Tricia Freeman

Tricia's story begins with an unusually rich musical upbringing. Her mother played the great jazz and blues voices — Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington — while her father brought Latin and classical sounds into the house. Growing up between Kansas and Texas gave her country and bluegrass another place in her musical vocabulary. She moved to California at 19, learned guitar and followed the songs into clubs and performance spaces. What began with a few chords became a career that could take her from local taverns and coastal venues to festival stages and European touring. A 2015 Los Angeles Times profile captured her remarkable work ethic and her devotion to live performance; it also documented her having opened for Al Green and John Fogerty at the Doheny Blues Festival. That life experience is what gives Tricia's music its texture. She never treats blues as a stylistic costume or country as an easy nostalgia exercise. Her interpretations draw on songs she has lived with, stories she understands and the audience immediately in front of her. Campus JAX is delighted to be part of that continuing story.