Phreeworld

The roots of what became Phreeworld began coming together in 1976, though the members did not officially become a band until 1990. Brian Phraner (vocals, bass, acoustic guitar, keyboards, drums) met and started playing music with drummer Donovan Michaels (formerly Don Freeborn) around 1975, when Michaels went to play with Phraner and guitarist Bruce Main in a progressive rock trio called Medusa. Dave Wheeler (vocals, guitar) had met Brian Phraner earlier in high school. Brian's brother Mark Phraner (vocals, bass, guitar, keyboard) was also around. The members of Medusa, by this time, were college students playing in the college jazz ensemble by day, while rehearsing original music, along with the occasional PFM or Led Zeppelin cover, at night. Medusa eventually broke up and the bandmembers went in their own directions. Wheeler played with jazz fusion/progressive rock outfit I Am, and wrote songs about everything from J.R.R. Tolkien to Arthur C. Clark's Childhoods End. (Some of these songs eventually became the basis for Phreeworld songs.) Mark Phraner collaborated with Bruce Jones from 1984 to 1989 in Eternia, whose music ranged from symphonic to hard and progressive rock, writing songs that would later find new life as Phreeworld tunes. Michaels played in numerous bands, some of which toured throughout America. Following the breakup of Medusa, Brian Phraner (a prodigy on bass) played in various bands, engineered, and designed sound systems for sports arenas, all the while writing ambitious and difficult solo pieces that were epic in length, particularly a concept piece "The Tarot Meditations" based on writings in The Book of Tokens by Paul Foster Case. Eventually to have 22 songs making up the entire piece, three of these songs were recorded by Phreeworld on their debut CD, Crossing the Sound. Phreeworld finally (perhaps inevitably) came together as a unit in 1990, with influences that range from the theatrical majesty of Genesis, to the progressive complexity of Gentle Giant, to classical composition, as well as fantasy and the occult. The record label Friends in the Garden released Crossing the Sound in 1998. ~ Stanton Swihart