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In late January, outside Detroit’s Third Man Records, it’s zero degrees and falling. Inside, Vermonter Greg Freeman is supporting his sophomore album, Burnover. On stage, wearing jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, he wrestles notes out of his guitar, a pick wrapped around his right thumb.
“I grew up learning how to play guitar from finger-pickers. When I was a kid, that was all I did,” Freeman says. “I’ve always kind of done a hybrid style.”
Freeman sings through gritted teeth, his crackled tenor echoing Stephen Malkmus. Speaking to the crowd, his voice carries the fragility of Neil Young or Elliott Smith.
“I like your haircut!” shouts one audience member.
“Thanks. I did it myself,” he quips.
Freeman makes what is widely considered to be “alt-country” music. But on the road and on record, clarinets and baritone saxophones weave weeping harmonies into his songs, pushing his music beyond the genre’s conventions.
“I’m so bored of the whole rhythm guitar player/songwriter thing,” he says. “Having one guitar in a band really allows you to do whatever you want, and that can be liberating because you don’t have to worry about conflicting with other instruments.”
Freeman’s main guitar is a Japanese copy, and as the lone guitar player on this tour, he seems to relish the freedom to move around its fretboard.
The Tokai is just a Japanese knockoff of a Tele, but it’s just as good, if not better
“The Tokai is just a Japanese knockoff of a Tele, but it’s just as good, if not better,” he says. “It has a breezy sound. It’s simple and sounds better [when] recorded, in my experience. It cuts through. I know what I like when it comes to guitars. I’ve never owned a Strat. There are some guitars where you’ll own them for five years and never write a single thing on them. It doesn’t really have to do with how expensive it is or how it feels. It’s just kind of a relationship.”
As Freeman plays, fretting roots with his thumb, his left hand wrapped around the neck of his Tokai T-style, it’s almost as if he’s sparring with an old opponent. His playing suggests someone uninterested in rehearsal for rehearsal’s sake.
“For many years, I’ve been trying to unlearn or break out of whatever routines you internalize when you were taught to play,” he says. “You get locked in playing the same chords and same scales and stuff, and it’s like you can just forget all that. There are no rules.”