The Free Wheels

In the summer of 2002, Singer-Songwriter Pete Noback won an Arts Grant from the City of Chicago to record an EP. He would record at Pogo Studio in Champaign, Illinois where he had met producer Mark Rubel (HUM, Poster Children) as a student at the University of Illinois, so he asked fellow students Aaron Meyers and Patrick Richards to help him arrange the material. Already, from the begining, this was turning out to be a band that used music to bring people together and take them back to places they know and love.

With Meyers on drums and Richards on bass, the group immediately seized on the drama in Noback's lyrics and took the songs to a whole new level:

"Take a song like 'Hannah and the Guilty' which is about a father reconciling with his daughter. All of a sudden, this quiet song I had been singing to myself sort of became this larger metaphor for how I felt about playing with these guys live in front of an audience." Pete says. "It was there all along in the chorus--"I'll make a believer out of you yet"--it just needed Aaron and Pat to make it true."

They began playing clubs all over Chicago just a year ago, but they are quickly becoming one of those rare new bands that put the songs ahead of themselves and can draw people inside the music instead of keeping audiences on the outside . They follow the heartbeat of the song wherever it takes them. In what appears to be a simple rock three-piece, there are echoes of many genres, characters, and moods. It's this lack of pandering and restlessness that has truly earned them the name, The Free Wheels.