Phil Freeman, the singer of the Rock ‘N’ Roll trio band called SMALL TOWN TITANS, was very kind and gave me an interview and I have to say we had a really nice time together. Because they are not so popular in Europe we talked about their formation and musical background. And of course we also talked about their new album “The Ride” which is released on the 13th of November and about its process, because they had a long process of producing it since the pandemic hit the world.

Sarah-Jane: When did the band get started and how did you get together?

Phil Freeman: We got together in 2011 right before I graduated college. We all met on Lebanon Valley College, that's really close to Hershey Pennsylvania, that is where we all met. We've been together ever since then, it's the original line up. We started as a five peace and moved to a four peace and become a three peace. So I was originally the lead singer and rhythm guitarist and then I ended up being the bass player once the fourth member left the band. And we really enjoy making music. We've done a lot together, made a lot of albums and making music together.

Sarah-Jane: How do you distribute the workload between the three of you since you do not have a management or label? Who makes the final decision on things or are you all equal?

Phil Freeman: Actually we do have a label. That's actually something we wanted to make clear. We did just signed a deal with AntiFragile Music a couple months ago and it's been great, it's been wonderful to work with. We also have a really awesome marketing team that works with us. From a company that’s called Indepreneur. So they're fantastic as well. We have a small team but we still do a lot of work between the three of us and we have, (he laughs) it's a lot like a small business, we share documents, we have the same programs, we keep track of who is doing what, schedule interviews. And some of us are better in certain things than others. For example Jonny helps run the social media, I take care of making sure that people get like stuff that they ordered on the stores. I'm taking care of working with the customer services team to make sure everybody is getting their stuff. Ben is really good in designing our T-shirts and all our merchandise. So it's really cool and we have a nice team. And our manager Shell. He helps us and gives us all kind of advice. He is like the think tank. He is the big brain of the operation that gives us all the ideas. He is a good partner to work with.

Sarah-Jane: So you are all equal in making decisions?

Phil Freeman: Yeah absolutely. What is so nice with the record and the label we are with, it's a partnership. There's a lot of situations where a record company will tell you what to do and you ask why and they tell you "because we said so". And it's not that situation with them. It's like a partnership. The same thing with our business manager. Everybody is on an equal playing field working together which is really nice. And at the end of the day we are the once to get to call the shots. It's probably the best situation that a band could be in.

Sarah-Jane: It is a more personal question. Do you have a job besides the band or can you live from making music?

Phil Freeman: I had been working as a voice coach. I’m a self-employed voice coach, I teach people how to sing. I meet students over Zoom, so I have students all over the world. I’ve been doing it for 8 years full time now. And the flexibility of that work allows me to go on tour with the band and tell students that I gonna have to take a break as I go on tour with the band and then we schedule times when I come back. So that’s been great to be able to work from myself with music for as long as I had. But to be completely honest with you and to also talk to the rest of the world about people who want to be in rock bands, it takes a lot of sacrifice. We’ve been together as a band, it’ll be 10 years in May 2021, and it’s only in the past two or three years that we’ve been able to make a decent enough living to be able to make a livin from it, if that makes sense. So we had to do side jobs, we had to take time off from touring sometimes in order for some of us to be able to work. And you know we all coming from different living situations and different personal and professional situations, but we’ve all stucked to it, we put our nose into grindstone as they say and we kept working until we hit the jackpot and that was with our cover of “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” that is what put us on the map and we were very happy about that.

Sarah-Jane: Since you have such an incredible voice, do have any musical training?

Phil Freeman: Yeah I had a lot of great coaches and teachers. My mom was a wonderful singer and my dad is a great singer as well and I grew up in an environment where there was music all the time and I studied voice and music as well. I’m also obsessed with it, I love singing and learning about the voice and helping people how to sing, so I’m constantly doing that.

Sarah-Jane: What’s with the others, did they come from different backgrounds?

Phil Freeman:Yeah Ben, the guitarist, he has always been musical. Despite the rest of his family not necessarily being super musical or at least what I know of, he was very musical talented from an early age and also taught himself how play piano and guitar and has written music for ever since high school just like me. But he also played football, so a lot of his focus during college before he joined the band was football and breaking the rushing record for American Football. So that was his background. And then Jonny, he is a huge fan of music and entertainment and went to concerts during his teenage years and his first concert was Velvet Revolver and that’s what inspired him to playing the drums and he actually started taking lessons from Jeremy Hummel who was the drummer for Breaking Benjamin during the “We Are Not Alone” record. So we all come from different musical experiences and backgrounds and it all works together. As the years go on it becomes even easier to write music together.

Sarah-Jane: Do you all still have musical training?

Phil Freeman:I haven’t gone and to be honest with you I probably should go to another voice coach like Melissa Cross or somebody just to keep you fresh but I have been self training and teaching for ever since I graduated college. It’s the same with the guys, we do all self-practice and self-training currently. But I’m always open to working with a coach if the time is right. It’s like Neil Peart from Rush, one of the best drummers, right at the peak of his career, he decided to go to learn jazz drums because he had never learned it before and tried to put a new spin on his skill set.

Sarah-Jane: How long did it take to produce the album? Did you face any problems due to Covid-19?

Phil Freeman: The recording of this album, we started in December 2019, I’m not sure, but I know it was right at the end of 2019 that we stared recording tracks for the album. And we did it with Grant McFarland and Carson Slovak of Atrium Audio these guys are awesome, their fantastic producers. So we were so happy to work with them and we were recording from a studio called think loud studio, it was in York, PA and everything was great and then the pandemic hit and unfortunately think loud studio had to close his doors, so we had studio time schedule to April and then we had to keep delaying recording, because Pennsylvania was called a red phase, so it was one of the situations where we could not go in and record at the studio. So we had to reschedule and we got back in July and our producers found a studio that they could temporarily work from and it just so happens that the studio that they were temporary working from was the studio that we recorded our very first two releases with. Which is like a full circle moment, it was amazing. One of our friends from college Taylor, she owns the studio, so that was really cool to work with seven waved studios again and record two songs there. But we were wearing masks in between takes and the studio itself was not air conditioned, so we had to turn off the air conditioners. So we were sweating, it was fun and it was awesome. It was a great experience, but a challenge to say the least. And then not only that a bunch of things happened there was a challenging neighbour to the studio. The studio is connected to a series of apartments and one of the neighbours was being very rude and it just turned into this big mess. 17.05 unfortunately Seventh Wave Studio had to find another location and temporarily shut down. Again Grant and Carson had to move again. So we ended up finishing the record at a place in Lancaster County in PA still with the same producer. And we finally finished the record on our last day in the studio was September 4th. As soon as we finished the record we had to focus on making sure we got all the CDs printed that we need get printed. It was just crazy that we finished the record; Less than three months before we release the record. It’s kinda crazy that we did that but that is what happens when you finish a record in the middle of a pandemic. It could’ve been done way sooner, but because of the complications with Covid it made things more of a challenge.

Sarah-Jane: What is your personal experience during the time of production?

Phil Freeman: There is a track on the record where I led out scream for a very long time. It was very inspired by Chester Bennigton’s scream in towards the end “Given Up” by Linkin Park. I decided to do something that was inspired by that scream. I was in the studio with Grants and Grant actually timed the scream. And this is a Grammy nominated producer that saying this so like I had a hard time leaving the studio because my head was so big, my ego is inflated so much, because he said: „Dude, that scream was 22 seconds long. I’ve never heard that, I’ve never seen that oh my gosh.” So the fact *laughs* that a Grammy nominated producer is saying that is pretty awesome. I love what I do, I don’t necessarily think that I’m the best. I just love what I do and I’ve been doing it for a long time and people seem to like what I do. And the fact that that came out of my mouth, I was able to do multiple takes of it in one go. It was awesome! It was cool to see that I was capable of that. It’s just a testament to all the awesome coaches that I had, the amazing experiences that I had and the fact I have two awesome brothers in my band that I can write such cool music that allows me to do fun stuff like that. So that was a special moment for sure.

Sarah-Jane: What message do you want to get across with the album?

Phil Freeman: If think the title puts it pretty well - “The Ride”. There’s a lot of changes there’s a lot of variation in the music, there are all kinds of different rhythms, different keys, different moods. You can even say each song almost represents a different color or different shades. And the last track of the record is “The Ride”. And it just talks about all the things you go through in life, the roller-coaster of emotions that you feel and how there is a time pretty much for anything and everything. And with that said, I think that we were trying to say with this record is that is has been a ride for us as a band, it’s been a ride for all of us together as the human race this whole entire year. We have never seen anything like this at least in everyone’s life time. We have definitely seen similar things in the past but nobody living or barely anyone living today has seen it. So everybody has been trough quite a ride in 2020 and so we hope that this album gives everybody a positive soundtrack and helps everyone celebrate getting through 2020 and getting into a much more stable, much more celebratory year which is 2021, one can only hope.

Sarah-Jane: Was the song “Junkie For You” rerecorded again? It sounds more intensive this time.

Phil Freeman: We actually rerecorded that in April of 2018 with Howard Benson. We actually had the opportunity to go out to Los Angeles and rerecorded that song at a studio. Or at least we recorded the guitars and the vocals with him. We kept the original drum tracks and the original guitars but we just layered a lot of stuff on top of the old track and took away some of the others stuff. So there is an original parts of the 2016 version of the song and a whole bunch of new stuff and remixed and remastered. It was a really cool opportunity and we were really excited to put this on the record as well.

Sarah-Jane: Why did you put it on the record now?

Phil Freeman: Well we released it as a single in 2018 and we thought why don’t we try putting this on the record to get it to a wider audience. Because in 2018 it did okay for us but that was before Grinch that hit so we want it to put it on at least on a compilation on some kind whether on an EP or an album coming up, so we’ve decided to put this new mix on the record, so that our new fans will get a chance to listen to it, maybe they haven’t heard it before.

Sarah-Jane: You wrote „The Ride“ right before the pandamic. Did you record the video according to the situation?

Phil Freeman: That is what is really interesting about the ride. The lyrics to “the Ride” were written about a year and a half before that. I remember I went to a concert and Johnny was there too. And we saw the Foo Fighters and that weekend after watching that concert I wrote like nine or ten songs in a row. It was kinda like these crazy creative flow. The ride a least some of the lyrics for the ride were a part of that. So I wrote it a year and a half before the pandemic hit which is a kind of crazy. And then Ben had this riff, he’s had that riff since high school, so the fact that we put those two things together, those lyrics and then what we ended up writing for the ride and finishing that before the pandemic hit? It was kind of crazy! It felt like we were really creepy and weird way like predicting the future which is still kinda scary to me. It means so much more when you put it into the context of what has happened this year. “The Ride” gave us quite the ride.

Sarah-Jane: But did you record the video according to the situation?

Phil Freeman: Yes, we did. I think it was in April or May that we put this music video together. And we made it to look like a video call. Because we couldn’t get together like if anything probably it wasn’t a good idea for us to get together at the time, because we did not know a lot about the virus at the time like collectively. It just hit the United States a few weeks back. Most of the business where shut down. Yeah that was doing during that time, for sure.

Sarah-Jane: The song „When it All Comes Down“ is more in the direction of metal although metal is not represented too much on the album. What inspired you to do this song? Was it difficult to transform this song with your voice?

Phil Freeman: No I had a ton of fun of recording a metal style. I have train metal screaming, self-trained metal scream for the past four or five years, I’m messing around with demos and helping students learn how to scream that way without hurting their voice. So that gives me the chance to do this with my band and because Jonny wanted to write an angry song and Ben wanted to write a metal song, which is hilarious, because Ben for the longest time “Oh I hate screaming” and all suddenly wants to do a metal song. So that was the perfect opportunity to do it and that’s what we did. And we were frustrated about people handling the pandemic. And “When it all comes down” is just pretty like “Hey, we’re just trying living our lives. Screw you!”.

Sarah-Jane: Let’s talk about the upcoming livestream. I’ve read you do very lively shows.
What is the challenge of doing a livestream performance for your band? Do you need the reaction of the audience for the performance?

Phil Freeman: We actually have a really amazing team at a place called Rock Mill Industries, it’s the same location we rehearse from on a weekly basis. And they have a whole team that works on the cameras, mixes the sound, make sure that they communicate with the website that hosts the streaming show. We hired them to worry about all of that and we just focus on social media, getting the word out about the shows and then on the day itself we show up and we play and it’s awesome. It’s also fun to see the comments fly by. I guess the biggest challenge is playing to an audience that you cannot see and you cannot hear that is the biggest challenge. Like seeing the comments in the chat like go by, helps a lot, because you know that there a people watching what you are doing. But not having the sound of the crowd in front of you and not being able to hear people scream and shout and interact with you or sing along with the songs that does make for a very different experience. So we kind of have to remind ourselves that there’s hundreds of people watching of what we are doing and we have to give them a show that it makes seem like they are there. That is probably the biggest challenge of the livestream.

Sarah-Jane: Who has the creative ideas for the videos?

Phil Freeman: That is a mixture. Ben does a lot of directing for it and then Johnny and I will give our feedback and our ideas. But we have a guy by the name of Josh Nesmith of Nesmith Films and he’s the guy doing most of our music video work. And he is fantastic, he does a really good job. I would say that Josh at least when it comes to the video is the fourth member of the band.

Phil Freeman: That was awesome. Thank you so much for the interview. This was a lot of fun, I appreciate that.

Sarah-Jane: Thank you for taking the time! It was so interesting to get to know you.