Searching. Living life on the trail of the buffalo. From the beginning it seems, I’ve been following after something. Like reaching Western Maryland and taking a left to head south. We’d kiss up against the Appalachians and I was transported. Called them the Painted Mountains, forever etching their beauty into my memories.

From a young age, the visual was magical. Running and playing in creeks, swamps, the woods, railroad tracks – a limitless, imaginative world. Still, I kept looking, following after something. Somewhere along the way I came across words. Most I didn’t know and quite a few I couldn’t say. Words took a leap of faith to understand and once I found a dictionary they were leaping off the page.

The band’s name, Freedom Alley, conjures up notions of hippies from the 60s, part of an underground cover network to help folks find freedom. Well, none of that is really true. We weren’t part of any affiliation except the camaraderie we shared and the reverence we honored. We had a lot of enjoyment back then…filled with angst and brooding and loving every minute. Why not? We were creating music channeled through us with occasional and frequent visitations of the muses.

All these many years later, long after Freedom Alley has extended their hiatus and everyone has drifted on to become ghost riders on the four winds, the music they created lives. Their entire collection is here on broadwayextended and now, their most recent offering just released this year is ready for your ears.

Gathered together on this disc are eleven songs with the same folk-flavored, acoustic soul rendering that the four lads known as Freedom Alley used to cull from thin air, the high muses.

For now, there are two. During the Covid years, Mark and Wally teamed up and put out another musical adventure, entitled Moments Burned Deep. The release was filled with originals. It also boasted a timely Woody Guthrie tune, All You Fascists, still relevant today. By way of explanation, because we were all on lockdown back then, Apple’s Garageband became our tool. For the purists we always were, felt weird going about the music like this, but we enjoyed using it to enhance our journey. Worth checking out.

Our latest release is called East on Broadway. In the player at left are all the numbers, all originals. More than half were first written decades ago. They survived the hibernation that time can bring, and given new life and a few new words during the recordings.

God willing, you’ll enjoy what you hear, note a taste of yourself in the songs, and be hungry to hear more.

Ladies and Gentlemen, enjoy yourself some Freedom Alley!