Home Free finds country music harmony

Vocal group Home Free has a music genre all to itself: country a cappella.

Since winning Season 4 of NBC’s “The Sing-Off,” the five-man Minnesota band saw its popularity explode beyond the Midwest fanbase it has been cultivating for more than a decade. Their takes on such well-worn country classics as Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” and pop smashes hits like One Direction’s “Story of My Life” have racked up more than 42 million YouTube views. On their new album, “Country Evolution,” released last month, they put their harmonies to five originals and enlist guests Charlie Daniels and The Oak Ridge Boys on a couple of the covers.

Tim Foust, who sings bass, chatted by phone before Home Free’s performance on Saturday at the Weidner Center.

» On balancing covers with originals on the new record: “We’re doing more and more originals. I’m sure we’ll always do covers because a lot of people want to hear us put our own spin on a good tune, and we have a lot of fun doing that, too. But we’re happy and very proud to be doing more and more originals as well.”

» On how they decide which songs to cover: “It’s a real democratic process. A lot of times it’s just a song that makes sense to everyone and then other times one person in the group will feel really strongly about a song, and then that person will go arrange it, actually write it out, maybe even do a rough demo so we can kind of hear what it would sound like if we did it our way. This time around we actually took some fan suggestions. We had asked a while back some of our supporters on Patreon what songs they’d like to hear us do, and ‘Elvira’ and ‘Seven Bridges Road’ were way up on the list.”

» On introducing classic country songs to young fans with their renditions: “It’s really cool. It’s a responsibility and it’s also an honor. We hear that a lot, particularly with our version of “Ring of Fire.” It’s one of the bigger songs we’ve done. I think the video almost has 10 million views on YouTube. A lot of people our age or older say they’ve had a lot of fun watching their kids discover a song like 'Ring of Fire' for the first time. It’s neat to do shows and look out and see a newer generation sing along to some of these iconic country songs.”

» On their friendship with The Oak Ridge Boys and recording “Elvira” with them: “That’s a dream come true, particularly for me, being a bass singer, I’ve always admired groups like that that actually feature a bass singer. They’re pretty few and far between these days. ... We knew we wanted to do our version (of ‘Elvira’), but we never really dreamed that we would get a chance to do it with the actual Oak Ridge Boys. We ended up just having fun. They’re just a group of guys like us, and they’re fun loving and hilarious. So when we got together we ended up just doing a lot of laughing.”

» On misconceptions about a cappella before the “Pitch Perfect” movies helped to make it more mainstream: “I think a lot of people hear the word a cappella and immediately just think of like a barbershop quartet or something, which is really cool music, but it’s not for everybody. You’d probably be hard-pressed to get a young kid into barbershop music these days, or even some of the doo-wop stuff that we admire, it just doesn’t compete sonically with what is on the radio these days. So that’s tough. Even some of the big wigs in the music industry are still a little ignorant as far as what modern-day, contemporary a cappella entails.”

» On the Home Free fanbase: “If you show up to a Home Free show you’ll see people from ages 3 to 93. I would say the biggest demographic is women from 30 to 60, but it really runs the gamut.”

» On what first-timers can expect at the live show: “There’s a fair amount of comedy in our show. Not like scripted bits or not like what you think when you think of comedy. A lot of people just say, ‘Well, I didn’t expect to laugh that much.' .... We just have a good time, and the audience has a good time with us. It’s a really big sound. People are really surprised with what we accomplish with just our voices.”

kmeinert@pressgazettemedia.com and follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.

DO IT

Who: Home Free

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Weidner Center, UWGB

Tickets: $22 and up; ticketstaronline.com, (800) 895-0071 and Resch Center box office