Freddy & Francine

Soul, Folk, Americana

Freddy & Francine Bio Written by: Jack Johnson

Authenticity in the music industry is slippery when wet. Everyone praises its value, yet when an artist is truly authentic, it is often only embraced if it can be easily walked on without slipping and landing in a pile of genre-related questions.
To the casual observer, Freddy & Francine seem safely cemented as a folk duo. They got the look. The soulful harmonies. The folk circuit bookings - over 150 a year, including the legendary Telluride Bluegrass Festival. They're even getting married. Cute. Even their act's name is cute. You could make a movie about it. Someone probably has.
But Freddy & Francine (their actual names are Lee Ferris and Bianca Caruso) aren't interested in acting, or genres, or talking or not talking about their relationship. They've done all that. They've even recently left their longtime home of Los Angeles for Nashville. And they've never looked more like themselves.
"We just want to play music all the time and we don't care about the rest of the bullshit," Ferris
said.
And there's been plenty of bullshit. The Hollywood types, the rat race, the traffic, Ferris's struggle
with alcoholism (he's now five years sober). Longtime fans know that the band took a three-year hiatus when Ferris and Caruso's relationship unraveled, a time which found Ferris turning his back on music while driving trucks in L.A., and Caruso working an office job in New York.
During this break, both seemingly were able to land on their feet. Ferris was cast as Carl Perkins in the Broadway and touring productions of Million Dollar Quartet, and Caruso co-wrote and filmed a television pilot in Joni Mitchell's Laurel Canyon home (her friend rents it), featuring Seth Rogen, and sold the thing to ABC.
But appearances can be deceiving.
"I was miserable in the whole process, because I wasn't connected to myself in my gut," Caruso said. "I didn't enjoy it. I enjoy traveling and playing music."
Despite rockin' in Perkins' blue suede shoes from Memphis to Japan, in front of thousands of people, Ferris was also unhappy because he was singing someone else's songs.
"My heroes were Joni Mitchell, The Stones, Dylan, B.B. King, Lightnin' Hopkins, Carl Perkins, the guys who just tapped into something in themselves, who needed to write and speak their own truth.
That's who I am," Ferris said.
Adding, "The experience of sitting down with an instrument and coming up with something for the first time, you can't beat that. The best experience I've ever had as a person doing that, and coming up with something that is bigger than the sum of its parts, is with Bianca."
But this is all old news. Freddy & Francine are full-time musicians, and have released three
full-length albums and two EPs - not to mention Ferris's production of an album by award-winning actor William H. Macy (featuring Caruso's vocals), and the duo's collaboration with Dead & Co. keyboardist Jeff Chimenti on the musical direction and casting for 2017's Off-Broadway musical "Red Roses, Green Gold," featuring the music of The Grateful Dead.
Keeping truckin', Freddy & Francine plan to release their latest Nashville-recorded EP in September. The six-song "Moonless Night," co-produced by Dan Knobler (Lake Street Dive, Rodney Crowell) finds Freddy & Francine - which has often used full bands on its recordings - still produced but more intimately portrayed, a sound closer to the duo's live performances.
But don't call it folk music. It's too energetic.
"We're performers. We're not just folk musicians who play and sing mellow songs with little voices
... there's screaming," Caruso said.

Don't call it Americana either. They don't wear hats. Besides, Caruso says, "The minute you think one of our songs is an Americana song, it can turn into a retro pop song."
Despite the reaction of most roots music fans to the dreaded "P" word, Caruso says she doesn't mind Freddy & Francine being labeled a pop band.
"Pop music gets a bad rap, but it comes from the word ‘popular.' I'd love to be popular," she said. "I never discriminate against a song because it's popular if it stays in your head ... every Beatles song is a pop song."
But mostly, Freddy & Francine sounds like Freddy & Francine. It ain't the easiest thing to explain, but it makes sense when you hear it, and finally, it makes sense to the two people who matter most.
"I'm really happy with who I am and I'm happy with the life I have," Ferris said. At the end of the day, or road, authenticity is internal. Watch your step.

Website:

http://freddyandfrancine.com/about

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/freddyandfrancine/

Clara Baker

Indie Americana Songwriter

Seasons change, we rise and we fall, and our goal is to learn to appreciate these fleeting moments. These thoughts spun through the mind of Portland songwriter Clara Baker as she was recording her new album, Things to Burn. Produced by avant-folk experimentalist Shane Leonard (Kalispell, Field Report), the album was recorded in Shane's mother's house in the tiny village of Merton, Wisconsin. Joined by two stellar roots musicians, Courtney Hartman (Della Mae) and Zachariah Hickman (Josh Ritter, Ray Lamontagne), Baker recorded the album live to tape, no isolation booths, no cutting in-and-out of vocal takes, no headphones, pushing herself and the players to experience the music in the moment. Fellow Portland songwriter Jeffrey Martin and Anna Tivel stopped in while on tour through Wisconsin and added harmonies and fiddle to a song; there was a relaxed feeling to the days, and an emphasis on collaboration amongst the players. Recording engineer Brian Joseph (Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens) trucked over his studio in a U-Haul, and they all set up in the living room, taking the chance that a live performance without the cushion of a recording studio would lead to the best possible performances.  "There's an authenticity to a live performance that I wanted to recreate with this recording," Baker says. "The experience of recording that way changes the way the music sounds. We set up this experience intentionally to have us be really focused on being in the moment. It was an emotional experience."

As they recorded, they looked out on a large, frozen lake through bay windows as it slowly melted each day, passing from winter to spring. As a songwriter, Baker's long looked to nature for inspiration, first through songwriting retreats in Oregon's Burnt Woods wilderness near the coast; she sees a natural setting as key to her process of creation. "There's a lot of imagery in the album that has to do with the natural world," Baker explains, "a lot of questioning about birds and mountains and fires and rain. When we were recording, we kept watching the lake, the life on it, the ducks, geese, and birds. We were really intentional about that. We needed somewhere that we could go on walks and be outdoors." Part of the reason that Baker and Leonard worked so well together on this album, is that both understand the need for stillness in music. It's the same stillness that draws us to a sunset, or a frozen lake, and it's the same stillness we hear here in a long echoing bass note, a shimmer of electric guitar reverb that appears and then fades away, a soft hitch in the voice with just the right amount of vibrato. What's so masterful about Clara Baker's Things to Burn is how she was able to pair such subtle touches with powerful songwriting and a naturalist's ear for metaphor.

Much of Things to Burn album draws from the push and pull between certainty and doubt. Raised in a religious household, Clara Baker understood the dichotomy of faith and doubt from an early age, but now she's learned to embrace it. The kind of vibrantly shimmering live performances she's tracked onto tape here wouldn't be possible without that razor's edge between success and collapse that live recording engenders. Taking a chance and pushing into something new and unknown is a scary thought for many, but it's also the only way to create something beautiful.

Website:

http://www.clarabakermusic.com/

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/clarabakermusic