Chris Freeman (musician)


Chris Freeman is an American bassist, best known as a member of the band Pansy Division.

Early life

Freeman was born in Seattle and attended Weatherwax High School in Aberdeen, Washington. At school he got beat up routinely and tried to hide his homosexuality. At age 19 he was going to marry a girl that he played in a band with, before breaking it off and admitting he was gay.

Pansy Division

Freeman eventually left Washington and moved to San Francisco. In 1991 he met Jon Ginoli through an ad Ginoli placed in the San Francisco Weekly looking for "gay musicians into the Ramones, Buzzcocks and early Beatles". With Freeman playing bass, and Ginoli guitar, Pansy Division went through a series of drummers before settling on Luis Illades, who has been in the band since 1996.
They became known as one of the founders of the queercore genre of punk rock, and received mainstream recognition by being Green Day's opening act for their first arena tour in 1994.

Discography

Albums

In 2000 Freeman moved to Los Angeles to attend film school. One of his classmates was Michael Carmona, who would go on to direct the 2008 documentary film Pansy Division: Life In a Gay Rock Band, which Freeman edited and co-produced. He was also in the 1997 documentary Queercore: A Punk-U-Mentary and appeared as an actor in the 2002 film Luster.
Freeman has also a written for various magazines and publications including Frontiers.