Friedman grew up in Park City, attending Parley’s Park Elementary, Treasure Mountain Middle School and one year at Park City High before transferring to the Winter Sports School.
He followed the same path many Park City natives with a passion for skiing do, developing his skill while competing.
“Came up through the ranks here, and eventually, you know, dreams started coming true,” Friedman said on KPCW’s “Local News Hour” Friday.
Friedman started out in the super G and downhill, but made the U.S. Ski Team in slalom. He stayed on the team for ten years, scoring impressive World Cup finishes and earning two national championship titles.
In between chasing his ski racing dreams, Friedman began writing music. He started playing guitar at 15 years old after his best friend's mom gifted him a classical guitar.
Throughout his time on the U.S. Ski Team, Friedman said he played guitar in his downtime.
“I'd write songs about the crazy stuff that was going on at the time, you know, whatever we were up to. It's just, you know, having fun,” he said.
Friedman’s skiing career ended early after a bad leg injury, but he said that opened up the world of music for him. He started playing more music and produced an album around 2006.
“I had a group of friends that, you know, they were looking out for me and they were musicians, and they said, ‘Hey, you know, you've got some cool songs here, let's record them,’ and we made a record,” Friedman said.
His band Freedog started playing in more shows and according to Mountain Town Music, he was voted the #1 Emerging Singer/Songwriter on Sirius/XM Radio's Coffeehouse channel in 2010. Two of Friedman’s songs were also featured in The Ski Channel's major motion picture "The Story."
Freedog now does short tours throughout the Mountain West and California. Friedman typically writes all the music, which he said is agnostic to genre, but features psychedelic rock sounds with folk and pop tendencies.
