This album was released in a limited edition on 20 October 1990 at the first Blues Séance Concert. The second Blues Séance Concert was 23 March 1991, and marked the end of the private release edition. Both concerts, staged by Victor DeLorenzo and featuring all players on the album, were sold-out, and have become legendary moments in Rock and Roll and Motorcycle Cultures. The album then was released on Flying Fish Records and again on Rounder Records. Both record labels were in breach of contract as is the industry tradition and The Holy Ranger‘s Free Hand is now unreleased by disciples in its Twelfth Anniversary Limited Edition. The Bonus Track was the first time since the Free Hand sessions that Dr. Martin Jack Rosenblum and Victor DeLorenzo were back in the studio together working on their vision, begun with a free hand, and they got it again. Produced by Victor DeLorenzo of The Violent Femmes, and featuring Brian Ritchie of the Femmes, Michael Hoffmann, Jim Eannelli and Big Al Ek (known as the Blues Rider Band for the record and the touring, although various musicians came and went on tour with the haunting consistency being Jim Eannelli and Martin Jack as a guitar duo), Free Hand was Martin Jack’s sonic text that followed his The Holy Ranger: Harley-Davidson Poems book, which was a Licensed Product, replete with t-shirts, jewelry and other trimmings identifying the mythopoetic Holy Ranger way of life.
Since this CD, Martin Jack has gone on to record these albums: Down On The Spirit Farm; No Freedom, Honey; Places To Go; and Spirit Fugitive. (Before it he recorded the ground-breaking poetry and jazz album Music Lingo with Jack Grassel and the concert album I Am The Holy Ranger, also with Grassel, and at least a half-dozen folk/blues and poetry albums, and easily over a dozen cutting-edge poetry books such as Home and The Werewolf Sequence.) After Free Hand, there was a return to poetry and music but not as separate entities, and never a return to the same motorcycle aesthetic content genre. Martin Jack moved fully into Art Rock, or music taking poetry too far. The Holy Ranger’s Free Hand is the only album sanctioned by America’s most famous motorcycle manufacturer at its original release, and the only authentic work of its kind within Motorcycle and Rock and Roll Cultures. That was twelve years ago. Today here it is once more with more, rernastered by the original engineer, Michael Hoffmann.

Professor Howard McCord
19 August 2002
For extensive history and lore regarding Dr. Martin Jack Rosenblum visit these Websites: www.members.tripod.com/holyranger or www.holyranger.com

THE HOLY RANGER’S FREE HAND, 12TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION CAN BE ORDERED AT HolyRanger.com.