Artist:The Hillbilly Thomists Hometown: We are originally all from Washington, D.C., where we formed, though as priests we are now assigned in many different areas, mostly on the East Coast. Latest Album:Marigold
What other art forms – literature, film, dance, painting, etc. – inform your music?
Our band name is taken from a letter of the Southern Gothic artist, Flannery O’Connor, in which she says that some readers think that she is a Hillbilly nihilist, whereas in fact she is a Hillbilly Thomist. A “Thomist” is a follower of the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was a Dominican priest. We are members of the same religious order and play folk and bluegrass music so the name seemed perfect. Flannery kept peacocks in her garden, as they are a medieval symbol of the resurrection, so that is the band symbol.
What rituals do you have, either in the studio or before a show?
Actually, since we are members of a Catholic religious order, we have a lot of rituals. It’s an ordinary part of our life already to pray the psalms together, say mass together, and of course we keep that up when we are doing our music. It can also be important for some of the fans, many of whom like this Catholic bluegrass vibe, but many of our fans are not Catholic, and appreciate the fact that we wear monastic habits, including on stage. The lyrics of our songs can be humorous or serious, but often have a kind of reference to religious takes on life. We did not really plan this as a strategy, but just started composing music out of interest or as a serious hobby and it has been popular with others.
Genre is dead (long live genre!), but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?
The band has a lot of styles and definitely assimilates different genres: folk, Americana, bluegrass, country, blues, gospel, and old-time material. Several different members of the band write songs, different in style, and we almost all sing, with pretty complex harmonies at times. Influences include Bill Monroe, Johnny Cash, The Byrds, Ricky Skaggs, Gillian Welch, but each of these more according to the spirit than the letter.
What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?
We agree on the value of reggae and jazz and during breaks the band sometimes plays Bob Marley for amusement.
If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?
We actually all have full time jobs, mostly as priests teaching or working in campus ministries. We record the albums and tour in the summer during downtimes.
The spring is often the peak time for artists to drop a new release — the festival season is just warming up, and a new album can bring about immense plans for an exciting year on the road. But for many road warriors like Danny Barnes, who released a new album in March 2020, release tours were turned upside down by the pandemic. Fortunately, in his true spirit, Barnes has managed to stay as creative as ever.
Man on Fire is Barnes’ 10th major solo release, not to mention his ‘barnyard electronic’ Bandcamp work, and an extensive collaborative discography including the likes of Bad Livers and David Grisman’s Dawg Trio. Though he often utilizes taste over flash, Barnes has been long recognized among the top banjo players — for example, he was the 2015 recipient of the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass. The new record, though released during an unprecedented time, garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Bluegrass Album.
BGS caught up with Barnes to talk about recording Man on Fire, how he’s filled his time during the pandemic at home in Washington, and his major creative methods, from finding the right collaborators to populating his songs with characters who will surprise you.
BGS: With the release of Man on Fire last March, how have you managed to best stay creative during the pandemic?
Barnes: One great thing is not spending so much time in transit. I was flying three weekends a month for decades, really. The amount of time I spent in a hotel, rental car, or airplane was astronomical. So when you pull all that out of the equation, I can just make stuff like crazy. I’ve been writing a bunch of songs, studying music like crazy, studying art, I just make things like crazy. I have a lot of ideas, you know.
I’ve heard you talk about using the banjo as a pencil. Can you explain that idea, and how it informs your creative process?
If you’re trying to play an instrument, say if you take up the saxophone or something like that, you spend a lot of years just chasing the instrument. I’m in my 50th year of playing [the banjo], and after a few years of working on it, it sort of gets where you can go the other way with it, where you’re expressing things through it. It’s like a different operating system; typically it takes a lot of years to get that familiarity with something. Over time, you develop this atomic understanding of things, a really good objective look, you know. I use the banjo to get ideas out.
There’s so much music in the banjo itself that’s untapped… In the traditional styles it has a certain role, like the shortstop on the baseball team. There’s a lot of guys like John Hartford that pointed the way before me. My experience was, I spent a lot of years just trying to wrench something out of it. With a pencil too, it’s a really simple thing, but you can do incredibly complex things with it. Similar to a 5-string banjo, it’s real simple in a certain way. Spending time figuring out how to play the banjo gives you a way of putting energy out the other way.
You’ve done a lot of collaborating with folks throughout the years. Can you tell me about some of the friendships that went into Man on Fire?
A lot of those guys I’ve known for a long time. I guess I met Bill [Frisell] right when I first got up [to the Pacific Northwest], I met Dave [Matthews] shortly after that, and I’ve known John Paul Jones since around there too as a matter of fact, early 2000s. I’d never met Geoff [Stanfield], who produced the record. I was talking about making a record and Dave suggested Geoff, who’s a friend of his. He’s a Seattle guy, so I could work here, I wouldn’t have to fly to L.A. or something like that.
I’m really blessed to have really close friends that care about me, and are super-elevated in the art where they really have another way of looking at things. It’s been a real honor to be able to work with those guys, I’ll tell you that. It’s tough when you’re in the music world, because everybody is involved in it. There are certain subjects that people just in general don’t have opinions about, say for instance like microscopes or something. Music though, people are so used to manning the ship as it were. I’m talking about the audience, people that would potentially listen. So you’ve really gotta think about how you want to stage things and get things out.
The trick about music is that it’s tough to get really really good opinions about stuff. Sometimes guys will make criticisms about stuff just because they want to work on it, you know what I mean? So you still don’t know anything. There’s a lot of ego. What I’ve found is that you have people that know you really well — I’ve been really blessed to work with a lot of what I call true masters of music, guys who are super elevated in my field. Those guys, when they have something to say, you can really count on it. Especially if they love you and care about you. If you know them and their kids, you know… it’s relationships. It’s not like you met them at Folk Alliance or somewhere and you’re just gonna make a record with this guy.
You have one of the most unique songwriting styles, between the vastness of your characters from beautiful love songs (“Fun” off of Rocket) and angry men mad at the world (“Bone” from Pizza Box). What is your inspiration behind creating the characters and stories surrounding them?
It’s really like being a poet or something like that. I feel like there’s something that happens to you, I’m not trying to brag on myself, but when you put out a lot of records over the years, there’s a place where you kind of meet yourself. And you go, “Oh, there I am, this is what I do.” If I wanna deviate from this, I now have something to deviate from. I figured out from my poetry that it’s sort of this southern outsider art, like art brut, the French saying for raw art. Kinda like Reverend Howard Finster, Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, sort of southern gothic, bleak but funny at the same time. And that’s who populates a lot of my little movies. I find it fascinating, when you can make all these characters, and they can do all of these things and have all these experiences.
The video for “Hey Man” is one of my favorite pieces from the new album. What was your inspiration behind that song, as well as creating the video?
I got this idea from a friend of mine, who went out to his garage, whipped the door open, and there was a dude living in his garage. I just use stuff like that for songs. I thought about telling the story from the homeless guy’s view, and he’s trying to explain why he’s in there as he’s getting all his stuff and getting out of there. Like on that show Cops, they’re stuffing a guy in a car and he’s trying to explain how he got into this situation, and no one is really listening.
David (Dave Matthews) really liked that song, and he’s got this guy Fenton, his lighting guy, who’s really smart about imagery, along with a couple dudes from the DMB crew who are really into editing. We storyboarded the whole thing, shot it in a couple of days over in Seattle. We put a lot of work and time into it. I’m really proud of it. I’ve never been able to do a budgeted video before. It was a real honor to get that out.
Any major plans you’re looking forward to when things resume?
I’m always doing stuff with David Grisman. He and I have a record that we put out a year or so ago, and a whole new record written, just waiting for a good time to record it. The Bad Livers, we’re kinda working on a record. I’m working on this music for tuba and banjo, kind want to make a record build around that. I’ve been writing a bunch of music for the 12-string guitar. I kinda want to make another ambient record. I’ve always got a lot of ideas.
Artist:American Aquarium Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina Latest album:Lamentations
Answers provided by BJ Barham
Which artist has influenced you the most … and how?
I can confidently say that I wouldn’t be the songwriter I am today if it weren’t for the discovery of Bruce Springsteen and his music in my early twenties. A friend played me Nebraska and I was floored. Must have listened to that album for a month straight. He was one of the first artists I have a clear memory of hearing and saying, “I want to do that.”
He writes these elaborate short stories set to music. The songs are expansive and cinematic. The characters are all people we know personally. Intimate snapshots into the lives of the working class. He speaks the universal language in a way not many people will ever be able to. There is something so simple, yet so complex about the way he tells stories. I don’t trust a songwriter who says they aren’t a fan of Springsteen.
What other art forms — literature, film, dance, painting, etc — inform your music?
I read a lot. I usually prefer fiction, but I’ll occasionally do a deep dive into a music-related autobiography. I tend to go for Southern writers and gravitate to the darker side of the genre. My songs take place in the darker corners of the Southern experience, so it doesn’t surprise me that my literary taste tend to go there as well. Faulkner, O’Connor, Harper Lee. The greats are what sucked me in.
I’ve been reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy, David Joy and Barry Hannah as of late. There is a familiarity of place that I really enjoy about them. I think a lot of the flaws in the characters of my songs are a direct result of the books I read in my leisure time. In my lifetime, literature has informed so much of what I know about people, I would be lying if I said it didn’t have an effect on me as a writer.
What was the first moment that you knew you wanted to be a musician?
The first time I played songs in front of people I was hooked. I was double majoring in political science and history at NC State University with every intention of going to law school after my undergraduate work. Then I fell in love with songs. I remember the first show like it was yesterday. Me and some friends from high school played (horribly) at Tate Street Coffee in Greensboro, North Carolina, in front of about 20 people. I was hooked. I became a student of every aspect of the trade. Songwriting. Performing. Business. There was no looking back after that first show. I had found my calling.
If you had to write a mission statement for your career, what would it be?
I played a lot of sports growing up and every time I would complain about a loss or another player just getting a “lucky” shot, my father always said that “luck was the product of hard work” and that is something that has always stuck with me. Work Hard. Get Lucky. It’s so simple, yet so profound. I have those words tattooed across my chest to remind me every morning that luck is not just something that happens to people. There’s a really great quote about luck being the intersection of hard work and opportunity. I think that was what my Dad was trying to say all those years ago, just a little less poetic.
When I started this band back in 2005, I knew I wasn’t the best writer. I knew I didn’t have the best voice. The one thing I did have control over was how hard I was willing to work. I truly believe that willingness to outwork anyone that was better than me is the only reason that I am where I am today. I get to earn a living from writing songs and playing them for people because I dedicated myself to the craft of songwriting and refused to take no for an answer. Some friends always say that I’m so lucky to be able to play music for a living. I just smile and silently thank my father for the lessons he instilled in me at such an early age.
How often do you hide behind a character in a song or use “you” when it’s actually “me”?
When I first started writing songs, they were extremely detailed and autobiographical accounts of my youth. The partying, the mistakes, the love lost. As I got older, I started moving more toward character based fictional narrative. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a little bit of myself in every single one of my characters. Some more than others. I believe it’s important to always add those dashes of personal experience into the songs. It makes them more believable to the listener and allows you to fall into those characters as you perform these songs every night.
The fiction is where you have the ability to make the songs universal and not just about you. The bigger picture versus the guy looking back at you in the mirror. I think part of the craft of songwriting is learning that balance. The greats came out of the gate with that gift. The rest of us had to learn it the hard way. It took me quite a few years to stop writing about the person that I currently am and start writing about the better versions of myself that I hope to become.
Artist:Lewis & Leigh (Al Lewis and Alva Leigh) Hometown: Al: Pwllheli, Wales Alva: Gulfport, MS Latest Album: Hidden Truths EP Rejected Band Names: The Ls
Located in the middle of the Lower Coastal Plains and salt marshes of Southeast Georgia, Savannah — founded in 1733 — is one the oldest cities in the American South. With its rich colonial history, diverse Southern architecture, and growing reputation as a regional haven for arts and culture, Savannah has long been a popular tourist destination. Affordable, nonstop flights that clock in at under two hours from New York make for the perfect trip from the Northeast.
Lodging
There are countless hotels in the touristy, downtown historic district. If you’re looking for more local flavor, try staying at any of the countless bed and breakfasts or Airbnbs in more residential neighborhoods for roughly the same price as most of the mid-level hotels. Look for a rental in the Starland District, the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood located south of Forsyth Park and the historic district.
Coffee
[Coffee at the Foxy Loxy Café. Photo courtesy of Foxy Loxy]
As a tea drinker, I deferred to my girlfriend on the matter of coffee during our four days in Savannah. She says the best coffee she had in town, bar none, was at the Foxy Loxy, the Tex-Mex-inspired café that takes up an entire two-story house in the Starland district. Every Tuesday night, Foxy Loxy hosts an evening of acoustic music from local songwriters and artists. The Coffee Fox, located downtown on Congress Street, is the shop’s flagship location. Also recommended: Shop the Fox, the sibling gift shop next door.
Food
[Southern cooking, family-style. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room]
It may be touristy, but lining up at 10 in the morning for the 11 am opening at Mrs. Wilkes Dining Room is the best decision you can make in Savannah. For $20, you’ll get seated at a large table with fellow diners where you share over a dozen dishes — family-style — of the best Southern cooking you’ve ever tasted … sweet tea included, of course.
Goose Feathers Café is another solid, cheap option for breakfast. The Bird’s Nest — which features two poached eggs, salsa, and cheese over a bed of grits — was particularly great. The best lunch we had in town was easily Zunzi’s, a take-out sandwich spot that sells gigantic hot sandwiches with a combination of South African, Swiss, Italian, and Dutch cooking. The Chicken Conquistador sandwich was massive, delicious, and well worth the $12.
Drink
[The sample pack. Photo courtesy of Moon River Brewing Company]
Savannah is a serious beer-drinking town, with several craft beer bars conveniently located downtown, from Savannah Taphouse to Moon River Brewing Company. With drinking on the street legal in the city’s historic district, the to-go cups that any bar or restaurant offers is surely an added bonus. Another newer restaurant, the Distillery Ale House, is also worth a visit with an excellent beer selection and first-rate chicken wings.
One of the stranger, most enjoyable drinking experiences in Savannah can be found at the Savannah Bee Company, which offers mead tastings for just $5. The company offers various delicious tastings from many of the relatively few meaderies that produce the fermented honey-based drink throughout the United States.
Located right in the heart of downtown and recommended by a local, HangFire was the most charming bar we went to in Savannah. It’s a hangout for musicians and young folks from all over town, and the bar regularly hosts a diverse array of local bands and singer/songwriters. If you’re looking for a fun night, I highly recommend ordering a couple of Scorpion Teas, one of the bar’s specialties. With an expiring lease fast approaching, the bar is currently scouting new locations to open in somewhere else in town, so make sure you look up HangFire, wherever it soon may be, next time you’re in town.
Arts and Culture
[Photo courtesy of the Jinx 912]
With the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) located right downtown, Savannah has long been a hotbed of arts, music, and culture. “Savannah has always been a creative enclave,” writes local music writer Bill Dawers in a recent issue of Oxford American. “Today, it’s common to see metalheads at country shows or punks supporting hip-hop.” From venues like the Wormhole to HangFire, there are more clubs and stages than ever for local musicians. For bigger shows, the Johnny Mercer Theatre and the Lucas Theatre host touring acts like Jackson Browne and Jason Isbell.
Much of the city’s local music scene revolves around the Jinx, the downtown rock room that has been operating since 2003. The divey, intimate club is the most important gig in town for local bands, as well as a regular stop for countless national touring bands. The club has a storied history with the town’s local metal scene, but its bookings are wide-ranging and cover a number of styles and genres.
For books and records, your best bets are the Book Lady, which offers a great mix of new and used books (and sports a solid music section, to boot), and Graveface Records, located just a block from the Wormhole. Graveface is run by Ryan Graveface of Black Moth Super Rainbow and the Savannah-based Dreamend. Graveface also runs the small, independent record label, Graveface Records, which puts out a great array of indie releases.
Local Flavor
[Photo courtesy of the Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home]
The mix of history, architecture, and arts give Savannah a unique feel unlike any other small Southern city I’ve ever been to. Some of the most popular tourist attractions are the many ghost tours throughout town, which is often called one of America’s most-haunted cities. Like many historical destinations throughout the South, Savannah effectively whitewashes — both literally and figuratively — a large portion of its long history, and our biggest regret on the trip was not being able to take the city’s walking tour with Johnnie Brown, a longtime Savannah native who offers a historical walking tour focused on the African-American history that the city does not readily present to the general tourist.
Otherwise, the city is highly walkable, so the best way to absorb the city is to spend a couple of days wandering among its countless squares, parks, and cemeteries. If you’re a literary nerd, taking the 20-minute tour through the Flannery O’Connor Childhood Home, a restored 1920s house that the Georgia writer lived in until she was 13, is a must. Another essential stop is the SCAD Museum of Art. Expanded and renovated in 2011, the museum is a gorgeous, expansive, world-class art museum featuring everything from photography to furniture design, and hosts an impressive rotating exhibit from the Walter O. Evans Collection of African-American art.
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