The Freed Man was the debut album by Sebadoh (Lou Barlow and Eric Gaffney). The title refers to the Friedman Complex apartments at Smith College where Lou Barlow was living with his then-girlfriend Kathleen Billus. As Barlow says in the liner notes, "... we named our first co-headlining tape after the Friedman dormitory where we both were living against regulations, with our girlfriends on the Smith (all women's) College campus .."