Austin Freeman and the Hard Souls Band

What a really great weekend.  It started with a girl in the UK starting a social media campaign to get us to come to the UK for a tour, then I spoke with a producer in Nashville that used, "...how Dolly Parton likes to do it when we work together..." in his sales pitch to me (crazy), to having a pledge of financial support that is going to be coming in through our patreon.com account convienant link here, which we are launching this Wednesday, to being asked to come to Scotland and play with the promise of room and board, to putting together what looks like it is going to be a monthly acoustic show where I will be playing 5-6 songs with one of the songs being featured that I will tell the story of where the song came from and the writing process and then of course I'll play the song.  There will be wine (obviously), I feel pretty certain beer, and possibly GVA is going to be able to cater. 

While I was at the venue where we are going to have this monthly show, Le Vie Desante winery in Gilroy, CA, Tracey who is now on this mailing list recognized me from a different show and shamed me for not keeping up with updating the shows on the website.  So thanks to Tracey for pushing me into doing that tonight.  We have a few out of the bay area shows pending, but otherwise I believe it is mostly accurate.  

Also very excited to say that Mike Derubio is going to be doing sound for us at the Kelly brewing show coming up on September 7th, and possibly a light rig as well, which we just might make a habit of...

Thanks everyone who is listening, following, sharing, liking, subscribing, and otherwise spreading the word and pushing this along.

Austin

The EP is out...sorta...for whatever reason, having submitted well over a month ago, some of the platforms are not flipping the switch quite yet.  Regardless, it is available on our site and I have seen a huge increase in daily visits to the site, so thank you guys for coming and checking it out and following along on our journey.  The radio station that has played a couple of the tunes over the past many months has asked to play the entire EP! 

I/we have been asked to play a couple of benefit shows to help raise funds for the victims of the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting.  Very sad, but if the music can provide some healing, I/we are more then glad to do it and thankful for being asked.

We have a series of shows over the next 4-5 weeks and then we are working on what this fall and winter looks like in terms of performing, recording, and all the things that goes along with that.

I have just recorded a solo track of a new song called "This Thing" that I am very excited about.  More about that in the weeks to come. 

As always, like, share, comment, subscribe, do all those things that take little more effort then tapping the screen on your smart phone (which we all do, oh...a few hundred (likely thousand) times a day.  Every but helps.  Every single one helps.  Please don't think it doesn't.  Speaking of, we are launching a patreon.com account very soon.  Please check it out, I will post a link when it is ready.

Thank you as always!

Austin

The band is really getting dial in now and are all ready and excited to be releasing (officially) our first EP "Ain't Hard To Choose" August 1st.  The EP will consist of songs we recorded at Airship Laboratory in Oakland with Reto Peter of Teahouse West and Nova Noir productions.  We recorded the songs live, which is a rare thing these days and very pleased with the outcome.  We are headed back to the same studio with Reto at the end of June for four more songs (three of which I just wrote!  We will release those tunes later on.  

Also, we recently had the pleasure of having Chris Jackson of KFOX 98.5FM fame, show up to a show, jam with us, hang with us, and then give the band a great shout out over the airwaves calling it the "highlight" of his vacation.  Well sir, it was and is a highlight of ours!

Show dates are updated (mostly) here on the site, so we hope to see you out there.

AF & THSB

I/we could not be happier to introduce everyone to the band.

• Drums & Vocals - Sam Sotelo
• Bass and Vocals - Mitch Sandberg
• Lead Guitar and Vocals - Chris Adgar-Beal

Together we are now officially Austin Freeman & The Hard Souls Band. 

Last Sunday we went to Airship Laboratories planning on doing three songs, live, for a demo.  We ended up doing 4 songs, including one ("You don't owe me a thing") that I had only written 9 or 10 days before and we had only played a handful of times.  We are so pleased with the result that we have posted the songs to the website and cut a video of us playing "Ain't Hard To Choose" in the studio that we put on the YouTube channel (you can follow the link off of any page on the site).  A large part of the day going so extremely well, was due to the level of musicianship The Hard Souls Band has, but also due to the skill and ear of Reto Peter of Teahouse West.  Reto and I first worked together on "Travelin' Man" (which ended up getting a little airplay in Ohio) and the experience was so good, I knew I wanted to work with him again and am very glad that we did.  

We will be updating the website more and more to reflect the whole band and posting out upcoming shows, along with any news. 

Good things to come, I have no doubt!

Hope to see you soon,

AF&THSB