Micki Free is a Grammy Award-winning guitarist who has played with everyone from Shalamar to Billy Gibbons, including the legendary AOR band Crown of Thorns. Micki Free has a new EP called Dreamcatcher which he recorded with members of Carlos Santana’s band and recently took some time to talk about it and his amazing career.
Please press the PLAY icon below for the MisplacedStraws Micki Free Interview –
On how he hooked up with Santana’s band for Dreamcatcher – Well, Cindy Blackman-Santana used to be in my band in 2010. Cindy, after she left Lenny Kravitz, she started playing with me for a couple or three years, then she met Carlos and they got married and Cindy introduced me to Carlos and we became really close friends ever since then. I jam with him a lot at the House of Blues shows and across the country and we became very close.
We fly to Kauai to visit him and Cindy when they’re off tour. I was putting this EP together, and I asked Cindy to play on it, and Carlos was there, and she said, “Sure”, and I go, “We need a bass player”, and Carlos goes, “Have Benny (Rietveld) play with you. He’s great, he’s great with Cindy”. So we asked Benny and, then as it started to progress, I asked Ray Greene, the lead vocalist to sing a cut with me and it just evolved that way.
Carlos is one of my idols and to play with Carlos Santana to me at this point is like playing with Jimi Hendrix because those were my two guys. So Dreamcatcher is actually named after a dream of being associated with Carlos Santana. So I made the, I made the whole EP Dreamcatcher and that song is Carlos’s favorite song.
On bringing his Native American heritage to Dreamcatcher, similar to how Sanatana brings his Latin culture to his songs – Yes, yes, I agree with you. It’s very eclectic, this record, there’s no doubt about it. I kinda put the flute in that, in “Dreamcatcher”, and it’s very jazzy blues-esque, you could say. That’s what attracted Carlos to it. Gary Clark, Jr. is a very good friend of mine. His records in the beginning were very much blues-based rock guitar, as we know, but then he stepped out of the box and now he’s doing basically an eclectic mix of his songs as well. I come back home on my guitar style and playing, but the songs are a little bit different from just a straight blues rock record, but the flavor is still there. The flavor is still there.
On the meaning behind the lyrics on Dreamcatcher – To the Native Americans, a dream catcher filters out the bad dreams, and the good ones pass through. So, to me, it was a dream pass through that I was to play with Carlos and, and jam with him and be involved with Santana. I’ve done a lot of shows with Carlos., I played with him a lot at the House of Blues, and across the country, and he texts me songs, and song ideas. We have an ongoing hope that we were gonna do a Jimi Hendrix record together, Jimi Hendrix cover songs. Carlos is a big influence, and it was a dream, dream catcher, man, that’s it, it was just like a heavy-duty hope and dream and we caught it in the dream catcher.
On if he feels it’s important to help others understand the cultural impact of Native Americans – I’ve never been that guy. I just did an interview before this one and they’re asking me probably the same question of Native American impact in music. When I was growing up, no one ever singled me out as being brown and native. I was a guitar player. That’s what Gene Simmons thought when he discovered me. He didn’t care what my culture was. He just thought I had something and he wanted me to come on board with him and be part of the KISS thing. So Gene managed me for two decades.
I think that now, it’s a very good time for native musicians in general to be heard because of the internet and grants and so forth and so on. The internet gets you out there and, for lack of a better word, Native American music has been around forever. Native American guitarists, flutists, drummers. Randy Castillo played with me when he was doing Ozzy stuff too. He was the first drummer in Crown of Thorns if you can believe that, Randy Castillo. I think it’s fortunate that the world is recognizing the talent and contributions that Native Americans are giving to music in general.
On how he joined Shalamar – It was crazy. I was in the studio. Foster Sylvers, who is Leon Sylvers’ brother, said “I’m going to introduce you to my brother, Leon Sylvers, he does all the Shalamar stuff”. I didn’t even know who Shalamar was because I’m into Hendrix, I’m into the Stones, I’m into Robin Trower, Santana. So I said, “Okay”. So I met Leon and they said, “There’s an opportunity for you”, because at that time the whole Prince look, pretty boy, everything was happening. Remember? So that was the forefront of everything. So, I had a meeting with him and they wanted me to be in Shalamar just because of the way I look at first., I remember meeting with Gene (Simmons) and telling him and I said, “I don’t even know who Shalimar is. Why would I want to join the band?” Because Gene was managing me. We’re getting ready to do an album together. So he says, “Let’s go to Tower Records on Sunset”. We bought a cassette, we sat in Gene’s Rolls Royce, put the cassette in, a cassette bro, we remember those? Then we listened to it and I was like, “No way, I don’t want to join Shalamar because that’s not what I am, that’s not what I do”. I didn’t know anything about really R& B then.
Simmons being the genius he is goes, “Okay, this is what we, I think we should do it. If you’ll join Shalamar, the KISS company would negotiate a solo deal simultaneously. When you join Shalamar, you can do a solo record”. So Simmons did that. I signed the Shalamar deal and Gene said to me, I’ll never forget this, “Listen, join Shalamar and be like getting into a limousine instead of a taxicab on your first outing”. I totally knew what he meant. I got into Shalamar, two years later I won a Grammy, “Dancing in the Sheets”, I started hanging out with Prince, Eddie Murphy, and it just rolled in after that. So, Shalamar was a very good vehicle for me to get out there, and then for me to be discovered more and more by the public.
On his band Crown of Thorns with Jean Beauvoir – It was crazy. I would hear in the club circuit, “There’s a guy that’s cool like you. The name’s Jean Beauvoir and you should meet him someday”. I was like, “Yeah, okay. Okay.” But I never met him ever. Then Shalamar was on tour in Europe once. There was a club called La Bandouche in Paris. I walked in there with all my harem, and Lenny Kravitz was in there with his harem. This guy walks in there with his harem, with a big white mohawk. He comes by me and goes, “Hey, Micki Free”. I recognized him, I go, “Jean Beauvoir. Nice to finally meet you, man”. He goes, “Where do you live now?” I go, “LA”. He goes, “We should hook up after the tour when I get back”. I said, “Sure”.
Long story short, go back to LA, me and Jean hook up. We started to write together. We played it with Gene Simmons. Gene Simmons goes, “Home run. That’s a hit”. The first song I ever wrote with Jean was “Hike It Up”. Gene Simmons went crazy. He goes, “That is a frigging hit”. Long story short, the KISS people, Gene and Paul (Stanley), created a company to manage Crown of Thorns called Amazing Management. They managed us. They got us a huge record deal on Interscope. The debut album stayed on the charts in Europe for years. Tony Thompson, me, Jean. It was a pretty incredible record, I must say. Since then, I’ve done a record, Jean and I called Beauvoir/Free, and I don’t know if you heard it, you should find it on Frontiers Records. It’s called Beauvoir/Free, but it’s just Crown of Thorns, because that’s who Crown of Thorns was. So, yeah, that was a killer project. Great songs, great songs, and really good memories.
W weren’t a hair band, we had really amazing songwriting. So, you could tell from the record, it was Jean and I that the songs were just different. Very melodic, but not like hair band songs. It all gelled, all that whole record gelled together so nicely. We recorded most of it in Jean’s house. We would write every day effortlessly writing. I was called the “Riff King” back then. I wrote all, mostly all the riffs, all the heaviness and Jean put the melody to it. Then we wrote the lyrics together. I love that record. That first record is killer, you know, everything, “Standing On The Corner For Ya”. It’s a great record
On his Vegas residency – Well, I have a lot of friends, as you know, so whoever’s in town stops in, we can jam. It’s billed as An Evening with Micki Free, Songs and Stories I’ll play my stuff, songs by my friends. Stones, KISS, ZZ Top, and have fun with it, but I will tell stories based upon the song.
So, if I do “Kiss” by Prince, which I love to do, I tell the story of how I met Prince and hanging out and playing basketball with Prince and Eddie Murphy and Charlie Murphy, which became a legendary skit that there’s like a hundred million views on it. If I tell a Stones story, it’s when I met Bill Wyman in London and Bill joined me on stage at Hard Rock Calling for “Jumpin Jack Flash”, which blew my mind. Then there’s Billy Gibbons. Billy and I flew to the Bahamas. We started recording there. We were actually going to do a project called Gibbons, Free, and Manning. Billy got too busy and he couldn’t do it. That’s how it works. It’s a good jam, but mostly my night and my stories.
On possible touring – I’ll probably start in August. I’m going to head to Australia. I’ve got to do a couple of things over in Australia for a big festival September in Australia, come back and then we’ll start hitting the road doing some dates here as well. I only go out on the road when it’s right. We know that you don’t make money selling records anymore, so you go on tour and I’m looking to, hopefully, hook up with one of my friends, go out and support them this year ending and next year, fingers crossed might be Santana. That would be my dream because everybody’s in the band. I just play. They play. Fingers crossed, but yeah, we, we were hopefully going to be out there also.
