“It’s just a Japanese knockoff of a Tele, but it’s just as good, if not better. It sounds better recorded – it cuts through”: How Greg Freeman is rewriting the country guitar rulebook

A black-and-white portrait of alt-country artist Greg Freeman playing an acoustic guitar.

In late January, outside Detroit’s Third Man Records, it’s zero degrees and falling. Inside, Vermonter Greg Freeman is supporting his sophomore album, Burnover. On stage, wearing jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt, he wrestles notes out of his guitar, a pick wrapped around his right thumb.

“I grew up learning how to play guitar from finger-pickers. When I was a kid, that was all I did,” Freeman says. “I’ve always kind of done a hybrid style.”