Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Austin Freeman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Austin , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
This is a story I recount with some regularity from the stage of our new home, 3000 miles and 3 years since the initial spark.
In April of 2020, I was, as was no doubt much of the world, in the midst of a maelstrom of emotional and mental fortitude. All-be-it, I was living with my band on a 30-acre vineyard, south of San Jose CA, with the closest neighbors as friends, and full-time employment. It was not a bad way to be experiencing April of 2020. The further reality of that time was also that I have a family, who at the time, was living 3000 miles away, for the purpose of allowing me an opportunity, to attempt to build a career as a songwriter and performer. That opportunity had just come to a deafening and resounding halt.
It was this consideration along with the entirety of the collective of all of our lives, band family and blood family, (as best I could understand) that I found myself, phone in left hand, coffee in the right, rereading a lengthy, unsent text I had composed to those who I felt needed to know that I was going to jump ship and head east. Desperately searching my mind yet again for a possible solution I had not found or fully explored, I mentally ran a checklist of what we did have; less than adequate internet, gear for a touring band, time, and space, the last of which was imperative.
When we first moved into the house, the steward of that unique and beautiful property had told me that the barn that stood in the front yard, nestled under the massive and expansive limbs of a centuries-old oak tree, had been a space of music and reverie on the weekends many decades back, the milk cow having been moved to her stall. The word he chose to describe the experience that it might have been had we ourselves been there on a Friday night, traveling from San Jose down to Monterey for the weekend, stopping for gas (the pumps were still there) a little food, companionship (nothing implied), and wine from the very vines that stood warm in the spring sun now at my back, was as a sort of “roadhouse”.
I looked up from the phone and over to my right. I could see it clear as day. I believe I said the words allowed, “I’m going to build a stage.” Text deleted, coffee slammed, shoes on feet, I scribbled a few lines on scrap paper I found in the van floor, 6 ft and a receipt, and 1 hour later I took my phone out once more and snapped a picture of the barn and the tall grass that stood in front of it, began unloading the haul from the lumber yard, and looked once more in the shed for the battery charger for my cordless drill. At 6 pm that night, what was our band at the time, set our gear on the result and played a set for the first time in 4 months.
The sense of something was flowing. Sideways glances began, perhaps searching for some confirmation or assurance that what each of us might have been feeling, was not a singular thing.
My thought was not to start an underground venue, but rather, to produce high quality videos of the band performing in a unique setting, opposed to our living room. I had recently been watching videos of Burt Sugarman’s Midnight Special (1972 in particular) and videos of other bands and music shows of the 70’s, and was comparing, in my mind, the quality and experience of those shows, to live streaming today, which I felt was not always a good thing for a musician to do, due to the quality and other factors. I had also endeavored to learn video editing, at some base level, while shooting multi camera videos of our band in the studio, and enjoyed the work. One of the things that stood out to me about Sugarman’s show, was that from the start, the first host, John Denver, had insisted that if he was going to host the show, that he would have some say in who was going to perform that night. It was in the spirit of bringing friends along, that I thought, “being outside, being a big stage, if we don’t invite anyone down, if it’s just a few of us putting the show together and the musician/s playing on the stage, we would not than be a venue, but instead we would be producing a show. A show that would extended beyond our music, simultaneously providing a space for bands to continue their craft during the shut down, but also a platform for showcasing that music, in a way sensorially pleasing to those sitting at home, devoid of the nourishment that live music can provide.
I was discussing the idea with my wife and mentioned the memory of touring the barn when we first moved in and the word “roadhouse”, that I wanted to call the show, “something roadhouse”. She mentioned that the word “primavera” had been in her mind for the last few weeks. I asked it’s meaning and she said, “spring, new spring, fresh spring”. If ever we needed a new, fresh, spring, April of 2020 felt appropriate. There it was, The Primavera Roadhouse.
Over the next few weeks, I bought the cheapest lights and tripods I could find, the best deals on PA equipment I could find (sadly not hard at the beginning of a shutdown), an additional phone to be used as a fourth camera, and began inviting fellow songwriters and musicians down to shoot an episode of The Primavera Roadhouse Show.
For two years we ran a show, Saturday after Saturday, out of our front yard, paying no money, making no money, entirely in the name of keeping the music going.
We would get messages from neighbors, thankfully not from their attorneys, but personal messages through social media, thanking us for what we were doing. That they (and this is multiple neighbors and instances) would sit outside on their porch and listen to the show going on. Most had no idea of exactly where it was, just that the sounds would echo up the canyon until it finally reached their ears and their present circumstance. We could hear people from a nearby campground cheer and react to the music. It felt a bit of magic.
Now, the “Roadhouse” has moved across the country and has a new home in Lansing, NC. Along side the Roadhouse, we have also started a nonprofit, The Phoenix Artist Collaborative which is focused on artist development and careers in entertainment. However the story from there to here, is entirely it’s own thing.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
About You & Your Business / Brand For folks who may not have read about you before, can you please tell our readers about yourself, how you got into your industry / business / discipline / craft etc, what type of products/services/creative works you provide, what problems you solve for your clients and/or what you think sets you apart from others. What are you most proud of and what are the main things you want potential clients/followers/fans to know about you/your brand/your work/ etc.
Please provide as much detail as you feel relevant as this is one of the core questions where the reader will get to know about you and your brand/organization/etc
Thus far, in terms of career/s, I have been, an ironworker, a crane operator, and a service technician, I have managed (unowned) businesses in the RV and construction industries, I have been a small farm cattle rancher, owned a crane company, a feed and seed/general store/gas station, had commercial general contracting company, held a federally recognized trademark, founded two tech companies, and am a songwriter and musician.
I started my first company at age 24, thinking to myself, “I hope I make enough money to get my band on the road.” The starting of the company was not entirely my idea, but rather that of my father-n-law who had run a successful crane and welding business since sometime in ’68. So it was, that before I really had the slightest notion of what a business was, I found myself in a local bank, signing a document I barely knew what it was for, and being reassured the seed capital necessary to negotiate the best price I could for a 23 ton “boom truck”, and to purchase a 100 shirts mixed sizes, 144 hats black with white logo, a new computer, Elder Scrolls Morrowind, one of the Need for Speed series, cheap domestic lager, and nonstop trough diving at all the fast food joints, meal deals irrelevant, would be in my account by Monday morning, at the start of regular business hours. Just call when you need more.
For the next couple of years I worked in construction, earned my General Contractors license, and attempted a partnership, not entirely unaware that we were riding a bit of breeze, in line to see the whole thing come down. Expenses were kept low and in the 2008 region, we had a water tower repair job that resulted in a good profit. I took this profit, borrowed a little against a small property and we purchased a “general store” with a 70 year history of success. We felt this would be a good hedge against what we believed would be coming and thankfully we were correct.
Prior to purchasing the store, my mother who was a fashion designer, currently working in “trend forecasting”, had urged my wife to start an art studio and/or gallery instead. To explore her talents as an artist and not give over to the grind. We were young and full of energy, I was very driven and enjoyed hard physical labor, it didn’t click with me. It didn’t even click that my love for writing music, which I had been doing at that time for 10 years or more, was “art” and that the two were even akin. Admittedly, we both would agree that the store was the very thing we needed to do, to build a strong hands-on education in understanding a business.
In April of 2011 my step-father of 19 years passed away. Nine days later my mother would do the same. I remember taking my mother to the appointment when the doctor said, “Sorry, there is nothing more we can do.” My mother nodded her head, already having known internally and expecting the news. The doctor asked her what her “wishes” (not sure of the exact word) were with the remainder of her time. While I will hold her exact words to myself (I have told our family), I will say that her near immediate, one sentence reply, was completely and entirely, selfless. It showed the indomitable spirit of a human and was one of the many powerful lessons, as an adult, I believe I have had, that help me to attempt to understand a priority of self and environment. Another one of those lessons had happened just a year and some months before with the birth of our first child, who was, with no intent, born on my mother’s birthday.
My mother and I walked across the hospital to a recovery room where my step-father was laying in a bed recovering from exploratory surgery. We sat in more or less silence when two doctors entered and gave the same news. “Sorry…”. His prognoses was worse. My mother had fought cancer for 10 years and had 6 months. My stepfather went to the ER for abdominal pain just 6 weeks before and he had half the time.
That night we had a conversation about logistics and realizing a frustration my step-father was having, I made a statement about wanting to help them achieve any of their last life goals. Travel, dancing, food, I didn’t know anything or have a how, I just wanted to help. The ride home that night sparked an idea that would eventually send our family to California and what would eventually become The Primavera Roadhouse.
During all of this time and the various careers, I continued to write songs, though I did not perform. I came to find that writing a song was my way of marking a conclusion, just in poetic form. I was simultaneously chronicling an emotional life and trying to understand that life, and to do this in a way I felt best could summarize the sleepless nights and the fights, the passion and kinship, and the tears of all sorts, that come from a life spent together in the tail spin of hells of ambition, with meter and rhyme, and a slap-ass back beat.
One day while singing in our apartment, a knock came to the door. Expecting a compliant, I opened the door and to my astonishment, it was in fact a neighbor, but opposed to asking for a moratorium on my ability to project, instead confessed that for a few weeks he had been walking his dog around the time I would usually be playing and singing so that he could hear the songs from outside. He mentioned an open mic in town and asked if I would come out one night and perform. Eventually the addiction to fight down the bile and step to the mic over came me. A year later I would form a band, a year after that we would be living together and producing the Primavera Roadhouse show.
Throughout all of the iterations of solo, band, and show, the need to have social media, websites, merch, and money; the need to have content, consistent, and constant, the insatiable collective want to perform, the opportunities of which, were become less as crowds stayed home and stages were many times left insolvent, if not paired with food or microbrew. In effect, we were left to be our own agents, which sounds like freedom through control, but results in distraction and less energy to dedicate to the working of songs and fulfilling the reason why you were all there to begin with.
This frustration would come about again in 2022 while on a solo tour and would lead to building the new Roadhouse. It was ironically a conversation at the 2nd to last show at the original roadhouse that sparked the idea behind The Phoenix Artist Collaborative the nonprofit we have started along side the roadhouse. The idea that it is a focus on how an artist feeds into the economy and not how they feed in to the culture that is many times a barrier to more talent being accessed and realized.
Have you ever had to pivot?
The website I was inspired to create and would take us to California was what I came to describe as a “social task management system that allows individuals to build and organize pathways to achieve more of their life goals.” This was mid “mobile first”, but we determined that desktop would ultimately provide the best experience overall, and thus focused on a design that worked well on any browser, mobile included. I was managing an RV rental company during the day and reading books on big data and AI at night while bouncing babies.
At the time my wife had a car and I rode a motorcycle everywhere, no matter the weather. One day I was riding into work and thinking about integrating AI into the site when it occurred to me, that in essence, all we were doing was organizing information. How could we lower the barrier of work that was involved in the site that we had built? I had a business model that could alleviate some of it and believed that with “critical mass” achieved, it would have perpetuated, however, the barrier to critical mass was the first one.
While still in my helmet and astride my ride, I saw a way of using AI to organize “an” internet around each user. Each individual’s own relevant internet experience. This was and is being done in an ad-centric revenue model whose effectiveness can be measured in a number of ways and is very relevant, but I believed there was a simpler way of understanding the future of any individual. It’s rather simple really. I called an investor/advisor who had come on board a few months before and scheduled a meeting. At the end of the meeting, I had a commitment to fund the beta. We built a test model which led to introductions, that would eventually lead to one of the individuals we were introduced too, taking a portion of the idea and starting their own company.
By this time, it was hard for me to think about the site and mission, and instead built another site to take on the unbalanced nature of online customer reviews.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
When I was getting ready to move out to California, a friend of mine (who would actually ride out with me) who owned a restaurant in town told me one day that he felt I should learn to “take my hands of the wheel”. At the time I was a very 10 and 2 on life kind of guy and this seemed illogical. I make decisions and people rely on me, the net result was more times a good one than bad, and by god the buck stops here.
Fast forward to the first season of the roadhouse. The range of simultaneous emotions that were in a constant battle within me was strong and what I knew to do was “manage”. To make my will, others focus. In doing so, some of those who could really help us and more importantly had a desire to do so, were turned off of the project and additional attrition may have been around the corner.
One night after a show at the roadhouse, my roommate brought this up to me in an amazing display of respect, psychology, and communication. He acknowledged what had been built and all of the excitement around it, but also the stifling nature of my lack of ability to allow others to simply be themselves. My will and my way. It reminded me of what my friend had expressed 8 or so years before. Hands off the wheel.
Once the ability to see a perspective, beyond my own, openly, and to practice acceptance, whether guiding a vision or simply being a human, my life has calmed and become a much better place to be.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.primaveraroadhouse.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/primavera_roadhouse/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/primaveraroadhouse
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/primaveraroadhouse
Image Credits
Ken McCain Martin Seelig