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Artist
Admiral Freebee
12+ albums
singer-songwriterrockbelgianBelgiumalternative rock
about
Admiral Freebee is Tom Van Laere, born in 1974, a singer-songwriter from Brasschaat, Belgium. Van Laere began his career as quite a reasonable tennis player. The story goes that he was standing in front of the mirror one day and turned his racket around into a guitar. Van Laere withdrew into the oeuvre of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Hank Williams and taught himself to play the guitar and the piano. As a musician, he took the name of Admiral Freebee, from On the Road, the novel by Jack Kerouac. Belgium got its first extensive taste of Admiral Freebee during Humo’s Rock Rally 2000, the most important rock competition in the Low Countries. Backed by a bass player and a drummer, The Admiral won the silver medal and the price awarded by the public. When performing live, Admiral Freebee is versatility itself. Whether he performs solo and acoustically or with a well-oiled rock machine, the audience can only do one thing - according to fans: listen, see and be silent, only to shout out in admiration in the end. In 2003 his debut album Admiral Freebee appeared, a record that met the high expectations. In the 12 songs Van Laere shows that he can just as easily come up with a moving country/pop ballad (see for instance the phenomenal single Rags 'n' Run) as a stadium rocker (Ever Present), and that he can just as effortlessly melt the two together into one song (There's a Road (Noorderlaan)) without turning it into a gimmick. March 2005 Admiral Freebee’s second album was released. It
