Funnily enough, as vital, timely and moving as their new album Liberty Now! is, nonetheless, it was not the album that drummer Phil Haynes and his string band Free Country intended to make when they entered the studio last December.

“After the American Trilogy recordings, plus our live record, I felt like the band was done,” Haynes explains. “Yet the sound of Free Country and the chemistry that the four of us shared never left me. I thought about what I would want to do if we ever made another record, and I knew it would have to be our own originals.”

“Each of these terrific musicians are lovely and very personal composers, and when a band comes together with this much chemistry, mutual love and respect, you write, arrange and contribute material very differently.”

Their music gained additional urgency and profundity that the band couldn’t have foreseen when they wrote and selected the compositions for the album. The first was the dire outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election just a month prior to the date. The second was the death of the revered trumpeter Herb Robertson, a close friend and collaborator of everyone in Free Country – the news of which reached them at the very moment they were entering the studio.

CD 1:
1. Situation Ethnics
2. Past Time
3. Strands of Liberty
4. Higgens
5. Diaphana
6. Confetti
7. Corner Store Strut
8. Joy
9. Next of Kin
10. The Wire
11. Home Road
12. Dawn on the Gladys Marrie

The 25 year NYC veteran drummer, composer and bandleader of singular voice and stirring stylistic range opens this brand new double album on the rhythmic elegance of Situation Ethnics, the emotive Past Time and the organically jagged Strands of Liberty, and they are backed by the languishing beauty of Higgens, the playfully flirtatious Diaphana, and the low slung soft shuffle of Confetti.

Along next is the more strident fare of Corner Store Strut, the emphatic Joy and a beloved preciseness within Next of Kin, which are in turn followed by the organically scratchy The Wire, a yearn that threads throughout the grandeur of Home Road and one of my own personal favorites, the beautiful embodying of Dawn on the Gladys Marrie.

CD 2:
13. The Way the West was Won
14. She’ll be Coming ’Round the Mountain
15. Revolution
16. Dakota Hymn
17. Johnny Guitar
18. Joshua Fought the Battle of Jerico
19. Simple Gifts
20. Respect
21. What’s Goin’ On
22. To Anacreon in Heaven
23. The Defense of Fort McHenry
24. America the Beautiful
25. Fanfare for the Common Man
26. What a Wonderful World

The second disc begins with the fervent nature of The Way the West was Won, a resoundingly absorbent She’ll be Coming ’Round the Mountain and a joyful rendition of the Beatles’ Revolution and then we get the atmospherically-charged, at times spoken word Dakota Hymn, the low slung vocalizations of Johnny Guitar, and the drum-led Joshua Fought the Battle of Jerico.

We then get brought forth the skittish, yet controlled Simple Gifts, a robust cover of Aretha’s Respect and a lush cover of Marvin’s What’s Goin’ On, before the acoustically harmonized To Anacreon in Heaven is shone brightly, itself backed by the charged fare of The Defense of Fort McHenry, the peacefully atmospheric America the Beautiful, the set rounding out on a rousingly drum-led Fanfare for the Common Man, closing on the smooth ease of a reinterpreted rendition of Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World.

Political awareness is certainly nothing new to the Free Country four. There is a strong undercurrent of social consciousness threaded throughout the band’s work, which Haynes wanted to underline. He decided to pair the new recordings with an album-length compilation of the most pointed cuts from the quartet’s catalogue, crafting an American history lesson in song.

“We’ve been thinking about these issues for a long time,” Haynes says. “I thought this music might offer everyone some solace and courage to live through this period and find ways to do things that might have a positive impact.”

Official Purchase Link

www.philhaynes.com