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St. Practice Day at Cowley'sFriday March 10th at
Cowley's in Farmington! There was a time not long ago where this was the view from the stage during our annual Free Beer show around St. Patrick's Day at Cowley's. Okay, you got me. This picture is from 2008 from the stage at Cowley's! It was 15 years ago! Free Beer was known for our "25 minutes of rock, 25 minutes of Irish Tunes with Jim Flynn and Ron Jewell, 10 minutes off, repeat every hour for 13 hours" marathon St. Patrick's Day gigs. The crowd was nuts. People were downright promiscuous. There may have been drinking. There may have been a lot of drinking. The Sock Monkey was violated. We were on top of our game. Well, that was 15 years ago! We're not doing a marathon set. Ron and Jim will not be joining us to do Irish tunes. It's not St. Patty's day. It's the week before on Friday, March 11th at 9PM. The Sock Monkey is in a safe space. What we CAN promise is that we WILL do two pretty dynomite sets of good old RAWK that you can dance to. There will be drinking. We will take 10 minutes off that will extend into about 45 because we miss talking to our friends. And we will be at Cowley's so that plenty Irish enough for us. Come on out and join us. I hope we didn't oversell it!! John Cowley and Sons Pub is located at 33338 Grand River Ave, Farmington, MI 48336. Park in the back. We play upstairs. We go on about 9:00P. We play until someone tells us to stop! |
Recent History
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BeerMASSaturday December 10th
Cowley's in Farmington! It's the most wonderful time to Drink Beer! And to listen to Free Beer do one of our very few "retirement" concerts celebrating one of our favorite made up holidays "BeerMas"!! It's that yearly pilgrimage to Cowley's in downtown Farmington to get the gang back together for one last hurrah in 2022. We celebrated that it was just slightly better than the year before it and a lot better than two years ago! We were on stage on Saturday, December 10th from 9PMish to just after Midnightish ... we played our Christmas songs. We practiced in advance of the gig!! |
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Free Beer Hall O Ween Party
Our annual Hall Party for the Spookiest Day of the Year is On!! Yes sir, ma'am. Free Beer is back at it this Friday. We have found a Hall that loves us, the Northville Eagles Hall at 113 S. Center Street in Downtown Northville. We bring back many of the staples that made the old home spun Hall O Ween Parties special. There will be the obligitory costume contest, all the spooky decorations and our Halloween Themed set (remember, this is where the Rocky Horror Picture Show set was born). The cover chage ($5) at the door is there and the excellent bartenders and not very expensive drink menu is in full play. Plus, there is FOOD this year. Yes indeed! Sliders and Fries starting at 6:30PM so it pays to get there early and soil your costume with a mustard stain. The Northville Eagles Hall is located at 113 S Center Street in Northville, MI 48167. There is plenty of parking in the structures to the south of the building. |
BEERMAS AT COWLEY'S SAT DECEMBER 4TH
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It's the most wonderful time to drink beer!!
Cowley's is still around and since our retirement doesn't seem to be sticking we might as well play at Cowley's for our annual "BeerMas" show. We don't know how long either of us will be around so we might as well take advantage of it! It's a good time for a holiday show. At 5:30 is the Farmington Holly Days parade and from 6P to 8P it's the tree lighting. After all that outdoor activity it will be nice to warm up inside Cowley's have a beer and a warm meal and listen to some Christmas songs from Free Beer ... then we will kick into our regular set so you can work off some of the holiday meal. Looking forward to seeing you there. John Cowley and Sons Pub is located at 33338 Grand River Ave, Farmington, MI 48336. Park in the back. We play upstairs. We go on about 9:00P. We play until someone tells us to stop. |
Thanksgiving Eve
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Free Beer rivives "Amateur Night" Tradition at Northville Eagles
Every year Free Beer would play the night before Thanksgiving. It's as close to a "gimme putt" as there is in the bar band business. You open the doors and everyone looking for a way to get away from their family and have some drinks with their friends just shows up. A little different this year with the threat of a Pandemic looming, but results were still the same. Instead of the Library Pub in Novi, the site was the Northville Eagles hall, who booked our "Package Deal" of Halloween and Thanksgiving eves. All of our friends showed up, we drank, rocked and had a great time. Kurt threw a scare into as he was not feeling well, and this time Johnny Allen was NOT available. But Kurt got better and was ready to rock when the lights went on. |
Halloween Free Beer Style
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Why have a hall party when you can have a Hall O Ween Party?
Free Beer has a history of doing Hall-O-Ween parties. We did one at the Northville Eagles Hall in 2016 and 2019 with all the fixings...a few scary songs, a costume contest, 50/50 ... this year got a little weird when Jim announced two days before the gig on October 29th at the Northville Eagles hall that he might have the flu and was going to get tested for COVID. He didn't have the Rona, but was still not in shape to set up the PA and play guitar all night long. Luckily, we know Johnny Allen from the Love Junkies who knows almost every song ever written and was willing to sit in for Jim this night. Jim ended up feeling better and stopping by the gig long enough to play guitar for the three songs that Johnny didn't know. |
THE FREE BEER LUAU AT MAI TIKI Resort near Oscoda
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Free Beer headed north the weekend of Saturday, September 18
Every Year, Free Beer takes a vacation to the Mai Tiki resort just south of Oscoda. We drive in Friday night, have a campfire, get up and have fund in Lake Huron Saturday morning, then cook way too much food and feast. THEN Free Beer plays a set in the sands on the shore of Lake Huron! What a hoot!! Even if you didn't have a reservation at the resort, you were welcome to crash the tent on Saturday night and help us celebrate nothing!! This year, Bobby White brought his guitar and Scott, Kurt and Bobby did a fireside acoustic jam on Friday night. Saturday featured the usual silliness with a tent full of fans and 5 guys who clearly had not practice enough due to COVID. We made it through the show, made it up as we went along and had a great time ... we even stayed most of Sunday to take advantage of the unseasonably cold weather!! |
Free Beer Returns to Cowley's!!
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Free Beer recovers at Cowley's on Saturday, July 17th
Every time we think this Free Beer thing has run it's course, a great audience like Cowley's on Saturday July 17th reminds us how much fun this really is. Thanks to the Farmington Founders Festival, we had a great crowd to watch us set up! Dinner was a bit of a gamble as the labor crisis raised it's ugly head as the reduced waitstaff and kitchen crew, featuring mostly Cowley's family members came to the rescue. But who cares man, it was Free Beer night at long last. The first set went really well despite some memory lapses and a lot of our regulars from First Friday with Free Beer were in attendance. We took a nice long break to get a chance to chat with everyone then launched into set two. This is where it was a bit astounding. Usually the crowd thins out, but I swear there were more people there when we quit playing at 1AM than there was when we started playing at 11P! Thanks to all y'all, especially Jim's family from Cleveland who drove all the way up only to have the end of Cleveland Rocks feature our special Ohio State Sucks! ending. Note: Clevelanders did not take kindly to that an physically attacked our Keyboard player!!. Thanks to the Cowley family for a great night, surviving COVID and staying open until next St. Patrick's Day. Hopefully we get to play a part in that final weekend!! |
THE FREE BEER BLOG
So much stuff started piling up on this page it was getting hard to load. So every six months, we will push it back to the blog ... which technically our home page is ... since it tells the story of Free Beer in pictures, text and links in a chronological order ... that's kinda what a Blog is. So we're owning up to it. If you have read this far, why not go for the long haul? Click here to head down memory lane!!
The Last Waltz
THe Final Free Beer show after 23 years
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Free Beer shares the stage with ex band members
for one last jam There was lots of anticipation for the Final Free Beer show on Friday January 27, 2017 at John Cowley and Sons Pub. Ever since we annouced our retirement way back on Friday, September 18th, we have looking toward the date on the calendar. We picked Cowley's since it has been our home bar for the last 10 years. We've played more gigs there than anywhere. We picked the LAST Friday of the month because we have played the FIRST Friday of almost every month at Cowley's. Chatter about the show continued to get louder and louder as the show got closer. We knew it was going to be a pretty big crowd. Every single person we knew was either going, or wished they could be there. We went and set the PA system up the night before because we knew everyone would get their early to get a seat. And we were right. We were there early. Fans started showing up right away, and they kept coming and coming and coming until Cowley's was jam packed. |
Want to see all the pictures? Click Here
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Sadly, we were without our diligent Drummer Tom Daldin who blew out his hearing at the BeerMas show and was told by doctors that he could no longer be in places where there are loud noises. It was really sad that Tom couldn't be there. He's was the one ingredient that made Free Beer sound different than everyone else, and his "Crazy Ivan" stops can be replicated by no one. But we are a lucky band to have someone as talented as Steve Tocco sitting in the wings ready to man the kit who knows our entire set list without practice. Thank You STEVE!!
We even employed some new technology to make sure any out of town fans got to see the last show, we broadcasted the show on Facebook Live! Believe it or not, by the end of the night, 1331 people tuned into the feed including people in Ohio, St. Louis, California ... Even TOKYO!!
We even employed some new technology to make sure any out of town fans got to see the last show, we broadcasted the show on Facebook Live! Believe it or not, by the end of the night, 1331 people tuned into the feed including people in Ohio, St. Louis, California ... Even TOKYO!!
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Videos from the Final Show
PA System Set Up Fireworks
Facebook Feed Set One
Facebook Feed Set Two
Crazy Little Thing Called Love --
Sally O'Malley
Little Less Conversation -- Dee Dee Judy
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We started early at 9PM and kicked off the set with an introduction from Scott Vertical Sitarek, just like our first show in Kevin Yonker's Garage back in 1993. We kicked it off with Cheap Trick's Hello There and cruised through set number one. Packed dance floor, people dancing in the front, back and all along the bar. We did our "Most important 4 letter word in our English Language ... BEER!" cheer. Everyone joined in. It was an awesome feeling seeing everyone you know watch you do the thing you love to do the most.
Set two started and we brought up some of our past bandmates from the crowd. We kicked off set two with Kevin Yonker, Drummer #1 at the kit, playing the first 3 songs we ever played ... Rock & Roll Radio by the Ramones, Dream All Day by The Posies and Should I Stay from the Clash. Next up was Bass Player #5, Dewey Larkin. He'd been with the band for 10 years, replacing Jeff Brookmyer when he started his own band, then in turn getting replaced by Jeff Brookmyer when his Travel Schedule was too tenuous to continue last year. He sat in on a very special version of Little Less Conversation featuring Marcel Lim with his tap shoes adding to the rhythm section with some Irish Dance Steps. Next up was Jim's new daughter to be Julia. She gave another rousing rendition of "Suffragette City" with Dewey on Bass. Dewey finished off his set with Hash Pipe. Next up was Drummer #4 TJ Collica. We haven't seen much of him in the last few years. He surprised us with a visit to the final gig and played Pump It Up. Drummer #5 Stefan Raraigh popped up on stage next for Blur's Song #2. Last but not least was Bass Player #2, Marty Beem. He only played two gigs during his tenure after filling in for our original bass player Paul Sevigny a number of times. We rocked out Steppin' Stone. Then we got the five of us back up on stage to blow through the rest of our final set together. We did the dance songs, the show tunes, the Violent Femmes set, Brittney Spears for Laura C and ended it as we always have over the years ... The Doors "Love Me Two Times" into Cora's answering machine followed by a "We're Free Beer ... THANK YOU VERY MUCH GOODNIGHT!". And that was it. Were we sad? Naw. For 23 years, we've been able to do what we love to do in front of our best friends ... be they someone who was there at the beginning like Keith Tyler, our families who have known us for our entire life, or someone who just happened to stumble upon us at the bar and kept coming because they had as much fun as we were having that night. The best part about the evening is that almost everyone was there ... our old friends, our family and our new friends. It was perfect. Without you it would not have been. THANK YOU for 23 great years!
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Our Retirement Letter
AN OPEN LETTER TO FREE BEER FANS
If you're wondering how fast 23 years can fly by...let us tell you... It's seems faster than a minute waltz, quicker than the fade out on the career of Justin Bieber, and speedier than bananas to turn from green to squishy black. Free Beer has been Free Beer for a long time. We started our 23rd year in June and we just made the decision that there won't be a 24th. This has been a journey that has lasted far longer than any of us expected. We've had friends of the band pass away and others have just faded away. Leaving a memory of those times and us wondering: "...hey, remember that one girl who used to come to a lot of shows - - what happened to her?" |
Free Beer is Retiring after 23 years!
On stage at Cowley's during the Harvest Moon Concert on Friday September 16th, we broke it to the fans. Free Beer's last show will be on January 27th, 2017, the LAST Friday of January. Kinda symbolic that the band that plays on the First Friday each month at Cowley's is going to end it on the Last Friday. For those of you that are counting, that means there are only 2 public shows left. If you have been procrastinating for the last 20 or so years, it's GO TIME! Start making plans to see us before your that person who missed all 465 shows and has to fib about seeing "Detroit's Most Persistant Band".
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The same thing happened to her that is happening to us - - Life happened. We're all busier and stretched thin. We have commitments upon commitments and things to do and people to see.
All the Bar Gigs, backyard parties, Weddings, Edelfests, Ford Corporate Gigs, and the shows we can't remember and the ones we'll never forget. We played the Royal Oak Music theater on back to back new years eve shows. And that second year, we looked out at 1500 people who were looking back at us like WE were the ones who wrote that Foo Fighters song. Believe me, when that happens, you never forget that feeling. Oh, and we played a company holiday party that was scattered among 3 floors of a massive office building. At one point the last 5 people who were watching us, got on the elevator and left in mid-song leaving us all alone on our floor. You don't forget that feeling either. Our knees hurt, wrapping up cords at 130 in the morning gets old and it's time to sing Goodnight Irene. We still have a few more shows to play this year and we're going out with a bang on January 27 at John Cowley & Sons They've been our home bar for 10 years and we will miss them like Dorothy misses the Scarecrow. It's a poetic end that for all those years we played First Fridays, that the last Free Beer show there should be on the Last Friday of January. If you're reading this, you're part of the Free Beer legacy and friendship circle. Remember us as a band who played other people's music with vim and vigor, did our best when some days we were painfully aware that a few lessons would have really made a difference in our skills, but at the end of the song, we all stopped together - - and that's all that really matters. We love you more than you'll ever know, Kurt, Scott, Tom, Jeff and Jim |
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Random Free Beer Related Stuff
Free Beer on Under The Radar MichiganWhat a great episode of Under The Radar Michigan featuring Free Beer recording our video at Groove Box studios.
Here's a link to the episode on UTR Michigan that ran this morning Here's a link to the video we recorded of "Love Me Two Times". |
Nice Article By Gary Graff In the Oakland Press
We know good journalism when we read it ... Thanks to Gary Graff for digging up the dirt on Free Beer and putting it in the Oakland Press. Appreciate it!!
Finally, Someone Sets The Numbers Straight!!
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Free Beer?Some people will go through anything to get some Free Beer!!
How to Catch A Canadian
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Kurt does a Girly Shot!See what happens when Emily sticks something hard in Kurt's mouth, and then the end of it gets all creamy and white, so Kurt rears his head back and swallows all of it, wipes the residue off his chin, just to lean forward all satisfied.
Watch the video and see if we here at www.freebeernet.com have any part of this incorrect. Enjoy! 
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