Free Throw: Moments Before The Wind
- 14 hours ago
- 6 min read
We sat down with Lawrence Warner of Free Throw to chat all about their upcoming album ‘Moments Before The Wind’, the story behind the record, touring with The Wonder Years and more!
So of course. The reason that we are chatting is because you have your latest album “Moments Before The Wind” coming out in a month (At time of interview). How are you feeling firstly?
I'm super excited! We worked really hard for this one. It’s weird, it's always one of those clichés where you're like, 'Oh, this is the hardest we've ever worked on a record. We put everything into it!’ But at the same time, it felt the most organic and natural. I think we're all just super excited for everyone to hear what we spent the better part of a year working on.
Where did the album name come from? I absolutely love it. I know that Free Throw tend to do a lot of conceptual albums, but what inspired the name?
It is from a book, a short story that Cory absolutely loves. He brought it to us as a band and I was just like, 'Oh my goodness!’ It encapsulates the record so perfectly. As a member of the band, it just felt right, and that’s very rare. Whenever something is just so painless, because everyone has an opinion about everything, but that was just like, 'Oh, Moments Before The Wind.’ It was the closing line of the short story he loves. We're all like, 'That's it, that's perfect.' Then it went from just being titled ‘LP6’ to that. Nothing else. No questions. It just captures the record so well.
How long was the album in the works as a whole? what did the creative process look like? was it kind of all one go or like quite a while?
We used a different approach to working on this record. In the past, we'd meet up and we would work on songs for like a couple of months or a year, whenever we had some time off. But this past one, we were like, 'Hey, we want to write while we're in the studio.' Because a lot of the time we felt like we liked overthought a lot of things with previous records. This time we wanted to capture just some of that raw, just us in a room writing songs together. So around this time last year we flew to New Jersey, a couple days after Valentine's Day, and we had three weeks up there at Barber Shop Studios and we kind of just went in with the idea of ‘Let's just write a bunch of songs together’ with our producer Brett, wrote a huge chunk of the record and then went on tour for the ‘Those Days Are Gone’ album cycle for the anniversary. Then we came back in June and finished the record. (Touring ‘Those Days Are Gone’ between recording) definitely brought some of those influences from the first record into the new record as well, they kind of bled into each other, which was nice.
Can you talk a bit more about the story of this record too? As I kind of touched on before, a lot of Free Throw albums tend to be a bit more conceptual. Do you feel the same with this one?
Oh, absolutely! I can speak on Corey's behalf. He's a very heart-on-your-sleeve lyricist. He wants you to feel those emotions on this. The story of it was just like a lot of liminal spaces, and that kind of ties into a lot of the album art and kind of just feeling you're kind of not knowing what's going on, you're kind of stuck in it.
There was also a huge breakthrough, Cory found out he was going to be a father while we were working on this record and there's the song ‘The Waters Of Life’ that is exclusively about that moment. I think that kind of helps tell that story of feeling like you're just caught in the ether of everything. And then that grounds you and brings you to where you know you're meant to be. That's how I always envisioned every time I listen to the record. It's like you're kind of just going through it, and then something strikes you and you're like, 'Oh, this is where I need to be. This is the feeling I need to feel.’
You guys have got a pretty busy 2026 coming as well, and you kicked it off in the best way, coming over to the UK with the Wonder Years. How was that tour for you? Do you have any crazy stories, or standout moments?
The Wonder Years are a band that we look up to so much. We’ve been fortunate enough that it was our third time touring with them. I feel like every time we have the opportunity to do more than a couple of shows together we’re just sponges, we soak in all the the knowledge they have, they truly they know what they're doing. They are so passionate about their music and what they are, and what they stand for, and I'm a sucker for that. I think that's beautiful, and they also put on such a beautiful performance.
I feel like it's difficult to tour with a band and want to see the show every night. But that was that tour. I would rush to pack all of my stuff and be like, 'Okay guys, I'm going to go stand out there, I want to see this again!’ And it was amazing. They are just so flawless. I think we're going to be on tour whenever they come through the U.S. leg so I'm kind of bummed about that.
When you have such a hectic tour schedule how do you keep up the energy on stage when you're playing every night?
Just a lot of us just having fun. I'm thankful enough to be in a band with my four best friends. We've known each other since high school and we've always played music together. Whenever we get on stage, we're literally just the same exact people, just getting to perform. I get to see Zach make some absolutely stupid faces while he's drumming, and all of us as a band are just so cohesively tight. We're always laughing. Even if, even if I break a string or someone's cable comes undone, we're still laughing about it. We're still having fun. At the end of the day, we're super thankful to be doing what we're doing, and we just want to put on the best show imaginable.
How are you feeling about taking the album out on the road this year? Is there anything special in store for the shows or anything you can tell us?
We're going to play a lot of it. We're currently kind of in the kernels of trying to figure out what songs we want to play and what we're going to do. I think we're gonna play seven or eight of them. We've never been so adventurous and been like ‘Hey, we're gonna play the majority of this record for you. Hope you like it!’ But we're just so passionate about it. We really want to just put it out there. We had so much fun writing it. We really want to perform them to everyone. We're kind of diving into a pretty big stage production for this tour too which will be really cool.
It's the most adventurous light rig I think we've ever done. It's a little scary, but some of the renders we've seen and the play through with some of our songs gave me a goosebump-esque moment. It's always weird whenever it's your own songs. I was like, ‘I can't wait to go out and perform these.’
Usually, I would ask what's next, but it feels like a well-earned break is probably what is next for you guys! Yet I still feel like that might not be the case!
Maybe! I feel like every time we're like 'Oh, we can't wait to have a month off’ in between tours, we always end up like planning to do something anyways. You know how people always dream of planning a vacation but never actually fulfill it? I feel like that's a lot of how we approach this. We definitely have some ideas that we want to have come out for 2027. It's another anniversary of one of our records so I'll say that, but we haven't dove too deep into that. We're still very tunnel vision on this new record.
‘Moments Before The Wind’ is out 27th March via Wax Bodega.
For more information visit freethrowband.com
Article By Danni Baker
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