I did, and he asked good, narrowing questions, such as, "What genre of music do they play?" ("Electronic"), and "What decade are they from?" ("The '90s"). He was a walking encyclopedia of bands — certainly if I had heard of this band, he had, too. But after several guesses he was stumped.
"Is this a well-known band? Or someone obscure that only I would know?" he asked. I told him, "Everyone you know knows this band," and could not help but giggle a little. Finally, he rolled his eyes and asked, annoyed, "Is it ME?"
It was him, specifically his band Telethon — a fun, German-influenced, keyboard nonsense party that he would describe as "dance music from after the robot revolt." And as we continued to play his guessing game I repeated my little prank a half dozen more times with some of John Freeman's other bands. He had a grillion of them. But if you were a music fan, or an artist, a smartass, punk, or weirdo in Dallas or Denton in the 1990s, you probably already knew that.
Freeman started making noise around the University of North Texas's Bruce Hall in the fall of 1990. Show up at the Punk Rock Weenie Roast and you could watch a guy with Tourette's Syndrome sort of playing guitar and half crooning, half screeching original songs about TV's Webster ("I Touched Emmanuel Lewis") and the Kennedy assassination ("JFKaput!") in between Prince covers. It wasn't like anything you'd ever seen, and you either didn't get it at all or you could not get enough.
As a solo artist, his musicianship was clearly style over substance — a gifted writer to be sure, but John never had the patience to really learn how to play an instrument. Friend and bandmate Matt Pence (Centro-matic, Shakey Graves) remembers: "His mind moved incredibly fast — imagine a hummingbird — so in the time it took to learn even the simplest chord he'd have thought of 10 new song ideas. When he figured out he could use alternate tuning to change chords with just one finger, John's guitar lessons were over."
Freeman eventually recruited Pence and other talented friends to form the "band" Dooms UK. (Technically it was a band, but more specifically it was an art rock "secret society" whose secret was the members fucking ruled.) With the Dooms, he had a group of enthusiastic collaborators who could turn his rock 'n' roll dreams into reality. Now Freeman could concentrate on becoming the ultimate frontman — a role he was born to play (a reviewer once described his stage presence as "an existential imperative"). Sometimes he'd be the Dark Messiah. Sometimes he'd be "a god walkin'." Sometimes he'd drive a motorcycle into the Denton music venue, the Argo, dressed as "Baby USA" (if you guessed homemade flag diaper, bib and nothing else, you got it right).
Baby Daredevil
"He could fuck with an audience like a daredevil — lose and win them repeatedly within the same set, the same song even," says artist and friend, Martin Iles. "I was scared for him at times, but then he always managed to pull them in again."When Denton's Good/Bad Art Collective formed in 1993, John found an even bigger group of supportive, like-minded weirdos who invited (and encouraged) him to follow every crumb of an idea to its most absurd conclusion. He saturated the scene with dozens of new bands, including The Oval Teens, The Meat Helmets, Golden Vipers, The Cock-Outs, Duck Duck Annihilation, Piss Fantasy and the Julius Sumner Miller Experience. His growing list of potential new band names was in itself a work of art, as were every single one of his hand-drawn band flyers.
Freeman's music and lyrics ranged from naughty to downright disturbing, at a time before we were woke, and "it's funny because it's so wrong" was all the permission he needed. And while onstage he could be an impudent, insolent, outrageous little prick, in real life he was a goofball with a big heart and a savant-like ability to make you laugh harder than you thought possible.
"I'd never encountered a mind like his, so often and so easily spinning gold, lunging full force towards the best punchline or most exhilarating, flat-out-shocking comment," says friend and collaborator Will Johnson (Centro-matic, Monsters of Folk). "He was rapid-fire, in a way I imagine geniuses like Guthrie or Carlin would have been."
Being around John Freeman felt intoxicating. But in the mid-'90s, he went looking for his own high, experimenting first with speed, then heroin. Soon his songs about shooting up and jokes about junkies weren't funny anymore. By 1999, Dooms UK had broken up, the solo shows slowed and Freeman seemed to disappear for long stretches.
In 2000, a group of Good/Bad artists formed a Brooklyn satellite, and John followed in the summer of 2001. We were hanging out on the roof of their gallery space in Williamsburg when a friend walked up and handed John three black baseball ringer tees with the word "Psychos" on them and said, "Someone should start a band." That was the first of two events that year that would change New York forever. The Psychos! became, according to John, "the deadliest rock group in the world ... they will have you humming their songs all the way to the morgue." Songs such as "My Answer Is Crowbar" and "Lights Out, Knives In" thrilled audiences, and both "Johnny Murder" and "Harry Dagger" (EFF's Harry Warwick) delighted and damn near dominated New York's underground rock scene.
New York was John's fresh start, and the minute he arrived he started writing and performing with renewed energy. But New York also has drugs, and it didn't take John long to find them. After multiple interventions, trips to rehab, fundraising events to pay for the trips to rehab and brief moments of sobriety followed by relapse after inevitable relapse, he returned to Dallas in 2006. He still had dreams of making his mark. He relaunched Telethon as a full band with friends Jeremy Johnson and Micah Y (Mission Giant, O-D-EX). And with a small inheritance, he built Sloppyworld — a music and event space in Exposition Park that reignited Dallas' long-lost lust for John Freeman's music, art and particular brand of bullshit.
Sloppyworld was short-lived — killed by bureaucracy and John's lack of patience for it (imagine a hummingbird), and in 2008 he said his final farewell to the town that raised him, settling permanently in Portland with his "Wifey," artist Wells Tuthill. And while he continued making art and music, it was mostly at home with friends or on the occasional visit to Dallas for a Dutch Treats or Telethon gig.
At 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 13, Wells discovered John deceased in his apartment. After battling addiction and an increasing number of health issues over the years, his death at the young age of 52 was not a surprise but still a total shock. Once the loudest, wildest, daredevil darling of the Dallas scene, it's impossible to convey everything he did, everything he was, or everything he meant to us all these years. Farewell to our favorite artist, musician, writer, cartoonist, creator of duct tape haute couture and friend.
