UPDATE ALERT! (9/21/27) Every now and again a musician will reach out about a blog I wrote. Usually it’s a quick “thanks”, or a small correction of some real or perceived factual error. But once in a very long while it’s something more. Much more. And that’s what I received the other day from none other than former Freeloader Chris Cole, who sent me a whole bunch of new information on the band. I debated on what to do with it. Re-write this post? Create a new post? And at the end of the day it just made more sense to add Chris’ email more or less in his own words, so I added a new section at the bottom (other than info about the cover photo, which is now under the jacket picture).
ORIGINAL POST
AL: Hey, you know my dad collected ancient coins, from Rome, China, Siam, Persia… somehow they all ended up in a shoe box in New Jersey.
DIRK: Meaning?
AL: Coins travel, Dirk.
You may wonder why I’m opening this post with a bit of dialogue from the 2005 film Sahara, a big-budget, big-cast flop (and one which I, admittedly, enjoy). Somehow they all ended up in a shoebox in New Jersey. In the modern world it’s easy for objects to travel half way across the globe and end up on the top shelf of someone’s closet, or under their bed, a fact that may end up being disconcerting to future archaeologists as they dig through the rubble of early 2000s society following the seemingly inevitable apocalypse.
Al’s dad’s coins are much like records. Records travel, Dirk. People bring their records with them when they move, or they buy them when traveling and bring them home. And over the last 10 years or so, it’s never been easier for some random person in one country to sell a record to a random person in another country. Records travel, and I’m fascinated by their stories. The overwhelming majority of time, of course, you have no idea of the life your record had before making its way to your Kallax shelf. There might be clues – a newspaper clipping, a handwritten note, seeds from some dirt weed (primarily on gatefold releases from the 1970s…), but more often than not you’ll never know. Just as the person who owns it after you will never know about your experiences with the record.
On our most recent trip to Iceland I spent some time going through the non-Icelandic releases over at Lucky Records. It was the cover of 1985s Freeloader that caught my attention. A few quick searches revealed it to be a private press album by a band of the same name from Cincinnati. Literally the first thing that went through my mind was, how the hell did this record get all the way out here, to a store in Reykjavik? I’m sure it came to the shop as part of a collection. But how did it get to Iceland in the first place? Shipping to Iceland is pretty expensive, and there are import duties, so it seems unlikely to have been ordered via mail… but it could have been. Did someone pick it up on a visit to the States and bring it home? Did it make other stops, perhaps ending up in London first? The guys at the shop didn’t know, so I’ll never know. And I’ll think about it every time I play this record.
There isn’t a lot of info about Freeloader (the album is self-titled) online, though I did learn guitarist Michael Farrar passed away at the all-to-young age of 47 back in 2014. Bandmate Chris Cole has kept Mike’s legacy alive, posting various photos on his Legacy page HERE. I’ve been trying to track down the other band members but with no success so far – so guys, if any of you see this and want to share some memories about Freeloader, email me!
The cover image features Mike Ferrar’s dad, Al, sitting on his 1937 Indian Chief circa 1950.
The ragged text at the top was intended to be Freeloader’s trademark style for future records.
I dig this record. Arguably it stands a bit out-of-time, feeling more like an album from the 70s than from 1985. It’s solidly rock, with elements of prog and at times CSNY harmonies. The rhythm section can swing, and the guitars are adept at both strumming and shredding. “Never Never Girl” and “Rastafarian Polka” are Freeloader at their most 70s, chill and sensitive, while “My Girl” is them at their most rocking and contemporary, a song that could have easily hit the charts in ’85.
I’m very curious as to how many copies of this were pressed – my best guess is less than 500 (as I learned in the update below, the actal number was 300), and likely even fewer. A 2023 post on Gripsweat indicates that a handful of copies turned up about 10 years ago, but that’s about all the info I can find. If I learn more, I’ll definitely post an update. There are some videos of the band posted HERE, though I don’t think any of the songs are from this album. As for tracking down a copy of Freeloader for yourself, as of the time of this post there were three copies for sale on Discogs – two in the US ($30 and $70 respectively) and one in Greece (at a pretty outrageous $180)! Records travel, Dirk. Records travel.
UPDATE (9/21/27)
Freeloader in the words of member Chris Cole.
“Mike [Farrar] and I grew up together in Greenhills, OH, about 20 miles north of Cincinnati. He started playing his older brother’s 1963 Stratocaster when he was big enough to hold it right. I started playing drums in 4th grade school band. He and I first played in 7th grade, he with his Strat, me with a snare drum, tambourine, and a little metal ashtray with two little monkeys on it (I still have it holding a couple of his picks and that little card from his funeral). It made a really cool bell sound. No clue what we were doing. He ended up in a band first, Split Decision, they played a couple gigs and were even on local TV for some reason. We ended up playing together in 9th grade via the typical small town “cream to the top” process. A couple different names: Rock Road Animal Hospital (Rock Hospital); The Mossy Rocks (then Mozzirocks); Unison for our first high school talent show – we played “Breakout” and “Are You On My Side” by Shooting Star… I still have the audio cassette!
We hooked up with Tony [Moore] in the summer of’84 and started writing ridiculous amounts music immediately. Tony was and is the best bass player I’ve ever played with. He started playing violin in elementary school and exploded from there. He was truly awesome. I met his sister a few weeks later, but that’s another story…
“We holed up in Mike’s basement and recorded stuff on cassette using the boombox and dual-cassette deck method. It was so natural with those guys. The stuff we did just happened, I never had that unspoken connection with anyone else ever again. We gigged a bit but mostly we just wrote. But Tony was only around until ‘92 or so.
“We ended up pressing a whopping 300 copies, the idea being to send them to radio stations and record companies, blow their minds, and be rock stars. Mike had gotten a nice $$$$ graduation gift (he and I graduated in ‘85, Tony in ‘86), and the whole project cost like $3,000. We spent around 38 hours in the studio over three weeks, including final mix. We went in with around 22 songs. (Mike laid down 12 or so raw acoustic tunes). The ones that made it were not our best by far, they were simply the better takes and performances. We got “studio stupid” and rearranged stuff and used equipment just because it was there and butchered some really good music. Some of our basement cassette recordings were better performances by a long-shot. If we’d have done it all 10 years later, this would be a totally different narrative. (it’s really cringy, but we had our own ALBUM for Christ’s sake!)
“The corporate info was bullshit: F.I.L. Enterprises? It stands for “Fall In Love”……Mike and a girlfriend came up with that one. Four Eggs? No clue. But we were ASCAP members, we got checks for years, maybe a total of $13.00 (give or take).
“Mike and I stuck together and kept at it for years. We kept writing better music with better technology until he passed away in 2014. I got a call and went to the hospital, we joked that things were backwards, I was supposed to be the one gurney and he should’ve been visiting me. (After all, I was in charge of drugs-n-concussion, the reckless unpredictable devil-may-care one). He had suffered a dissected aorta. He coded in front of us, and died with me in his ear reminding him that we’re not done yet, we have too much music to write and trouble to get into, but if you know anything about those situations you know that unless your already opened up in the O.R., it’s curtains. It really fucked me up. Still does.
“As far as Tony goes, as I mentioned, I met his little sister Kelly not long after he joined up with Mike and I. She blew me away. We were together off and on for a couple years, then went our separate ways for 17 years or so, stumbled upon each other again and we’ve been married since 2003! So, Tony has been my brother-in law for 23 years.
“Mike and I wrote and recorded hundreds and hundreds and maybe a couple hundred more tunes, and if you’re a glutton for punishment, ask to hear some of it…….you got a 50-slot CD player?
“Thanks for making it this far, probably too many words I know, but that’s me and that’s how I be. Mike worked production and tech at a small local retirement community radio station for years until he died. He’d eventually give himself a morning news and traffic slot and always signed off saying, “Choose to make it a great day.” Pretty cool.”
I’m so grateful that Chris reached out. There was so little info about Freeloader online, and this gives us a fuller picture of the band and the men behind it.