FeelFree
Like many grown men, the founding members of the award-winning band FeelFree chuckle at themselves and shake their heads a little when they think back to their middle school years.
They were students at Alexandria's George Washington Middle School. “We were at a sleepover. It was me, Evan (Hulehan), and Bryan (Frank), the other founding member. It was 7th grade and we assigned instruments before we could even play guitar,” said Andrew Pfeiffer(vocals/guitar/trombone). “The next year, we were playing the annual TC Titans Expo.”
Pfeiffer, Hulehan and Frank started by doing covers of a wide variety of music that was first popular from the '70s to the late '90s — Good Charlotte, The Spin Doctors, AC/DC, Sublime. They wrote a few original pieces, too.
It wasn’t until years later — around 2008 — that they got their first taste of reggae. They listened to SOJA (Soldiers Of Jah Army), an Arlington-based reggae band that enjoys U2-level popularity in South America. “We started seeing them live around town and it was inspiring to see what they were doing,” Hulehan said. “That was our first influence of reggae.”
“It’s positive music and uplifting music that you weren’t always hearing, which was refreshing in that moment in my life,” Pfieffer said.
They were hooked on music, and not even college could slow them down. With Pfeiffer at Wesleyan College in Connecticut, Hulehan at the University of Colorado and their friend and new band member Garrett Clausen at the University of Miami, the trio wrote songs collaboratively but remotely.
“We still recorded over 20 songs in the summer and winter breaks… We were still making content,” Hulehan said.
By 2010, Clausen officially joined the band on bass/vocals/saxophone and Colin Cantfil joined on trumpet; it was the official forming of FeelFree. They immediately started to release songs on the internet — two full albums’ worth of material.
The band also started doing hugely popular live shows in the region, including at the Fish Market on King Street (their last show there was in 2015, after the band started to draw too-rowdy crowds), and the District’s 9:30 Club. They also played in Baltimore at Soundstage. More recently, they have been expanding their touring area: They recent played two shows in Denver, and later this summer they will hit Richmond, Wilmington, N.C. and Ocean City, Md.
But they haven’t forgotten their roots: The band will be at the Del Ray Music Festival on Saturday, July 13. They return to the 9:30 Club as headliners on Saturday, July 27.
In a lot of ways, the band is operating like a start-up business, with every member wearing a lot of different hats. The band members are responding to emails, booking their own shows and handling their own accounting — and also trying to make ends meet.
The business is profitable. Their numbers on Spotify are way up, and the band’s music is reaching new people every day — and that’s the most rewarding part, Pfeiffer said.
But it hasn’t always been easy. For years, the band members have worked more than one job to keep makings ends meet. (Studio time is expensive.)
Right now, the band is working on a few songs and have a few more in the bank. Another album is in the works, but singles will be coming out in the meantime.
FeelFree
Since they were in middle school, the music industry has changed in a huge way.
“We don’t make as much money off of album sales as people used to,” Hulehan said. Most of their royalties are coming from streaming, not from album purchases. Merchandise is an increasingly important revenue stream.
In addition to making new music, the band wants to increase the number of tour dates and locations from the 70 shows per year they do now. They’re working toward hiring a full-time manager and a full-time booking agent.
They still plan to call Alexandria home. While a lot of musicians make big moves to New York or Los Angeles, FeelFree isn’t interested.
“You can move there and meet a lot of people in those cities, but it’s also a huge pond. Here, we have a lot of connections, and we’ve made a lot of headway in this area and in the venues here. With the internet, your music can still reach as many people no matter where you’re living,” Pfeiffer explained.
Their latest album, “Define The Free,” won Best Reggae Album of 2018 at the 31st annual DC Wammie Awards in March. Next time, maybe it’ll be a Grammy.
