Over the years he's been called "The Guy", "The man with the flip top head", "Earthquake" and even Captain Heavy in the early days of the Dr. Demento Show. The list goes on.This man has tasted the highs and the lows in an industry that to many is questionable. When the music stopped being what sold and the image became what music execs pandered to the public, any ordinary musician would have hung up the guitar straps long ago. This man continues to out jam the up and coming stars the Labels want you to buy, and his message will provoke emotions and thoughts that make you pay attention.
He considers himself a bred Texan, both parents natives of the Grand State, who moved to California where he was born shortly after in January of 1953.
If you ask him when it all started he'd probably tell you it was in 1958 when he was 5 years old, listening to Johnny Cash and his father had given him an acoustic guitar, too big for his hands. He taught himself to play it like a lap steel, his first song "Ring of Fire" as he listened to the radio.
He wasn't your average child, and that was made clear at age six when he picked up his father's little, hard cover, algebra book and taught himself how to do algebraic math, unassisted. This, of course created one heck of an issue with his third grade teacher who just couldn't understand what he was doing, and why he behaved like a six year old when stuck in the corner with a box of crayons nearby. You might have already gathered that he was just six years old in third grade.
He has opened for Meat Loaf Soul when Meat Loaf was a barefooted, singing harmonica players fresh in L.A.; found out how cool Casey Kasem was during a taping of his Battle of the Bands, when Edison moved a bit quick and Paul Stoop moved a bit faster, taking Ed's guitar in the handoff and turning just in time to collide with Casey's head, but that is another story to tell.
It is safe to say this man has been around the block a few times.
He started his career on the guitar and took up the bass out of necessity, a talent that afforded him the ability to pretty much pick up any instrument with ease; the piano, drums, mellobar, slide, lap steel and even the banjo.
A well educated man, those early years barely glimpsing into what would be a very diversified life.
A music major with electronics and theology just to spice things up, certainly makes for a vast and interesting range of topics 'round the table. Add to that the self-study of Astrology to better understand himself and the influences that impact life around him, the man is a consummate "Thinker", and not at all afraid to share his views on life when asked. His music self evident of this.
The down side of all this talent is the visionary that seeks perfection. The message requires the soul to sing it. After all it's his story. The music is his blood and the words his soul.
A few of his early 1990's recordings involve him on each instrument, the layers of harmony his voice. He bleeds music. (Go ahead and check them out).
They say in Astrology that Capricorns are born old and grow young, sort of living life in reverse. This could be telling as we look back over his life. His first pro gig at the young age of 14, playing five nights a week in a teen club called the "Teen and Twenty Club" which later became the Syndicate 3000, right next door to one of California's most famous clubs, The Golden Bear. At age 18 he was playing at The Posh Night Club where they separated him from the crowd with a pane of glass (underage).
From there we can see his success with the band Kingdom on Specialty Records, staying in the billboard top 200 for several weeks. His manager then was Barry Hansen who is best known for his syndicated radio show, Dr. Demento. Renaissance Fair was another band with him, who enthralled the L.A. basin for many years.
He can hold his head up high, the man with the right amount of gravel and grit to his voice with that layer of sultry velvet that seeps into your pores and takes you along for the ride like some drug induced field trip.
I love to sit and listen to the lyrics, this soulful scholar, a man out of time and yet for all times.
...and so I play my blues, a celebration of suffering, a cosmic middle finger to pain and injustice. 2.16.13 Edison Freeman
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