Home Free Finds a New Identity on ‘Timeless’
The guys of Home Free open up about their new album and their "always evolving" sound.
Four years after being crowned the season four champions of The Sing-Off, Home Free only continue to grow their catalogue of harmonious songs and feverish fans. They continue on this path with their latest album, Timeless, which features a collection of fan-favorite covers and fresh original songs that move the band in a new direction.
Hot off their Sing-Off win, the group felt an immediate push to put out their first album, Crazy Life, which was was soon followed by Country Evolution that featured covers like “9 to 5,” “Friends in Low Places,” “House Party” and more easy-going hits. “I think when you come off a show like that, it’s hard to find an identity right away because you’re just kind of thrown into the mix,” Adam Chance explains to Sounds Like Nashville about the mindset coming off the singing show. “But I feel like there’s identity in this album.”
While they admire each song they cover, the quartet was ready to dive in deeper with Timeless. “I feel like this album has evolved a lot,” Rob Lundquist says of the project, adding that while he appreciates the light-heartedness of their previous work, “it was nice to take some more songs with a little more depth, little grittier. It’s definitely different from those albums.”
Just one way they took their sound in a new direction was with the swampy “Man of Constant Sorrow,” the Grammy-winning country song that captured listeners’ attention in the acclaimed O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film all the group’s members cite as a favorite and a song they’ve been working on for years. “It took a long time for us to get that song to a place where we were like ‘yes, this is a good, well-rounded, completed song,'” Austin Brown explains. “We’ve never done anything like it.”
The group spent years playing with the song, knowing they wanted to record it, but had to get it right before they released it. “Everyone, piece by piece, just started to add a new element, add a new idea, for this and for that and what direction to take it. So there’s a lot of different variations,” Adam Rupp describes of their interpretation. While adding their own Home Free twist, the guys ultimately decided the song shines best in its original form, honoring it’s gritty nature with their stellar harmonies and Rupp’s impressive ability to imitate any instruments using just his voice, including a harmonica. “Then when it came up everyone was like ‘wow that was just totally different and unique and cool,’” Rupp says about how they knew the song was the right fit when hearing it alongside the rest of the album’s tracks. “Once we decided it was time, it sort of just came together organically,” adds Tim Foust.
The singers were also conscious in branching out from their covers and selecting songs that were originally written, picking from a pool of tracks penned by frequent collaborators Mark Nestler and Arlis Albritton, who’ve collectively worked with the likes of Tim McGraw, Keith Urban and Luke Bryan. But Foust also got to show off his own songwriting skills, co-penning “It Looks Good,” purposefully going for a pop country vibe mirroring the sound that dominates country radio today. “I was most influenced by Diamond Rio and groups like that, those harmony groups of the 80s and 90s. So a lot of times my writing sounds that way,” Foust explains of his typical songwriting style. “But with this song it was like ‘let’s actually embrace what’s going on and let’s give it a modern spin.’”
With this blend of powerful covers of country hits like “Hillbilly Bone” and “Life is a Highway” accompanied by originals “When You Walk In” and “It Looks Good,” the group can feel themselves evolving – and hope fans feel the same. “It feels like a step in our growth, it feels like we’re growing up,” Brown says honestly about the project. “For the first time in my life, I feel like a man who’s comfortable in himself. I feel like I see where my life is going, I feel like I see where we’re going… we’re investing in our future as opposed to just giving everything we absolutely have right now. We can measure ourselves a little bit more, run this like a marathon, as opposed to a sprint and we’re playing for the long game.”
“I like to think that we’re never stagnant, that we’re always evolving,” Rupp says. “I think this album certainly introduces some new ideas, some new innovations, and we try to portray that in the show too so that people kind of have this constant growth with us and that they want to keep coming back and keep experiencing as we grow and how we develop our music.”
And it’s the relationship with their fans that is most valuable to the group. When they step out on stage and hear the roar of the crowd that doesn’t cease until show’s end, it makes all of their efforts worthwhile. “We’ve always said that seeing our fans and seeing the crowds and the hype and all the excitement that goes into the shows is what really motivates us every night,” Rupp says honestly. “It’s a high, it’s euphoric, it’s awesome.”
Timeless is available now.
