Chris Freeman (born Christopher Mark Freeman, August 8, 1961 in Seattle, Washington[1]) is an American bassist and vocalist, best known as a member of the band Pansy Division.
Quick Facts Born, Occupation(s) ...
Chris Freeman
Chris Freeman performing with GayC/DC in May 2021.
Freeman was born in Seattle and attended Weatherwax High School in Aberdeen, Washington. At school, he got beaten up routinely and tried to hide his homosexuality.[2] At age nineteen, Freeman was going to marry a girl that he played in a band with, before breaking it off and admitting he was gay.[3]
Pansy Division
Freeman eventually left Washington and moved to San Francisco. In 1991 he met Jon Ginoli through an ad Ginoli placed in the San Francisco Weekly looking for "gay musicians into the Ramones, Buzzcocks and early Beatles".[4] With Freeman playing bass, and Ginoli guitar, Pansy Division went through a series of drummers before settling on Luis Illades, who has been in the band since 1996.
They became known as one of the founders of the queercore genre of punk rock, and received mainstream recognition by being Green Day's opening act for their first arena tour in 1994.[5]
GayC/DC
After Freeman moved to Los Angeles in 2001, he later joined a band of gay musicians who started a Go-Go's tribute band called The Gay-Gays, which lasted for 10 years. Freeman started another band with guitarist Karl Rumpf and drummer Brian Welch in 2013 called GayC/DC, an all-gay tribute to Australian hard rock band AC/DC.
Steve McKnight (left) and Freeman (right) perform with GayC/DC at Palm Springs Pride in Palm Springs, California in 2018.
The band met their guitarist Steve McKnight after Freeman found an ad he posted on the gay personals site, DaddyHunt. They also added former Best Revenge bassist Glen Pavan.[6]
McKnight, Pavan and Freeman also formed a side project called Mary and performed at Palm Springs Pride in Palm Springs, California on November 3, 2019.
"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond Of Each Other", on 'Stop Homophobia' compilation with Fagbash, Happy Flowers and Black Angel's Death Song (Turkey Baster Records, 1994)
"Sweet Insecurity" and "Luv Luv Luv", Luster, directed by Everett Lewis (2002)
"First Betrayal" in Hellbent, directed by Paul Etheredge-Ouzts (2005)
Pansy Division: Life In A Gay Rock Band (2008)
In 2000 Freeman moved to Los Angeles to attend film school. One of his classmates was Michael Carmona, who would go on to direct the 2008 documentary film Pansy Division: Life In a Gay Rock Band, which Freeman edited and co-produced.[7][8] He was also in the 1997 documentary Queercore: A Punk-U-Mentary and appeared as an actor in the 2002 film Luster.[9]
Freeman has also written for various magazines and publications including Frontiers.
