The cover of Steve Free’s Christmas album - “The Light of Christmas.”
Frank Lewis
PDT Staff Writer
For several years, Scioto County native Steve Free’s hit “Just a Baby Boy,” has found its way onto seasonal CDX releases. A CDX is a CD that is sent to radio stations all across America and even around the world, and features a variety of artists. This year a song from last year’s successful Christmas CD, “The Light of Christmas,” has again been placed on a CDX to go out for the holiday season.
This year, “Christmas in the Valley,” a song about our area, has made it onto a CD featuring artists such as Lady Antebellum, Blake Shelton, Toby Keith, Scotty McCreery, Clinton Gregory and a host of others.
“I hope people will see all the big names and say, ‘who is this guy I’ve never heard of?’ and listen to the song,” Free said.
After years of urging by his record company, Fraternity Records, and friends, Free decided to release his first Christmas CD, with a variety of songs from the title song - “Light of Christmas,” to “Be Thou My Vision,” written in 700 A.D.
“They think that St. Patrick wrote it. Legend has it, but nobody can prove it,” Free said. “It was an old Irish song. A lot of the old songs I had to practically rewrite because the words were in old English and Gaelic, and they didn’t make a lot of sense. I had to take whole lines and rearrange them.”
Everyone has favorite songs off full albums, and Free is no exception.
“One of my favorites is ‘In The Bleak Mid Winter,’ which we did naturally with a lot of acoustic guitar, a lot of classical guitar, and then just added strings in the right places,” Free said.
Free said his album is available on iTunes, at Market Street Cafe, Boneyfiddle Arts Center, and the Scioto County Welcome Center.
Among the other artists featured alongside Free on the new Christmas CDX are Erica Nicole, Phil Vassar, Freddie Hart and Tobi Gordon.
Frank Lewis may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 252, or at flewis@heartlandpublications.com.
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