Jeremiah Freed highlights Union Fair

By Tom Von Malder

If you are in a high school band, playing hour after hour in rehearsals and beginning to wonder if it’s all worth it, don’t give up. Consider the case of Jeremiah Freed.

Two years ago, the five guys of Jeremiah Freed — singer Joe Smith, drummer Kerry Ryan, lead guitarist Nick Goodale, rhythm guitarist Jake Roche and bassist Matt Cosby — were in high school in York, Maine. But that year something wonderful started to happen, the band won the annual Rockoff contest in Portland. By February, they had the No. 1 added single at rock radio nationally, with their song “Again” added to 50 to 60 stations.

Last winter, indeed, was magical.

In October, the band self-issued its eponymous debut album. Famed producer Beau Hill (Alice Cooper, Ratt, Bad Brains) produced two of the songs, “Again” and “How They All Got Here,” after meeting the band’s manager and hearing some demos. Within a few weeks, WCYY, an alternative rock station in Portland, heard the disc and program director Brian James began playing “Again,” which ended up being one of the station’s five most requested songs and spent two solid months at No. 1 on the station’s afternoon program, Top 5 at 5. When the station added “How They All Got Here,” it shot to No. 1, with “Again” right behind at No. 2.

Radio play meant album sales, close to 2,000, and suddenly Jeremiah Freed was invited to play on the same bill as Nickelback and Saliva at the Cumberland County Civic Center.

After that gig, singer Smith said, “Here we are an unsigned band … and we’re on this amazing bill playing in front of 8,000 people. We went from zeros to heroes.”

And the “unsigned” tag quickly changed too, as Republic/Universal signed the band. The re-recorded debut album was released nationally March 26.

“It was kind of crazy,” Smith said in a telephone interview from New York City Feb. 27. “It was a surreal experience, traveling to New York City and our manager saying the next two days would be the total opposite of the last two years. We signed like on a Monday and were in the studio by Wednesday.”

In fact, Smith, 20, said the record company was so impressed with their independent release that it simply wanted to reissue the disc nationwide, “but we said, ‘Wait a minute. We’ve waited for this moment. We went to go in with the extra money and see what we can do.’ “

Hill came back to Maine and the album was re-recorded at Big Sound studio in Westbrook. The band self-produced four songs — the nearly 9-minute “Eyes, Life, Change” (“We’ll probably play that in concert the rest of our lives,” enthused Smith.), “Ginger,” “Stranded” (which was not included on the self-released album, but is my favorite track) and “Reasons.”

“Working with Beau Hill or someone of his caliber teaches you how to play better together … to fine tune your songs, and then it comes more naturally,” Smith said. “You hear things better. It was a great experience for us.”

Smith said he and Goodale were like the kids who sing at the back of the school bus. They used to play basketball every day until Goodale’s father taught his son a few guitar chords. Rather than play basketball by himself, Smith took up singing and the two friends started writing songs together.

The band members love classic rock, as in 1970s hard rock, which is reflected in their original songs, which are heavy on melody, chorus hooks and strong guitars.

“We’ve been playing together since our musical infancy,” said Smith. “We played songs we wanted to hear, like ‘Free Bird.’ Then as we got older, we started to realize how we wanted things to sound.

“The five of us know exactly what we are going for. Everyone in the band agrees. It is just us doing our own thing. I think people appreciate what we are doing.

“It is important to us that people realize the music and the band are as real as we sound. We are friends for whom this is fun and we want to keep doing it.”

The band is working on new material and has tentative plans to begin recording this fall for its follow-up album on Universal Records that could be out by early 2003. Fans can expect the band to debut some of this new material, which is more guitar heavy and classic rock leaning than that on its debut release, during the current tour.

Jeremiah Freed will perform 8 p.m. Aug. 22, at the Union Fair, off Route 17, Union. Fair admission is $6, with younger than 15 admitted free.