There’s nothing like a good country song to stir your soul and rip open your heart. The genre tends to be poignant, drawing up real human experiences that are sometimes about joy and celebration, but mostly sorrowful, painful and achy heartbreaks!
Yes, I like to chalk up most country songs as crying-into-my-beer music because that’s usually what it makes me do – and I can’t get enough of it! There is an undeniable sentimentality, an emotional truth that rings out of the genre.
It has to be something to do with the southern charm or the rock-a-bye lull of the music, or maybe it’s the cold hard truth of the lyrics. Whatever it is, I tend to jump between both sides of the spectrum when it comes to country music, because it’s got all the feels! I can feel like someone else understands what it means to be broken and lonely one minute, or foot stompin’ on a bar table, the next! That’s the beauty of it, isn’t it?
The band, Home Free, definitely harnesses everything that is country into this really country song. First off, they are the world’s first all-vocal country band. Yep, all those magical layers of voices and noises that take you on a multidimensional journey through space and sound are their vocals! Secondly, they’re singing the beloved bluesy, folky back roads outlaw country, fiddle playin’ hill billy boogie song, “Man of Constant Sorrow.” It was once performed by the Stanley Brothers, Bob Dylan, and then revamped and re-popularized by The Soggy Bottom Boys for the hit motion picture, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” It’s a hundred-year-old song from 1913 and was originally called, “The Farewell Song,” written by D**k Burnett.
Home Free takes this tune and makes it their own, using their incredible range of voices to entertain and delight fans in the music video, which by the way, is just as equally as country. It appears as though they are somewhere wet and muddy in the bush, definitely far away from the concrete jungle, singing their hearts out. They’ve even incorporated a harmonica and mouth harp into the song. These are the only two (and really small percussion) instruments used and needless to say, it adds to their mystique. Home Free’s vocals are impressive, complementing and harmonizing with each other to pull off a version of the song that’s got me tapping my foot and snapping my fingers to the beat!
Click the video below to watch Home Free hit a home run with their all-vocal rendition of “Man of Constant Sorrow.”
