Wes Freed - Biography

Biography

Born April 25, 1964, Wes Freed grew up on his family's cattle farm in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The feel and look of this area has inspired most of his landscapes and many of the characters who appear in his paintings and comics. According to Freed, when he was about seven years old he ran across a DuPont safety magazine that featured a drawing of a bottle-wielding, bowler hat wearing skeleton driving a roadster. He said he became so enamored of the idea of a boozy hot-rod driving skeleton, that he's been painting variations on that theme ever since.

In the mid-1980s, Freed attended Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he earned a degree in Painting and Printmaking. Among his influences at VCU were Professors James Bumgardner and Myron Helfgott, as well as Lester Van Winkle, Joe Seipel and James Bradford. According to Freed, the influence was not so much a matter of influencing his own artwork or style, but because they shared his profound love for live music, British motorcycles, and low-cost alcoholic beverages.

In the early 1980s, Freed formed and became the frontman for several bands, including the punk rock Mudd Helmut, the hillbilly soul of Dirtball, and country-influenced and critically acclaimed band, The Shiners. While in Dirtball and The Shiners, he shared vocal duties with his wife Jyl, whom he married Feb. 29, 1996. According to aficionados, the couple's combined vocals have been favorably compared to the seminal L.A. punk band, X.

Also during that time, Freed began drawing a comic strip he called "Willard's Garage" that ran in various alternative newspapers in the Richmond area. "Willard's Garage" told stories of the somewhat fictional "Crow Holler", a Celt-Appalachian lore-laced location inhabited by skeletal moonshiners and other mystical / comical characters. Of all of the characters, the most popular by far was Hexter the Blood Possum, who eventually had his own spin-off comic entitled "Wild Tales of a Simple Life". Hexter also garnered a pivotal role in the plot of Jim Stramel's "rednexploitation" movie, "The Thrillbillys", which starred Freed and fellow musicians Angry Johnny and Erin Snyder.

Through a variety of circumstances, in 2001 Freed began appearing in various regional television commercials in the role of "a redneck type character", including one for the North American chain of junkyards known as Pick-N-Pull or U-Wrench-It.