FreeVerse

Welcome home, FreeVerse
Little Rock jam band revisits an old haunt.

By Shea Stewart (Contact)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

The boys are back in town — FreeVerse plays Juanita’s on Saturday with Little Rock’s South 61 opening. The 18-and-up show kicks off at 10 p.m. Cover is $7. It’s the drummer who’s the weird one.

In a jam band that lists influences such as the Grateful Dead, Phish, Galactic and Talking Heads, FreeVerse drummer Chris Sturtz flings Iron Maiden, Slayer and Morphine into his basket of influences. It might make more sense for Sturtz to list the legendary The Allman Brothers Band drumming duo of Butch Trucks and Jaimoe Johanson, or Bill Kreutzmann from the Dead.

But when you are the man building the foundation for the band’s Southern fried fusion of psychedelic rock, funk, blues and jazz, it helps to have a rock-solid background. It’s the steady beat of Sturtz that allows the rest of the band — Adam Nelson on lead guitar and vocals, Brent Stroud on rhythm guitar and lead vocals, Brian Wolverton on bass and vocals, and Dave Williams II on saxophone — room to surf over and through the band’s concoction of musical influences.

“The Grateful Dead are the reason I play music,” Nelson said. “But FreeVerse has grown into so much more. It’s better with the addition of all these influences.”

The band’s two newest members — Wolverton who joined in 2006 and Williams who joined in 2007 — slightly altered the band’s sound. But both come with strong musical pedigrees, with Wolverton playing with the Arkansas Repertory Theatre and Williams playing jazz saxophone on Friday nights at his family’s restaurant, Dave’s Place, and add their own musical stamp on the band.

“We have definitely gone the funk rock route with Brian and Dave in the group,” said Stroud at a recent band rehearsal at which Williams proudly sported a Galactic T-shirt.

“The way I feel about our music is we take jazz ideas and principles, and apply them to funk and rock,” Nelson said. “We’ve got new areas to explore. It’s a new life.”

On stage, the members of FreeVerse are locked in as a unit, destroying the walls of five- or six-minute song structures and freely exploring their musical paths and creating grooves. But it’s not all noodling solely for the band’s enjoyment as certain tunes lend themselves better to 20-minute expeditionary jams while other numbers are more concise. The perfect jam depends on many factors, including crowd participation. But the key to changing gears from a bluesy shuffle to dirty funk is a personal connection the band members have with each other, Sturtz said.

“It’s just spending a lot of time with each other and being familiar with everyone,” he said.

“People make eye contact,” Williams said. “There is a lot of onstage communication that is nonverbal.”

Stroud adds, “It’s never spoken. It’s always talked out musically.”

Formed in the spring of 2002, the band has recorded two albums, 2004’s The Trinity Sessions Demo recorded by Jay Wedeman of Brown Carpet Studios in Jacksonville, and the band’s self-titled June 2006 album, produced, engineered and mixed by Drew Pickens mainly at The Hive Studio in Little Rock. Tentative plans are for a third album soon with a handful of originals the band already plays live ready for recording.

But in the meantime, the band is returning to where it all begin with a Saturday night show at Juanita’s.

Nelson and Stroud started playing together in the mid-1990s. Sturtz joined the group along with original bassist T.J. Hudson (who departed in 2006), and FreeVerse was formed. The band’s first show was at White Water Tavern, and the band played continuously in and around the Little Rock area, slowly building its name by playing everywhere it could, including backyard parties. Although the band was not succeeding financially, people were taking notice.

But it took a Feb. 1, 2003, show at Juanita’s to truly open up the future. The band was selected to open for Oteil Burbridge, bassist for The Allman Brothers Band and leader of his own group Oteil and the Peacemakers. The Saturday night show opening for Oteil proved to the band that it had arrived.

“That was our first big show,” Nelson said. “It kind of made us legit.”

This weekend’s show with Little Rock band South 61 opening for FreeVerse will mark the first time the band has played Juanita’s in two years. And while the song remains the same, it’s a slightly updated sound for familiar faces.

“That was our first big gig, and we’ve played a lot of gigs there,” Stroud said. “That’s why it’s so cool to come back.”
- Sync Weekly