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Alone onstage at Sydney\u2019s Oxford Art Factory, Hudson Freeman quietly strums his viral hit If You Know Me. He\u2019s barely halfway through his set when the song\u2019s familiar bent notes start ringing \u2013 at first more desolate than on the recording, before it builds to a crashing crescendo.<\/p>\n
As he finishes, he nods to the gathered crowd and says, \u201cI guess you can all go home now …\u201d The audience laughs at the quip, a knowing jab at the song\u2019s outsized popularity and the ludicrous journey it\u2019s taken over the past year.<\/p>\n
It was in late August last year that the Texan-born\/Brooklyn-based indie-folk singer posted an Instagram of himself performing the then-unreleased song in the middle of a field in Indiana, with the crickets chirping and the sun beaming like a Thomas Kinkade painting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI posted the video immediately after I filmed it in that field on this drive from Indiana to Chicago, and it blew up on the way there,\u201d Freeman says. \u201cI had this gut feeling that it was going to happen. It was just too beautiful outside \u2013 the clouds, the sky. I\u2019d been using that heavy metal font and I knew if I just put it in the blue and then with the green of the field \u2026 It just looked perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The song hit the algorithm lottery. \u201cIt was the right place at the right time,\u201d Freeman says. \u201cThe internet\u2019s really arbitrary, but maybe part of what got people\u2019s attention is because it seems so real in this time when there\u2019s a real fear about AI and stuff.\u201d <\/p>\n
Sipping coffee by the poolside bar at his hotel on Sydney\u2019s Oxford Street, his wife and creative partner Sophie Brown by his side, Freeman recalls the song\u2019s success with the bashful wonderment of someone who lucked out at a pub raffle. At 28, he\u2019s boyish in a gas station shirt and a nose ring (online he\u2019s called himself \u201cthe Eric Forman of indie-folk\u201d, a sardonic shot at his resemblance to Topher Grace\u2019s character in That \u201970s Show).<\/p>\n
He\u2019s in town as the support act for Mumford & Sons\u2019 arena tour of Australia and New Zealand, the biggest shows he\u2019s ever played beyond a two-night stint in Hollywood with Kings of Leon in April. \u201cIt\u2019s intimidating to open an arena by yourself, but I just stay cool and collected,\u201d says Freeman. \u201cIt\u2019s been unusually nostalgic for me. I was introduced to folk and Americana through Mumford & Sons when I was, like, 13, so this feels like a dream from when I was younger.\u201d <\/p>\n
Instagram and YouTube are now filled with part-time guitarists doing their own versions of If You Know Me\u2019s iconic riff. Even guitar-god John Mayer gave it a go<\/a>. In Freeman\u2019s Instagram comments, Limp Bikzit\u2019s Fred Durst posted to praise the song, as did bluegrass phenom Billy Strings<\/a>. Hollywood star Jack Black got in Freeman\u2019s DMs.<\/p>\n \u201dA huge one for me is a comedian we\u2019re fans of, Tim Robinson,\u201d adds Freeman. \u201cHe followed me and I messaged him and he messaged back. I definitely have a dream that he directs a music video.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n The attention came at just the right time. Last May, Freeman released his third album, Is a Folk Artist, to little noise and, after 11 years of struggling to sustain a music career \u2013 in Brooklyn, Freeman worked day jobs as a line-cook, Brown as a nanny \u2013 he was on the brink of tossing it in.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were taking it year by year in New York. I released the album and it felt like I was finally finding a musical community, so it was enough to make us go, \u2018OK, we can do another year and let\u2019s re-evaluate after that,\u2019\u201d Freeman recalls. \u201cBut I\u2019ve been releasing music since I was 17, and I\u2019m 28 this year and I hadn\u2019t found much of an audience up until six months ago, when that video went viral.\u201d<\/p>\n Major labels came calling, but he signed with the US indie Mom + Pop Music. \u201dWe did flirt with major labels, just to see what it was about, get a fancy dinner, but my gut was telling me to stick to my guns,\u201d Freeman says. Ever the indie kid \u2013 he\u2019s even carrying a tote bag bearing Mom + Pop\u2019s logo as we speak \u2013 he was wary of major label promises.<\/p>\n \u201cI was really struck by how the major labels wanted to take the majority of the cut of whatever the next project was going to be, even though I had already done all this work and had essentially broken myself. I don\u2019t understand that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIt would be one thing if they were trying to sign me before people had discovered me, but for them to want to take all the royalties for a project that I had already self-marketed, I was so uninterested in that, even if there was potential for a bigger advance. I just would rather make the album I want to make.\u201d<\/p>\n There was also a lingering fear around his breakout hit. \u201cI have a lot of anxiety about how to show that I\u2019m more than just that song, and I\u2019ve been trying to figure out how to not let this just be a one-hit wonder,\u201d he says. \u201cI was worried that if I went with a major label, they would make me camp out on If You Know Me.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen it with some artists \u2013 someone like Noah Kahan, who basically had to do Stick Season for years \u2013 and I didn\u2019t want that to happen to me. I wanted to find a label who wanted to push me and see me do something different. So I\u2019m not really dreading making the next album. I\u2019ve been waiting for this moment to actually have a recording budget and give it my all.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s been hard at work on a new album, and its outr\u00e9 premise comes from a strange response he kept hearing in the wake of If You Know Me. \u201cPeople would come up to me like, \u2018This song reminds me of The Last of Us\u2019,\u201d says Freeman of the dystopian video game-turned-hit TV series. \u201cIt got me thinking, what if I leaned into that and made a post-apocalyptic folk album?\u201d<\/p>\n Oddly enough, the apocalypse carries personal resonance for Freeman. His parents are Pentecostal missionaries and he \u2013 and his wife Sophie \u2013 grew up in the Assemblies of God, the evangelical denomination that our ex-prime minister Scott Morrison is part of (neither had heard of ScoMo, even though he features prominently on the Assemblies of God\u2019s Wikipedia page).<\/p>\n From 13 to 17, Freeman and his three younger siblings lived in Eswatini \u2013 previously Swaziland \u2013 as his parents pursued missionary work. \u201cIt was a lonely experience, to be honest,\u201d he says. \u201cIn some ways, it was very normal and it was very much a community that I have fond memories of. And in other ways, there are obviously conservative elements of [the church] I don\u2019t really identify or align with. But it certainly was an interesting experience being in a family that viewed their life\u2019s mission as calling them to another country. They took it very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n He was homeschooled there, which was why he got so into music and playing guitar. \u201cI was just avoiding doing schoolwork all day,\u201d Freeman says. \u201cMy only social outing was church and playing in the church worship band.<\/p>\n \u201cMy mother was a worship leader and her father, my grandfather, was also in the church, playing organ and playing bass. He taught me guitar. I always say, it\u2019s a very positive way to learn music: you get the chance to play in front of people every week and the audience has to clap after every song. You really learn how to perform.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n As a teenager, was he fully onboard the family\u2019s decision to migrate to Eswatini? \u201cI was at the time, but I fell out of love with it very quickly,\u201d he says with a laugh. \u201cThe denomination we were part of, they get you really excited about being a missionary kid. They get it in your head that you\u2019re just as important as your parents are and that you\u2019re just as much doing the mission as they are. But when we got there, I remember just being like, \u2018Oh, I actually don\u2019t feel like I should be here\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Freeman\u2019s parents are now based in South Africa, where they\u2019ve been \u201cessentially pastoring a church\u201d for the past eight years, he says. Amid the uncomfortable intersection between colonialism and evangelism, Freeman has complicated feelings about their missionary work.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the work my father did was helpful in that it was pretty comparable to humanitarian work that you\u2019d see non-religious organisations do. He was helping to build wells and orphanages. At the time, Swaziland had the highest HIV\/AIDS rate in the world, nearly 50 per cent; there was an overwhelming sense that every other person you met was HIV-positive. There was a huge economic and humanitarian crisis happening that I think my parents believed their work was helping.\u201d<\/p>\n Brown, who moved from the US to Jamaica at age nine, where her parents ran an orphanage, jumps in. \u201cSorry, it\u2019s not my interview,\u201d she says, laughing. \u201cBut I will say, similarly to Hudson\u2019s family, I feel like my parents had a really big heart for people and I think they did good work, but at the end of the day that comes out of sacrifice for your family, the way that you grow up in a different place and feel different and out of place and lonely, and I think those were defining things for our lives, being so young.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"\u201cMy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/23a615bf21e3b9ec889a10f62d8a8a807d816a40.jpeg\")
\u201cMy only social outing was playing in the church worship band … You get to play in front of people every week and the audience has to clap after every song.\u201d <\/p>\n
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