Wes Freed at the 2010 Mudd Helmut reunion show at The Playing Field (Photo by Isaac Harrell)
Artist and musician Wes Freed died on Sept. 4. A native Virginian and a longtime fixture in Richmond, Freed is best known for designing the vibrant and macabre cover art for the rock band Drive-By Truckers. He was 58.
On Instagram, Patterson Hood, co-founder and chief songwriter for the Truckers, called Freed “one of my best friends” and a “genius.”
Wesley Leonard Freed was born in Waynesboro in the Shenandoah Valley on April, 25, 1964, to Carl Leonard Freed and his wife Margaret Ann Freed (née Jones). An artist as a young man, Freed graduated from Fort Defiance High School in 1982, where his senior picture shows him wearing a blazer and tie — a marked contrast to the outlaw look he sported later in life.
Freed graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1987, where he studied print making and sculpture. He married for the first time in 1987 to Katrina Arleen Marshall, a fellow student at VCU. The couple divorced in 1992. Four years later, Freed married Jyl Anne Sammons, a fellow musician. That marriage also ended in divorce.
Freed and Jyl met the Drive-By Truckers in 1997 in Atlanta and invited them to play in Richmond at the Capital City Barn Dance. When he heard the Truckers for the first time, Wes concluded with typically dry understatement, “These guys don’t entirely suck at all.”
After visiting the Freeds’ “Addams Family”-like Mechanicsville home one night, Hood asked Freed to do the cover art for DBT’s next record. Freed designed the art for DBT’s breakout 2001 double disc, “Southern Rock Opera,” an ambitious blend of history, autobiography and commentary on small-town Southern life.
Members of DBT came and went, but Freed’s artwork graced their next seven album covers. Known for his trademark dead trees, skeletons, black cats and other foreboding creatures, Freed’s art also had a sense of humor, perfectly reflecting the morbid and often hilarious themes in DBT’s music. Wes’ work could also be sexy and risque, featuring numerous scantily clad or nude women. And it was Freed who designed the iconic “Cooley Bird,” honoring the band’s lead guitarist and songwriter Mike Cooley.
Freed did covers for other bands, such as Cracker and Charlottesville singer Lauren Hoffman, but his work became synonymous with the Truckers. Freed was also an accomplished musician. The lead singer for Richmond alt-country bands Dirt Ball, the Shiners and Mag Bats, he wrote about the Civil War, boozing and the South. As his song “Oregon Hill Waltz” made clear, Richmond was never far from his mind.
He also acted. In 2001, he appeared in “Thrilbillys,” a low-budget action film directed by Lakeside’s Jim Stramel. In a movie that used amateur actors, Wes proved a natural. Working with him, Stramel remembered, “changed my life profoundly.”
Described as an “outsider” or “Gothic” artist, Freed designed not only album covers but posters for DBT “Rock Shows” and other bands’ gigs, including his own. Many of his pieces were collected in 2019’s “The Art of Wes Freed: Paintings, Posters, Pin-Ups & Possums,” a book he dedicated to his late ex-wife, Jyl. Wes also did covers for the recent DBT fan book, “The Company We Keep” and Stephen Deusner’s “Where the Devil Don’t Stay: Traveling the South With the Drive-By Truckers.”
Tall and with long red hair, wearing his cowboy hat, boots and jeans, Freed was easy to spot around town. He hung his art outside his second-floor apartment on Hanover Avenue, where it always seemed to be Halloween. He made a living as an artist, but after being diagnosed with colorectal cancer in early 2022, he asked for help with his medical bills on GoFundMe. Friends and fans contributed $30,000 to support his treatment.
Freed’s presence in Richmond kept the city connected to the greater American art and music world. He was colorful, generous with his time and inspired other artists. He was the kind of person, Stramel has said, who made you “believe in your art, support your art, no matter how bad things may seem at the time, and the art will believe in you.”
Hear a podcast the author recorded with Freed in 2016.
