The Free Design was a Delevan, New York-based vocal group whose music can be described as sunshine pop and baroque pop. Though they did not achieve much commercial recognition during their main recording career, their work later influenced bands including Stereolab, Cornelius, Pizzicato Five, Beck and The High Llamas.
Early work
The members were all members of the Dedrick family: Chris Dedrick, sister Sandy and brother Bruce were the original lineup. Chris Dedrick wrote most of the songs. Younger sister Ellen joined the group later, and youngest sister Stefanie joined near the end of their initial career. Their father, Art, was a trombonist and music arranger. Their uncle Rusty Dedrick was a jazz trumpeter with Claude Thornhill and Red Norvo. They formed the band while living in New York City. Chris has said the group was influenced by vocal groups like The Hi-Los along with Peter, Paul and Mary and the counterpoint experiments of Benjamin Britten. Their trademark sound involved complex harmonies, jazz-like chord progressions, and off-beat time signatures, all products of Chris's classical training. The band released seven albums from 1967 to 1972, the first six on Enoch Light's Project 3 label and the last one, There is a Song, on the Ambrotype label. For the most part, they were accompanied on the albums by studio musicians.
Post-breakup
After the band's breakup in 1972, Chris Dedrick recorded a solo album, Be Free, which went unreleased until 2000. He moved to Toronto, Canada, where he became a music producer, arranger, and a classical and soundtrack composer. He worked with directors Guy Maddin and Don McKellar, winning a Genie Award for Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World, and he made music for the Ray Bradbury Theater TV-series. In 1997 Dedrick won a Gemini Award for his work on the television series Road to Avonlea. Chris was nominated a total of 16 times for Gemini awards, winning a total of four, the others for Million Dollar Babies,Shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast and The Great Canadian Polar Bear Adventure. He won a SOCAN award for Tripping the Wire and a Hot Docs award, also for Shipwreck on the Skeleton Coast. Starting in 1976, Chris, Sandy and Ellen became the core members of The Star-Scape Singers, a classical vocal ensemble led by Dr. Kenneth G. Mills. Chris Dedrick also served as the group's main composer. The group performed and toured extensively throughout the 1980s and 1990s.
Revival of interest and later years
During their career, The Free Design did not gain commercial success. They remained in obscurity after disbanding in 1972. Starting in the mid-90s, interest in them began to grow as part of a general resurgence of interest in easy listening and sunshine pop from the 60s and 70s. In 1994, Japanese musician Cornelius reissued the Free Design catalog on his "Trattoria" label. In 1997, the band Tomorrow's World covered their song "Kites Are Fun", and in 1998, the Spanish "Siesta" label put out four compilation albums of their music. Stereolab, whose lounge-inspired music clearly showed a Free Design influence, named a 1999 single "The Free Design". The Free Design song "Bubbles" was covered by Dressy Bessy on the 2000 Powerpuff Girls soundtrack, and performed live by LA power-pop band Wondermints in the late 1990s. Perhaps inspired by this newfound interest, in 2000 the band re-grouped, after a nearly 30-year retirement, to record the song "Endless Harmony" on the Beach Boys tribute albumCaroline Now!. This experience convinced them to record a new full-length album, 2001's Cosmic Peekaboo, which featured the original lineup in addition to Rebecca Pellett, who had previously been Chris Dedrick's musical assistant for several years. In 2001 the label Cherry Red released a Best of Free Design compilation. The Free Design song "I Found Love" was included on the 2002. From 2002 to 2005, the original albums were reissued in the United States by the Light in the Attic label. In 2005, the label put out The Now Sound Redesigned, an album of Free Design remixes from established acts like Stereolab, Super Furry Animals and Peanut Butter Wolf. Stefanie Dedrick died on April 5, 1999, from the effects of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Chris Dedrick died on August 6, 2010, from cancer, aged 62. According to a message posted on his official site by his wife Moira, Dedrick died “after a week of increasing radiance, yet with rapid physical decline.”
Other projects
Bruce Dedrick produced the 1969 single "You're Never Gonna Find Another Love", a Mickey Nicotra composition for The Sermon, which became a hit for the group. In addition to the production, the background vocals were provided by members of the Dedrick family.
The song "Love You" is featured during the credits of the film Stranger Than Fiction and as the ending theme of season four on the Showtime hit, Weeds. It is the theme song to the podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go!, which began in 2007. The song is also the basis of the 2007 episode "I Love You" of the animated web seriesJulius and Friends by Paul Frank Industries. "Love You" has been featured in TV commercials for PetersDrumstick ice creams in Australia, Freia Smil chocolate in Norway, Cosmote in Greece, Toyota internationally, DC Shoes, and Delta Air Lines in the United States. The song "I Found Love" can be found on . The song "Kites are Fun" was used as the theme music to the Irish comedy TV showYour Bad Self in 2010.
