolis, Minnesota to chew the fat.
Besides the UK, is Home Free going to tour anywhere else in Europe in the near future?
In May we’re going to be doing a festival in Spain, which is pretty exciting for us. First time we’ve ever been over there and we’re going probably to try and hit another couple of dates around that but not sure on when or where that will be at.
You’ve also played in Austria…
We did that last year [the European Country Festival]. We ended up shooting a music video out there for our song How Great Thou Art right in the Austrian Alps. It was the most beautiful backdrop we’ve ever had. It was gorgeous.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that there’s now a country festival on the continent. Country’s popularity has really spread from America.
Actually, country music tells a story that people can relate to a lot of the time. We have fans all over the world – we have a lot in Australia. We’re hoping we can get out there sometime, probably next year.
Did you get a chance to catch any music that impressed you when you were here for the first time last year?
We saw the Swingle Singers [who’ll also be at London A Cappella Festival again]. They’re maybe some of the best singers I’ve ever seen perform live. Just their blend, their harmony was unbelievable. Every single person was spot on. We were very shocked at how amazing they were. Fantastic.
Did older a cappella groups influence Home Free?
Definitely. The main reason that Home Free even started was because Chris Rupp, Adam’s brother, heard a group called Rockapella and thought they were the best thing ever. But all five of us come from very different backgrounds and have our own influences.
Did you listen to doo-wop singers?
I wasn’t familiar with a lot of doo-wop or a cappella when I was growing up. My dad played a very wide variety of music, so he influenced me with James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Pavarotti, then the Statler Brothers, and my mom listened to popular music at the time. So I was getting Boyz II Men, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, things like that. I had a very eclectic style back then.
The other guys, Tim, Austin and Chance, were very into country and gave us a good country sound. Currently, I love country music, and the Zac Brown Band is probably my favourite group out there now. He’s got a very, very cool sound. Kind of old country. There’s another guy called Chris Stapleton, who’s currently really big, and I think he’s got one of the coolest voices I’ve ever heard.
You and Adam Rupp have bachelor’s degrees in music…
Yeah, we do. He got his at a private college called Gustavus Adolphus in St. Peter, Minnesota and went for trumpet performance. I went for vocal performance and graduated at the University of Minnesota in Duluth.
What made you decide to study music at university instead of forming a group or going out on your own?
I didn’t really get into singing until about my senior year in high school. I was kind of shy. I was always nervous to sing in front of other people. My junior year, I tried out for a musical, and everybody was shocked that I could sing. I got a great response. Way more than anything else I had ever done. When it came time to go to school, I was just going to do regular requirements and figure out what my major should be, but my parents were the ones pushing me to go for vocal performance. They thought I could have a career with that. So I went along, and it was definitely the right decision.
What is so special about singing a cappella?
It’s fun singing with guys onstage. Getting harmonies down, blending with each other. We’ve been performing How Great Thou Art on our last tour and hearing some of those chords ring in a big theatre, it gives you goosebumps. Or it gives me goosebumps, anyway. I don’t really know how to explain it. When everything’s in tune sounding good, it’s hard to beat that.
I understand you all worked on Royal Caribbean cruise ships. What’s that experience like, besides getting to eat a ton of food?
Yeah. [laughs] The best food. We’d done that for a couple of years. Home Free were independent contractors. We’d be there for seven nights and perform once or twice, so that was like the best little working vacation ever. We would do that once a month, and it was great. One of those times we met Austin. He was on the ship for eight months as a cast member doing the shows. He was a production singer, and he blew us away. We were like, “Man, if he’s ever off the ship, we’d love to have him join Home Free,” and that happened.
How good of a training was that, and would you recommend that as opposed to hitting bars and clubs early on?
Do you mean Austin doing the production thing?
No, you doing the cruise tour.
Those are two totally different things – we have more of a staged show. Doing clubs and bars would have been weird for us. A lot of bands that do clubs and bars do four-hour sets, and we just can’t handle that. Our voices would get fried immediately. We’re more like an hour and a half. We’ll do a 45-minute set and another 45-minute set. Every crowd was different, so we had to win over people who had no idea who you were. It was great training for us.
You probably didn’t have to deal with so many drunks!
[Laughs] People still get pretty drunk on the cruises.
I bet they get hustled out much faster.
You’re not getting heckled like in a bar, which is nice!
Is it true you switched to country for The Sing-Off because there was a gap in that style of a cappella?
Yes. Back when I joined the group, we did every kind of music. One of those was country, and that always seemed to go over really well whenever we would do it. Austin joined the group in 2012, and he noticed there weren’t any strictly country groups out there, and before we had auditioned for The Sing-Off, he was really trying to push for that. When we auditioned, we did two different country songs, and then we were going to do a pop song. They producers were like, “Hey, could you do another country song and be the country group on this show?” and we’re like, “Yeah.” So that was the best decision we made.
The band auditioned three times previously?
That’s correct. I was in all the auditions. Me, Chris and Adam were the three guys that had been in all four auditions. Tim and Austin were there for the fourth one, and that was the winning combination. The first three seasons that we tried out, we never had a solid five people that had been in the group for awhile. We would just see if there was a bass that would be interested and audition or what not. So we didn’t have much chemistry, and plus, we were doing all the same stuff that everyone else was doing. So our story wasn’t as fascinating as some of the other ones.
You’re proud to be American. Obviously that plays a big part in the group and the songs you pick?
Definitely. We’re all very proud to be from the US. I would say that’s a big part of Home Free, for sure.
We’ve done God Bless The USA. We sing the national anthem at a lot of different events.
That must be nerve-racking. Crowds can be pretty brutal if you mess that up!
Yeah! [laughs] Thankfully, knock on wood, we have not messed it up. It’s fun. We did a NASCAR event a couple of years ago. We did an NBA playoff game in front of like 30,000 people. It’s a good time.
What’s your favourite sport to perform for – baseball, football, basketball?
We performed for the Minnesota Vikings a few months ago, and that was a dream for me! I’ve been a Viking fan my whole life.
Home Free, Glee Club, Cardiff Bay, Wed 25 Jan. Tickets: £19. 50. Info: 0871 472 0400 / www.glee.co.uk
words RHONDA LEE REALI