Free Range
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Free Range

Athens, Alabama, United States | Established. Jan 01, 2013 | SELF

Athens, Alabama, United States | SELF
Established on Jan, 2013
Band Rock Psychedelic

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"FREE RANGE: Rock trio's members talk paths to music"

Three musical paths — and maybe a chicken or two — intersect in the Limestone County-based classic rock band, Free Range.

Billy Smith, Jeremy Drawbaugh and Seth Facundo are living the “free range life,” a phrase coined by their fans.

“The first time I performed on stage was at a music festival,” Smith said, “I got up there and knew it was where I was supposed to be. I am more myself on stage than anywhere else.”

Smith has been making music since middle school and credits East Limestone band teacher Jennifer Janzen with teaching him everything he knows.

“I played xylophone in the band, and when I started to learn guitar chords I figured out the guitar is laid out exactly like the xylophone and so is the piano,” he said. “That’s when I found the freedom to play free-style riffs and write music — the music opened up for me.”

Seth Facundo, the band’s bass player, found his musical path as part of the audience. “When I was growing up, my mom would take me to shows,” he said. “Sometimes the shows were just OK, but there were times when the band connected with the audience on a much deeper level and I knew that I needed to be part of creating that experience.”

Drummer Drawbaugh grew up listening to his father’s and grandfather’s bands. He sat behind his first drum set at age 2.

“My mom’s dad could play anything with strings,” he said. “He had seven kids and his rule was you couldn’t move out of the house until you learned to play an instrument.”

While Free Range is primarily a cover band, they also write their own music.

“In marching band, I learned how to take different songs and mix them together,” Smith said. “Writing original music is a lot like that.”

Drawbaugh compared writing music to completing a puzzle because a songwriter has to decide what music and words fit together.

“Playing your own music can take you anywhere,” he said.

When not on stage, the band can be found practicing in Smith’s barn.

“The name Free Range is mostly about the wide variety of music we wanted to play, but there were a few chickens there for inspiration,” Smith said.

The band will perform Friday, April 14, at the Limestone Music Festival at the Limestone County Event Center. The festival is sponsored by Andrew Kirk with Modern Woodmen of American and Chick-fil-A of Athens.

The show begins at 7 p.m. and tickets are $10. Proceeds benefit the East Limestone High School band and County for a Cure, Limestone County's Relay for Life team.

Tickets can be purchased from any East Limestone High School band student, from Chick-fil-A of Athens, Village Pizza on East Limestone Road or at www.eventbrite.com. - Athens News Courier


Discography

Free Range (LP) 2019
Hippie Cowboy (EP) 2017

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Bio

Free Range is an independent Southern Psychedelic Rock band from Athens, AL comprised of drummer Jeremy Drawbaugh, vocalist and guitarist Billy Smith, and bassist Seth Facundo. The band got its start in 2013 performing out and around the North Alabama Music Scene. As the depths of their sets and fans deepened over the years, they fixed their focus on forging their own brand of original music. After years of development practicing and performing the once robust catalog of the classic rock category, with a few crowd pleasers along the way, the band’s creative collective began to flow its way through to the recording medium.

With Free Range’s 2017 release of their Hippie Cowboy EP, the band showcased the tones and textures of their origins. The five songs present on this effort represent the basics of Free Range’s core aesthetic, Southern Rock, and gave the band a stepping stone to begin spreading their influence through social media and online stores alike. During the following 2 years the band focused their efforts on writing, recording, and producing their self-titled, debut album independently. With the 2019 release of their full-length LP, they catapulted their sound past the traditional boundaries of their Southern Rock roots, and into the intricately imaginative terrain of the Progressive Psychedelic genre. 

Today, Free Range’s focus is fixed on the support of their debut album by bringing their potently powerful performances to the masses, and broadening the radius of their sonic influence to even more events and venues within the Southern states of the U.S.

Band Members