The Early Years:

Audley Freed was born on Oct 5th 1962 in Alexandria, Virginia. Due to his father being in the army, Audley moved around until he was nine years old. His mother's side of the family hail from South-Eastern North Carolina and Audley comes from a small town there called Burgaw. Audley’s Father was a keen Country Music fan and his Mother played piano for the Church.

Audley Freed grew up on a healthy diet of Classic music. As a small child he remembers listening to Santana, Yes, Sly & The Family Stone, Creedence, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Al Green and Chuck Berry. Audley was inspired to play the guitar after hearing Joe Walsh and Alice Cooper on his Dads Am Car Radio. He was also influenced by bands like Bachman Turner Overdrive, the Doobie Brothers, the Outlaws and Johnny Winter.

After a few rudimentary guitar lessons at a music store, Audley taught himself the instrument by playing along to the records of ZZ Top, Kiss, Bad Company, Aerosmith, Hendrix, Mountain, Free and The Allman Brothers. Audley admits to learning Lynyrd Skynyrds live album ‘One More from the Road’ backwards!

The first teenage neighbourhood bands he played in covered music by Steve Miller and Cream amongst others.

One of Audley’s early bands was ‘The Point’ which, in a later line-up, featured Kelly Holland. Around 1986, Audley moved on to play with the locally legendary ‘Sidewinder’, a much revered covers band that were reputed to do a mean Zeppelin impersonation. Sidewinder also, at one time, featured Robert Kearns on bass. Around ’86/87, Sidewinder were one of the biggest attractions in the South-East area.

Audley continued playing in local bands, playing anything from Tina Turner and Deep Purple songs to samba nights in tuxedos and bow ties on the circuit around the south-east and midwestern part of the States. Fast gaining a reputation as something of a local guitar hero, Audley began to realise that the full-time schedule of a working musician left no time or money to record and write his own music. In 1991, Audley joined Jason Patterson and Robert Kearns in rehearsal studios in Raleigh, to begin writing the songs that became Cry of Love. In 1992 Cry of Love, with singer Kelly Holland, were signed to Columbia Records.