It’s Free, Man: Freeman Concert brings local, national bands together for free music
April 22, 2009
After five years, the Freeman Spring Concert continues to grow and bring in big-name bands.
The concert, hosted by the Freeman Alumni Committee at 4 p.m. Saturday in Forker parking lot, will feature local artists The Anytime, The Dig Angees, Tempest Rose and The Sloe Kids along with All The Right Moves and headlining act Every Avenue.
Now in its fifth year, the concert was first held in 2005, the year Veishea events were canceled because of the previous year’s riots. Over the years, the concert has hosted acts like Less Than Jake, The Plain White T’s and Ames natives Radio Moscow and The Envy Corps.
“From there it’s grown to what we have today,” said Jared Wilson, president of the Freeman Alumni Committee and senior in agronomy. “I guess the goal is … to provide a quality free concert to the students of Iowa State and the surrounding communities, and the other is to really promote Iowa State and Freeman Hall and the residence halls through throwing a really good concert.”
Wilson said there was no way to tell exactly how many people attend the concert every year, because people come and go, but said previous headlining acts said they estimated up to 3,500 people showed up last year.
Selecting bands is not an easy task, Wilson said, and the committee tries to select a wide variety of well-known bands that fit the committee’s budget.
“We start by looking at a group of bands within our price range,” Wilson said. “Once we get a list of those, we go to Facebook and see how many Iowa State fans they have on Facebook. We think that that’s the best way to see how popular a band is going to be.”
This year, the concert serves as the final event of the Inter Residence Hall Association’s Residence Hall Week. Wilson said the committee tried to book a couple of local bands, such as Tempest Rose, made up of students in the residence halls.
Oliva Orozco, member of the committee and senior in child, adult and family services, said the reason she likes the concert is because the headlining bands sometimes are not incredibly well known, but later rise to national acclaim.
Wilson agreed.
“Plain White T’s is obviously the big one, they came out with ‘Hey There Delilah’ probably six months after they played our show and Motion City Soundtrack, who also hit it big, played at our concert,” Wilson said.