Review: Phil Haynes & Free Country’s ‘Liberty Now!’

Drummer/composer Phil Haynes constantly leaves listeners anticipating what he will do next. In the past three years alone, he has presented No Fast Food – his trio with Dave Leibman and Drew Gress, Transitions – a duet album with Ben Monder, the romantic piano trio called Daydream, the complete American recordings of Four Horns & What?, the fusion guitar album- Return to Electric (Corner Store, 2024), and now his socially-conscious jazz string band, Free Country and its latest release, Liberty Now! (Corner Store, 2025) which reunites Haynes, cellist and lead vocalist Hank Roberts, guitarist Jim Yanda, and bassist Drew Gress. While the four have collaborated together for over thirty years, the album marks their first quartet outing in over a decade.

Liberty Now! is a double album that reflects the band’s original intent of culling songs from their American Trilogy [Free Country (Premonition, 2000), The Way the West Was Won (Corner Store, 2002), and ‘60/’69 My Favorite Things (Corner Store, 2018)] with new, original material. Impacted by the 2024 Presidential Election and the passing of revered trumpeter and long-time collaborator Herb Robertson, these musicians were dealing with a myriad of emotions when they entered the studio. Ironically, the new material has only a slightly political bent, and is not as hard-hitting as the prior compilation of songs that trace the history of America. But without directly intending to make a protest album, the group did indeed produce one even if it’s not as in-your-face as Max Roach’s iconic We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960). Mixing older, rebellious pieces with anewer, less political material takes the edge off, making it far less preachy. It’s the reverse of what one might have predicted.

Free Country is best described as an Americana band with tendencies that come from the lineage of jazz. Roberts, Gress, and Yanda play rootsy in Yanda’s “Situation Ethnics” but with far more swing than most musicians on a stereotypical roots record. If one must ascribe a label, perhaps the promotional descriptor “jazz-grass” is most succinct. The guitarist’s “Past Time” is melodically sweet, with impressive solos from Gress and Roberts. Haynes’s “Strands of Liberty” is more tense and immediate, while Roberts’s “Higgens” is downright foreboding with an intriguing harmonic blend of cello, bowed bass, and guitar that owes to Western classical music. Gress’s “Diaphana” builds quietly into melodic, delicate strains, punctuated by Haynes’s brushwork and cymbals and Gress’s pizzicato turn. The leader’s “Corner Store Strut” reveals the confident swagger suggested by the title. The first vocal on Disc One has Roberts in the lead with his bandmates chipping in on Haynes’s “Joy,” beautiful in its own way though edgy, not nearly anthemic or hymn-like. Yanda’s “Next of Kin” is an angular piece bristling with energy and vigorous interplay. Roberts’s “The Wire” is aggressive and almost painfully discordant, contrasting sharply with Yanda’s pieces, such as “Home Road.”   Roberts sings Haynes’s waltz “Dawn on the Gladys Marie,” a tune that came over from his band, No Fast Food. The song doesn’t necessarily fit with the instrumental material on Disc One of the album, but shares a similar timbre.

Disc Two is a compilation, leading off with the overture of sorts, “The Way the West Was Won.” The group begin to gather protest momentum with their instrumental rendition of The Beatles’ “Revolution,” the lament for the fallen soldier in “Johnny Guitar,” and the military-like funeral drumming on “Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho.”  “Simple Gifts” is a lengthy, swinging instrumental and vocal piece, with crafty kit work from Haynes and riveting string interplay. From that point onward, Free Country digs into a serious protest sequence that includes the Civil Rights anthem “Respect” and a highly inventive stand out arrangement of Marvin Gaye’s’ “What’s Going On.”

All four in the quartet sing on “To Ancreon in Heaven,” to emphasize the drinking song origins of the American national anthem. The song is then rendered instrumentally in an almost edgy, avant-garde and Hendrix-like manner in “The Defense of Fort McHenry.” The quartet treats “America the Beautiful” in a disjointed, dirge-like manner with interruptive percussion and somber tones, especially from Roberts and Gress. By contrast, they deliver Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” with bright aplomb. As most know, the closer,  “What a Wonderful World” is not a protest song in the traditional sense. But one must consider that Louis Armstrong recorded the most well-known version during the height of the Civil Rights and Vietnam War crises in the late ’60s. On Free Country’s version, Roberts delivers a highly emotive recitation that reaches the same essence of Armstrong’s interpretation. The album as a whole, especially on this compilation portion, captures the attitude of Armstrong’s response to the context surrounding his version beautifully. When asked about the song, Armstrong replied, “Seems to me, it ain’t the world that’s so bad but what we’re doin’ to it. And all I’m saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we’d give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That’s the secret, yeah.”

‘Liberty Now!’ will be available on October 17, 2025 from Corner Store Jazz. It can be purchased on Bandcamp