Musician Greg Freeman at home in Burlington on Monday, June 30. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
It took a little time for Greg Freeman’s debut record to really make its mark.
The Burlington-based singer-songwriter released “I Looked Out” in July 2022 on the tiny Oregon label Bud Tapes to little fanfare and sparse reviews. About five months later, Freeman and his band took the record on tour outside of Vermont.
By then, the album had begun to develop a following, an authentic word-of-mouth success that has gradually picked up steam, making Freeman something of a cult figure among those in the know.
“The reception was pretty slow building, I guess,” Freeman said recently, reclining on the porch of his Burlington home, one of the many faded clapboard houses that line the city’s downtown streets.
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Just a few weeks prior, the Vermont musician had returned from his first extended tour in Europe, where he was pleasantly surprised by the turnout he generated.
“People came to the Paris show,” Freeman said, nodding happily. “The England shows that we did were really great too.”
This past fall, Freeman was signed to Canvasback, an imprint of Transgressive Records, which promptly reissued “I Looked Out” on vinyl.
In August, the label is releasing Freeman’s second LP, “Burnover,” which is poised to be a career defining success, the kind of thing you could hear blasting in dorm rooms and dive bars alike for the rest of the year.
It’s a sprawling, dreamlike collection of elegant indie gems and hard rock epics, anchored by razor sharp guitar riffs and the distinctly airy voice that has earned Freeman comparisons to Neil Young and Jason Molina, of Songs: Ohia fame.
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Freeman said he wrote a good portion of the album in a single sprint, a month long period after his first tour for “I Looked Out”that he spent hunkering down with his guitar back in Vermont.
“I just woke up in this house every day, and everyone was at work, and I played music and watched movies all day long,” Freeman said, looking across his porch. “I think once you do that for long enough, things start flowing better.”
Shortly thereafter, a steady stream of retrospective praise for his debut and raucous live performances began to lay a long runway for the new album’s arrival.
Last spring, he and his band appeared at South by Southwest and were singled out in subsequent coverage of the Texas music festival.
Write ups in Paste, Stereogum and Rolling Stone have since followed, with some heralding Freeman as the next MJ Lenderman — the 26-year old Asheville-based musician and current golden boy of indie rock.
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Freeman has also been getting invitations to share the stage with larger names. Prior to his jaunt in Europe, he supported Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithausser for a stretch of his solo tour, and in the Fall he’ll be opening for the iconic indie band Grandaddy for a series of shows in the Northeast.
Freeman grew up in Bethesda, Maryland, playing guitar in his room while nursing an obsession with traditional blues greats like Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson from an early age.
The White Stripes, with their Son House covers and blues-inflected garage jams, served as a gateway drug from the early masters to the classic rock and contemporary indie records that Freeman began to favor more throughout high school and college. “That was the first, like, contemporary band that I was super into,” he said.
Before attending the University of Vermont, he took a gap year and played alone at open mics across the country, often sleeping in his car as he hopped from town to town.
When Freeman finally arrived in Burlington in 2017, he was bowled over by the vitality of the local music scene. “I came here and everyone was in bands, and there was so much music everywhere,” Freeman said. “That was really a first for me.”
Freeman joined the fray, playing basement shows before moving up to venues like Radio Bean and Artsriot, where he mostly performed as a solo artist backed by many of the musicians that remain in his band today.
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In the years since, Freeman has stayed around the Queen City, becoming a mainstay in the city’s burgeoning indie scene alongside friends and contemporaries like the band Robber Robber and singer-songwriter Lily Seabird, who played with Freeman’s band for several years.
With its tight-knit social scene and sprawling bucolic surroundings, Burlington is, for Freeman, a city of contradictions that has given him much of his material. Scraps of overheard dialogue make it into his work, as do shades of the more complicated social dynamics that come with living in such a small city.
“There’s kind of like a suffocating social environment here sometimes,” he said, grinning. “But then there’s also, you know, so much green, beautiful space.”
The odd contrast is something Freeman said he tried to evoke in Burnover. For all its catchy hooks and colorful guitars, the record is a study in the peculiar feeling of loneliness that you get from never quite being alone.
“My thoughts die out slowly on the blood swept plains / where I see you every night,” Freeman sings on “Curtain,” one of the singles from the record.
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Rejecting the term “concept album,” Freeman said that “Burnover” was more intentionally cohesive than his last, with sonic motifs and language that recur throughout.
“I want you to be able to visualize a certain place when you listen to the whole thing,” he said.
The place isn’t Vermont or New England exactly, he said, but something similar, something green, gothic, weird.
“I’m always kind of trying to write about the places where I live — the spaces around me and the people around me,” he said.
Accordingly, whatever comes after “Burnover” could represent a change of pace for the Vermont musician.
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Before he accompanied Leithauser on tour, he headed to New Mexico, where he spent almost a month alone in the desert, writing the bulk of what will be his third album.
“It was pretty out there,” Freeman said.
He returned home with a batch of new songs, but his sojourn out west hasn’t made him want to leave. For now, he said, he would be in Burlington for the foreseeable future.
“It’s weird, though, how much has happened in this neighborhood,” he said as he peered down the road. “I’ve lived on all these streets.”
Vermont’s governor has signed legislation that will allow adults over the age of 21 to legally possess twice as much marijuana as they could previously, enable interstate cannabis commerce and make other changes to rules for licensed businesses.
Gov. Phil Scott (R) on Friday announced that he approved the large-scale cannabis regulatory reform bill, S. 278, which passed both chambers of the legislature last month.
One of the main impacts of the new law for consumers is that it doubles the prior legal possession limit to up to two ounces of marijuana or 10 grams of hashish.
The legislation, sponsored by Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (D), also allows the governor to enter into compacts with other states for cross-border cannabis trade.
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The legislative text notes that there is a “shifting federal posture on regulated cannabis markets” and says it is “the intent of the General Assembly to prepare for the possibility of regional or interstate cannabis markets.”
A provision says that such agreements could only move forward if federal law is amended to allow for interstate transfer of cannabis, if a federal law is enacted that blocks use of agency funds to prevent such transfers, if the U.S. Department of Justice issues a memo allowing or tolerating such activity or if the state attorney general certifies that entering into interstate marijuana commerce agreements “will not result in significant legal risk to this State based on review of federal judicial decisions and administrative action.”
— Marijuana Moment is tracking hundreds of cannabis, psychedelics and drug policy bills in state legislatures and Congress this year. Patreon supporters pledging at least $25/month get access to our interactive maps, charts and hearing calendar so they don’t miss any developments.
Learn more about our marijuana bill tracker and become a supporter on Patreon to get access. —
The bill signed by the governor also creates a pilot program for cannabis events at which businesses could sell products but where cannabis consumption would not be allowed.
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The legislation additionally says that housing rental agreements cannot prohibit tenants from “possessing cannabis or cannabis products within the rental premises or using cannabis or cannabis products within a dwelling unit, except that a rental agreement may prohibit the use of lighted cannabis or cannabis products intended for inhalation within the rental premises.”
It also eliminates the vertically integrated license type and reduces licensing fees for cannabis cultivation businesses, among other technical changes to current statute.
Earlier versions of the bill would have altered potency restrictions for cannabis products, reduced taxes and allowed on-site consumption licenses and delivery services, but those provisions were removed during the legislative process prior to final passage.
In 2018, Scott signed a bill to legalize marijuana possession and home cultivation and then allowed subsequent legislation to legalize commercial cannabis sales to take effect without his signature in 2020.
Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.
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PAWLET — The Pawlett Historical Society and Rupert Historical Society will co-host a talk, “The Great Bennington Battle and Vermont,” with acclaimed historian Howard Coffin, at 1 p.m. on Sunday, July 5, at the Pawlet Town Hall, 122 School Street, Pawlet.
The surrender at Saratoga of a British army under John Burgoyne, now almost 250 years ago, has long been called the decisive battle of the American Revolution. But perhaps Burgoyne was doomed after the Battle of Bennington, a bloody day of fighting along the Vermont border that happened two months before Saratoga?
Coffin will discuss the history-changing Burgoyne campaign, focusing on the dramatic battle of Great Bennington—a Vermont battle as well as a New York one. He will also review heroes John Stark and Seth Warner and the Vermont Constitution, itself about to turn 250 years old.
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A seventh-generation Vermonter, Howard Coffin is the author of four books on the Civil War: “Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont;” “Full Duty: Vermonters in the Civil War;” “Nine Months to Gettysburg; and The Battered Stars,” as well as “Guns Over the Champlain Valley,” a book on military sites along the Champlain Corridor.
This free event starts at 12 p.m. with a display of the first coinage minted in the United States, and works by noted photographers Neil Rappaport and John Pelton from our towns’ Bicentennial events in 1976. Be sure to mingle after Coffin’s presentation for an ice cream social with Stewart’s Ice Cream. This event is accessible to all, and made possible by the Vermont Humanities Speakers Bureau. For details on the event, contact Rose Smith at 802-645-0306 or roseksmith1925@gmail.com. For information on Vermont Humanities, visit vermonthumanities.org.
QUECHEE, Vt. (WCAX) – Crews worked across the White River Valley on Friday to restore power and clean up debris after two EF-1 tornadoes touched down in Vermont, including one that swept through Quechee.
Joe Haynes stared over his yard in Woodstock, with chunks of his roof scattered across it, wondering about the next steps.
Reporter Connor Ullathorne: How long will this all take to clean up?
Joe Haynes: Oh, I have no idea.
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He said he’s lucky he and his nearby neighbors are safe and are not blocked in.
“Some of the trees were down. They’ll be down for awhile but they can make their way out,” Haynes said.
Crews in Woodstock continued clearing trees and downed power lines along Route 4. That’s where Tiffany Miller was working inside the Mountain Creamery when the tornado passed right over the store. Nobody was injured, but their new walk-in storage ended up in the trees.
“It’s definitely a big setback for us. We were getting ready to have it wired up tomorrow. So I mean we definitely have a lot of elbow grease and hours to put in to get back up to where we were,” Miller said.
She said she was happy to see how many customers have checked in on them.
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“It’s nice to see that no matter what, in some bad case– storms or indifferent– that we can still come together and be there for each other,” Miller said.
Farther east in Quechee, workers hacked away at trees and swept away debris along the golf course and roads.
“It’s crazy they want to see. Everybody cares about their community and all their assets and amenities, so it’s nice to see everybody come together,” Quechee Club General Manager Brian Kelley said.
Kelley said they were out early Friday, and many residents were shocked at the damage. He’s still hopeful the area can come together and support each other.
“We normally do about 200 rounds a day going into one of our peak weekends. We’ve got the balloon festival this weekend, so we have that population in town, so a little bit of disappointment but people have been great and supportive, and we’ll be back at it tomorrow,” Kelley said.
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Kelley said it should be a few days until they are back to full force in Quechee.
Many others across the region told us they’re now focused on getting back to normal.
Click here for the latest forecast from the WCAX First Alert Weather Team.
