New album announcement! tenneson - Studio C209

Feb 25

By BL Shirelle with Fury Young

Michael Tenneson is a long time artist here on FREER Records. He's the band leader of Territorial, which is our most successful band to date on the label. He plays several instruments. He's an incredible songwriter, composer, and also a great visual artist.

Washington Post Article re: Territorial

What's special about Michael Tenneson is he is a great example of the human condition. He was incarcerated for a heinous crime in 1980, did his time, came home, and then in the course of two drug-fueled robberies - shot five people to death. He's been incarcerated the second time since 1987, serving five life sentences.

Over the nine years we’ve worked with Mike, we see the person he’s grown into as beautiful; but the lives he's lived have spanned depths of torment, depravity and struggle that some of us can't even imagine.

*Michael Tenneson & Fury Young, 2018 Territorial sessions. Photo: FY*

After we released Territorial in 2021, we donated some musical gear to the prisons in Colorado from our Instruments Into Prisons program, and they moved Michael Tenneson to a different prison to run a music program.

We're talking about impact. We're talking about quality of life results. So pat yourselves on the back for helping us get there with your donations. CONGRATULATIONS… THANK YOU!

The top brass loved the Territorial album so much, that they actually moved a man serving five life sentences to a medium security prison to run a music program with gear that we donated into the prison. Beautiful.

With that donated gear, Tenneson recorded several songs on his own, right in his cell - “C209” - and got them out to us. Due to certain technical flaws with the recordings, we originally thought we would limit our involvement to digital distribution and publishing administration through our distro/pub-only wing, FREER Music.

But after hiring our audio wizard Matthew Cullen to polish the masters, we could hear Tenneson’s message so vibrantly that we had no choice but to release this album on FREER Records. He's a FREER Records artist, and people really should hear his testimony with our boutique stamp on it. Now that we're going to put out his album on the label, we need to raise more funds so we can make four lyric videos and several promotional assets that y'all can make part of the moment when you take in his art. So we're asking for you all to pitch in towards so we can make it happen.

Want to hear some? Here’s a sneak peak of the first single from his upcoming project - a rockin’ plea for humanity amongst the darkness - with an ending both uplifting and eerie. Ladies and gentleman, Nobody’s Listening.

Preview Tenneson's 1st single

DONATE FOR TENNESON LYRIC VIDEOS

Some of Tenneson’s songs from the Territorial album.

I love this community so much. I love that I can tell y'all what we got going on. I love how y'all appreciate the stories, y'all really want to help impact these incarcerated artists, and I see real growth in our FREER family. I see a real need being filled with what we're doing here, all of us as a team.

I'm sure there's people out there who think that there could be no redemption for someone like Michael Tenneson. We're here to reject that narrative. We believe that music is a huge part of his healing and a huge part of him being able to pour into society, even if he never feels the light of the free sun again, even if he never breathes any free air ever.

While he's still inside, he deserves to have a certain level of quality of life, and while he's still here on earth, he deserves an opportunity to share his talents with the world. These are things that we have to reconcile with in the criminal justice system, in the social justice activist industry.