Photograph by Devyn Glista
Chris “Freekbass” Sherman is such a talented musician that you could drop him in the middle of the Midwest with only his bass guitar, his phone, and the clothes on his back and he’d figure out a way to funk up the world. In fact, he’s already doing it, lighting up a digital platform that’s normally considered the realm of teenagers: TikTok.
Six nights a week, Freekbass (the “bass” refers to his instrument and is pronounced like it) dresses up and performs live from his music studio on Cincinnati’s east side. Last year, TikTok Live Fest named him one of its top 10 U.S. creators (a category that includes everyone from crafters to trick shot artists) and he landed in the top 100 globally.
How did it happen? It was mostly through Sherman’s talent and flair for showmanship. Back before he was dubbed “Freekbass,” he was always a freak about the bass guitar. “I was probably 5 or 6 years old at a hardware store with my father, and I remember it like it was yesterday,” he says. “This person walked by the store and was playing ‘More Bounce to the Ounce’ by Zapp on a boombox. I didn’t know that was a bass guitar I was hearing, but I was fascinated by that sound.”
Photograph courtesy Chris Sherman
Sherman played with a teen blues band and then shifted gears to the “Clifton world,” as he calls it, of original songs and a DIY ethos, where he honed both his chops and his songwriting skills. He was in the high-profile local rock band Sleep Theatre with Itaal Shur, who later co-wrote the Santana/Rob Thomas super-hit “Smooth” and remains an in-demand songwriter/producer. Sherman’s side project dance band SHAG took on a funky life of its own that led to nationwide touring. Given his proclivity for funky bass licks and his proximity to the coolest bass player in the universe, it was only a matter of time until Sherman got to meet Bootsy Collins.
Collins became a mentor, helping Sherman find his own groove in the studio. “I started going out to his studio three, four, or five times a week, and I would just sit there and he showed me how to use equipment and how to use the board,” says Sherman. “I mean, basically that was my music school. Bootsy and I would talk about the music business and not getting too caught up in all the flashiness of it. I thought I was just gonna learn some cool bass tricks. I had no idea I was going to learn how to basically create records, which is what he taught me to do. It was a pretty magical experience.”
And, yes, William Earl Collins—no stranger to the magic of a nickname—bestowed the “Freekbass” moniker on Sherman, equal parts validation and benediction.
But a bit of “right place, right time” also came into play to help Freekbass turn TikTok into his personal playground. Actually, it was more like “wrong place, right time.” Sherman has always been willing to experiment with emerging media and ways to connect with music fans and had a presence on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. He started to dabble in Twitch, a platform primarily populated by gamers, when a fellow bass player who just happened to work at TikTok suggested Sherman give that platform a shot.
If you think TikTok is an endless scroll of six-second videos of dance moves, cute animals, and comedy clips, you aren’t alone. And that type of content remains its stock in trade. But Sherman is finding it can also be a great place to connect with fans on a deeper, more personal level.
When he powers up his instruments and goes live, he’ll play music. But what Sherman really likes about TikTok is the ability to connect with fans in real time and respond to feedback on the fly. With help from his moderators, who bring comments and questions to his attention, Freekbass can stop mid-song and show how he constructed a particularly tasty lick. He also shares a bit about his personal life. When his mother was having health issues, he mentioned it on one of his live performances, and the outpouring of support bolstered his spirits.
Photograph by Devyn Glista
In fact, it was his mother’s love of old movies that helped launch Freekbass’s passion for fashion. “My dad was a firefighter and had these weird shifts where they do 24 hours on and 48 hours off, so I was with my mom a lot, and I’m an only child,” he says. “And even though she grew up in the 1960s, she was really into old showbiz: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Elvis. She made me an Elvis outfit when I was a little kid. A couple of them, in fact.”
Ever since, the Freekbass stage persona has felt less like a put-on and more like his version of comfort clothing. “When I wear these outlandish costumes, that’s when I feel the most comfortable in my skin, too,” he says. “But it also keeps you on your toes, because if I was dressing as crazy as I do and couldn’t play, it probably wouldn’t come off very well.”
His style is a family affair, too. Wife Angie Wilson is a University of Cincinnati DAAP grad and helps source or create some of his outfits, including the custom panda-bear-toy suit he wore on the TikTok Awards ceremony red carpet last year in Los Angeles.
Photograph by Devyn Glista
Freekbass makes money from his TikTok presence, including via subscriptions, a model similar to Patreon, for superfans. Those who want to hone their bass licks can pay for exclusive longform instructional videos called “Bass Series with Freekbass.” He also gets sponsorship funding from instrument manufacturers and clothing, sneaker, and eyewear companies, plus a cut of merchandise sold via links shared on his channel.
TikTok helped Sherman realize a dream when the platform chose him as one of five content creators to feature on the famous NASDAQ ticker billboard in Times Square to promote its Live Fest in December. “I was getting on a plane from Los Angeles back to Cincinnati and a flight attendant came up to me and said, ‘A friend of mine told me you were in Times Square,’ ” he recalls. “So I called Angie, and NASDAQ actually has an online feed of its billboard. She looked it up real quick, and my image was on the billboard already. So I booked a ticket to New York to see it and get some photos, because that’s a once in a lifetime thing.”
While Sherman is sharing the music he loves, being a TikTok creator means constantly feeding the beast. In addition to his six-nights-a-week livestream—he takes Saturdays off because he’s an FC Cincinnati fanatic—he creates at least one other video clip each day, often featuring more candid, behind-the-scenes content. So in many ways he’s living his life online for all to see.
But the upside far outweighs those demands, he says. Freekbass has found a whole new audience, and while he isn’t pulling in Kardashian dollars on TikTok, it has allowed him to share his skills globally. “It beats getting in the van and driving seven hours to play a show for 80 people in a bar,” he says.
Sherman still plays shows IRL, but thanks to his higher profile he can be more selective and play larger venues, typically at music festivals. In other words, TikTok has helped his career keep on ticking without leaving his hometown. “I’m sure I’d be playing music no matter what part of the world I live in,” he says. “But I’m not 100 percent sure I’d be playing funk had I not grown up in this area, because it’s such a part of our DNA here in Cincinnati—James Brown, Midnight Star, and of course Bootsy.”
Photograph by Devyn Glista
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