The following was posted on the Herald-dispatch.com site, written by Dave Lavender. September 6, 2010.
For further information (directions / events / times) for Camden Park, click here
September 06, 2010 @ 12:00 AM
DAVE LAVENDER
The Herald-Dispatch
These days you can be sure of a few things, death and taxes, and if it's a holiday weekend at Camden Park, award-winning songwriter Steve Free will be jamming.
Free, who lives in the shadow of the Shawnee State Forest in Scioto County, Ohio, is performing at the park at 2 p.m. Monday, Sept. 6.
The park is open 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 6. After today, the park will be open on Saturdays only in September before opening in October for its annual Spooktacular, which runs Friday and Saturday nights.
Free, who records for the Cincinnati-based Fraternity Records, and who gets airplay on indie stations all over the world, said there's something about his music and the family-owned park that really go together.
"I will play Camden Park until they run me off," Free said. "We're kind of like the park, we're laidback and fun, and our songs are about the area so we have that vibe that goes perfect with the crowd and the park's vibe. I love playing the holidays because it's like playing for so many different people. There's some familiar faces but they get people from more than 30 states and I get e-mails from people who said they like our music from all over the country who saw us at Camden Park."
Folks coming out to the Camden Park will hear a bunch of the new originals off of Free's latest CD, which is totally homegrown, using his Portsmouth, Ohio-based band and recording it at Dan Ward's studio in Wheelersburg, Ohio.
Known for his breezy Appalachian folk and river-churned Jimmy Buffett-esque attitude with some Native American songs tossed in, Free has built up a good following on Americana stations from Europe to Australia.
In fact, his latest single, a gospel song called, "The Storm Passes By," is not only on Christian Country and American charts but also on Southern gospel charts as well.
Free, who sprinkles in a couple of 1950s-rock 'n' roll songs, said even though he was known for his diversity he stretched this CD further.
"Really what everybody associates me with is being kind of diverse, everybody knows I am a little folk, a little Appalachian, and Native American but I thought my diversity was getting kind of the same so I said lets do something out of the box and do some of that music we grew up with."
Free, who has been getting airplay on the trucker-fueled all-night radio station out of North Carolina, Night Ride, said his music is getting played on those freewheeling European, and indie radio stations not frozen in a format, and but more similar to the ones he grew up listening to.
"When we grew up you might hear Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles and then Frank Sinatra," Free said. "Me and my bass player were talking about it, and we're kind of paying tribute to all the different styles of music that influenced me."