Home Free Finds ‘Timeless’ Success With Catchy Covers, Originals

There aren’t many country albums where you can hear a John Mayer track, a Dave Mason classic from the ’70’s, and “Man Of Constant Sorrow” all in the same place. Welcome to the world of Home Free.

“Free” is a pretty apropos name for the five-man a cappella group, who took off when they took home the trophy on Season 4 of the NBC competition The Sing-Off and haven’t stopped soaring since. Capitalizing on their initial success and continually building on it by putting their unique spin on everything from Top 40 favorites to timeless classics, members Austin Brown, Rob Lundquist, Adam Rupp, Tim Foust, and Adam Chance have amassed an immense YouTube following of 180 million viewers. That success has translated into sales as well: the group has sold over 250,000 albums and its just-released fourth project on Columbia Records, Timeless, debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard Country chart.

With a wide open field of favorites to choose from when they record, and some well-crafted originals peppered in for extra flavor, they’ve found the formula that keeps their fans constantly coming back for more: content.

“We are always evolving as artists and we try to capture that for sure on our records,” said bassist Foust about how they determine which songs to cover and record. “And it’s a really democratic process for us to be honest with you. We all have songs we are passionate about we bring to the table, and our producer or management suggest some, too. In the case of our previous album Country Evolution, we actually polled the fans and asked, ‘What do y’all want to hear?’ and we took about half of their suggestions and put those on the record.

“But with this new album we had a list of songs we’ve been wanting to do for awhile like ‘Man Of Constant Sorrow’ and even that Dave Mason song ‘We Just Disagree’ — we all grew up listening to the Billy Dean version of that. But we’ve got this pod of songs that we know, kind of like our wish list, and every album we’ll decide which ones we think are ready. And we’re always keeping our ear to radio both pop and country and then we also do our research too, like we’re big fans of John Mayer and the first time we heard ‘In The Blood’ we thought, “well this is a country song.” So we wanted to put our spin on that.”

The quintet finds an added bonus to being able to constantly mine music across many different genres for their audiences as well, according to Foust. “One of the biggest joys we’ve found in this is being able to expose a new generation of kids to music that meant a lot to us growing up. ‘We Just Disagree’ — that song is maybe not on the forefront of people’s minds these days, but we loved that song growing up and we think kids would enjoy hearing our version.”

“Our set list is always evolving too and typically whatever’s newest is what we’re excited about to sing, but I will say it never gets old singing ‘Ring Of Fire.’ The audience loves it, it’s our most popular cover we’ve ever done, and the audience loses their minds every time we start it in the show.”

Their ability to reinvent classics with a modern spin with just their voices first took shape when they met in college nearly two decades ago, and their melting pot of influences has no doubt contributed over the years to their unique sound.

“We’re kind of all over the map with our influences,” explains Foust. “Austin and Chance and I we were all raised on 80’s and 90’s country as well as classic country, and Rob and Adam are from Minnesota and they didn’t really get too much of that influence until later in life. Rob was raised on more classical stuff, his dad played a lot of Pavarotti and stuff like that, and his mom listened to pop radio when he was growing up.

“And then Adam, our beatboxer, was most influenced by composers for video game music, believe it or not. He’s really studied all the composers who have been doing that and he was a trumpet performance major in college. So whenever he does an arrangement for the group a lot of times it’s outside of the box.”

The group recorded four originals for this latest project, and has recorded songs by Mark Nesler and other Nashville writers for several of their albums. They enjoy arranging and recording originals, though Foust admits it can be a bit different than laying down favorites or standards that are already so familiar.

“I would say arranging an original is maybe a little trickier when you’re covering a song because you’ve got a fully fleshed-out instrumental arrangement to work with already, so you can pull from those elements like a certain guitar riff or something we can pull that off vocally. But whenever you’re starting an original you sort of wonder how in these sessions the Nashville players would play the stuff. So these days what we’ll do is we’ll fully flesh out a demo of an original with instruments too and then arrange based on that.

“We work with a couple of songwriters these days and I think they’re always trying to think about what they’ve written that would fit what we do. And we always tell ’em not to worry about that, we just say give us a good song because at the end of the day it just needs to be a catchy song and we’ll put our spin on it. Nine out 10 country songs too are gonna lend themselves to that standard three-part chorus harmony that you’re just so used to hearing in country music.”

In addition to the albums they record, Home Free caters to its fans by constantly feeding them new tracks via YouTube. In a content-is-king, rabid consumption world, the group has learned just how key it is to keep their fans engaged.

“I think the record industry has sort of been turned on its ear anyway and the old model of an album every 18 months or something that just doesn’t really work anymore because of the nature of the way people consume music,” said Foust. “They’re always ready for the next thing, so we’ve sort of just gone along with it and tried to commit to releasing two fully-produced videos per month. And a lot of the songs end up being songs that aren’t even on our album — we’ll just go in and cut a full track that will only ever live on YouTube. That’s just a way for us to keep cranking content out and we’ve got some pretty rabid fans, so it keeps them happy.”

The original content not only bridges the gap between albums for the group but also serves as a major way to introduce them to new fans who may not be familiar with them.

“Every show we meet quite a few people who have just discovered us shortly before the show on our YouTube channel, so it’s driving our business right now. And we have complete control over it. We get to do what we want to do and it’s a direct line of communication with us and the fans,” explains Foust.

That fan connection is so strong that the group decided to tap into it recently and partner together to help raise funds following the devastation of Hurricane Harvey. Since Foust hails from Nederland, TX, which is near Houston, the tragedy hit close to home for him, and the group quickly formed their campaign at YouCaring.com/HomeFreeHelps to help. Challenging fans to match their initial donation, they have since raised almost $100,000 to aid those affected by both Harvey and Irma.

“We started with a 20,000 donation and challenged our fans to match it, but our fans reached that in like twelve hours,” recalls Foust. “So we have upped the goal to $100,000 and we are at $87,000 right now. And during that whole campaign Irma hit Florida as well so we decided to donate $20,000 of it to Irma relief as well. The coolest thing about the Harvey relief is we’re working with an organization in Southeast Texas that my mother and sister are spearheading to make sure that every single penny is going to go to the people who need it.”

Though Home Free’s continued success may seem surprising to some not familiar with the group who might scoff at the idea of an a cappella group breaking into the mainstream, bassist Tim Foust explains it usually doesn’t take much to win the skeptics over.

“There’s still a little bit of an archaic school of thought about it, admits Foust. “It doesn’t matter how far the genre progresses, there’s still just some people out there who hear the word a cappella and they immediately think barbershop quartet, and they just don’t understand how that would possibly fit in popular programming — until they see the show, and then they go ‘OH.’ It’s a country rock show that just happens to be a cappella. So we have a little bit of a hurdle here and there, but it’s pretty easy to turn people into believers if you can get them to a show.”