Artist Spotlight: A Discussion With The Sing-Off Winning Group Home Free

Home Free is a talented vocal harmony band that has built up a strong career by knowing how to create full sounding songs with just their voices. The group represents a unique space in country music and when we had the chance to talk with Anthony Rupp from the winners of the 2013 edition of NBC's "The Sing-Off", we took it. We hope you get to know more about the exciting new band in the conversation below!

Roughstock: How did the Home Free Vocal band come to be formed? 

Adam Rupp: My brother Chris Rupp (baritone) and myself, Adam Rupp (beatboxer), started the group 13 years ago.  For Chris it was a passion to form an a cappella group after seeing groups like Glad and Rockapella.  For myself, I just had a burning desire to perform and loved how unique beatboxing was.  We met Rob performing with another group 6 years ago and snatched him up when that group disbanded.  We found Tim online 5 years ago through networking with other colleagues in the business.  And finally meet Austin while we were guest entertainers aboard a Royal Caribbean Cruise.  He was one of the production singers at the time.  Tim and Austin have country roots and we’ve traveled all throughout the Midwest performing in many small towns and fairs.  Country was a natural fit for us. 

Roughstock: How do you guys settle on the parts each of you will sing? 

Adam: It’s pretty clear cut in the group as to what each of our strengths are.  We focus on playing to those strengths.  Austin sings his face off, Rob’s voice is smooth as butter, Tim has a freak range, Chris is the glue, and I give the punch.  Sometimes we’ll need to do some interesting distribution of parts in songs to fill the chord, for example Tim or myself may jump up to tenor during a song to give full harmony or another one of us give us the beat. 

Roughstock: Were you apprehensive about appearing on The Sing off?  

Adam: Yep.  We were already an established full-time group and we could’ve kept the gradual path we were on.  But, if you have a chance to go for it you got to take it, right?  So, leading up to the show our main goal was to just get past the first couple cuts (to feel validated), but after the first taping when we performed Florida Georgia Line’s “Cruise” we realized that there’s something special going on here.  Then after we performed Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” we thought we had a legitimate chance to win.  

Roughstock: What made that show appealing? 

Adam: It’s strictly a cappella.  Nuff said. 

Roughstock: How has the country music community reacted Home Free and to your album, Crazy Life?

Adam: You tell us. Our album debut rose to number 1 on iTunes country and number 3 overall.  We’re currently 40 in the Billboard 200.  The physical copy hits the stores Feb 18^th.  We also receive a lot of comments from people who say they didn’t like country before, but have changed their heart after hearing us.  Nice compliment.  In our upcoming sing-off tour www.singofftour.com most of the country venues have sold out. (Smiles).

Roughstock: What one word best describes country music to you?  

Adam: Story.

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As Adam Rupp said in the story above, their album hits brick and mortar stores (Best Buy, Hastings, Barnes and Noble, Walmart) this coming Tuesday.

You can order Home Free's Crazy Life  on the web at Amazon or iTunes.