 |
| |
|
I like to give stuff away. If the idea is to get your music out there, boy you can really do it. On archive.org I have something like 30,000 downloads. I've never sold 30,000 records of any of my albums! But to have 30,000 downloads, that's really cool. And with those live shows, you get all that stage banter, so you get this other information. -Danny Barnes |
|
|
| |
|
"He's one of my biggest heroes in music really, and I try to emulate him and his work. When I lived [in Austin] I was working with people who were playing kind of roots based music and not very much was written down. It was mostly head arrangements and you learned the music through rehearsing. But in Seattle, the musicians I am working with typically write everything down. And the cool thing about writing it down is it gives you a chance to sort of molecularly alter and to edit and to look at patterns in a piece."
 Danny Barnes & Bill Frisell |
"One thing I learned from looking at his music is typically, like in roots music, there's these landmarks in a piece, certain places where things usually happen, like at the beginning of the tune you have these little watermarks," continues Barnes. "But in Bill's [Frisell] music, nothing happens there. Maybe something happens over here instead and it carries over across to a place where another landmark would be, and then there's nothing again. It's like a Dali thing where it just melted. Yet it's simple, too. It could almost be from Microcosmos [or] that Bela Bartok piano method; it could be totally bone simple, just shifted like Scriabin. Also from Wayne Horvitz I got that. He's equally talented as Bill but plays the piano. Those guys are heroes of mine."
Frisell had originally contacted him for lessons. Barnes self-deprecatingly exclaims, "I know, it sounds ridiculous! He just wanted to learn some traditional American tunes. We ended up recording a lot of that stuff on The Willies. But I really consider him to be one of my teachers. Like Pat Cloud, this really amazing jazz banjo player who lives in Long Beach, California. Just working with these people and picking their brains, asking questions, it might take years to find the answer. But I typically work on theory, orchestration and arrangement, or just learn about other musicians I may not know about, records I may not have heard of."
Touring with Tim O'Brien for periods between 2006 and early 2008 and his continued work with Robert Earl Keen have provided yet more learning opportunities for the eager musical student.
"I grew up listening to those Hot Rize records," he recalls. "It's just fascinating to be around a guy like that. [Tim's] written so many great songs. He really knows bluegrass and good musicians all over the country, young people or people that don't play professionally that are just really good. Then playing with Robert is so amazing because Robert is such a pure writer – he has an amazing amount of songs. He will talk about how much editing goes into the songwriting process. I fancy myself a songwriter, so it's good to interact with people you admire. One of the things that's cool about being around those guys is that it makes you not feel so weird. You spend a lot of time working and writing songs and you think, 'I'm 46 years old. Am I nuts?'"
 Danny Barnes |
A common denominator attracts Barnes to these diverse musical alliances.
"They are all positive guys - I'm a reformed pessimist. I realized we all make our own reality by how we think and how we treat people. The guys who do really well in the business are really nice guys. They make sure everyone's happy and everything's cool, have good energy to be around. They really bring something to the party instead of 'What am I going to get out of this? How much do I get paid? When do I have to stop? What kind of billing do I get?' Of course, they have managers that can do that for them," the self-managed musician laughs, "but that's what I try to emulate myself."
It's hard to imagine Barnes being a pessimist, but he is honest about his former bitterness.
"I was guilty of that cynicism for many years," he admits. "I couldn't understand why I was unhappy but I realized I wasn't making other people happy. That was a real awakening in that regard. Jung talked about how you have to go through the fire. Then you go through it and you learn and you hopefully help other people learn. There's a lot of suffering and pain you go through to be a musician, but a lot of it's self-imposed. You realize the more you talk about it the worse it gets. Like I have a friend of mine who's down on the whole download thing, always talking about how evil downloads are. But downloads have been great for me because they have helped me get my music out. It's a free way of doing that – for a guy like me that's been an asset."
"They complain that things aren't what they used to be for musicians, that things are really hard. Well, it's always been hard in a way," he continues. "It wasn't easy for those early bluegrass bands. For example, they didn't have highways, so they were driving around on the muddy roads. And Bill Monroe, he embraced technology. Ed Haley didn't want to make records because he was like, 'Why make a record if you'll give me five bucks to play and I'll never see the money from that record?' But Bill, he embraced it. Radio was new at the time and he made it work for him."
 Danny Barnes |
Barnes' creative approach to managing his own career has always placed him outside of any particular music scene, liberating him from many of the fences that others face.
"After you get established [locally] you should only play where you are about three times a year, otherwise you are sort of playing against yourself. I think you have to travel to make it work. When you have a scene you have to toe the line in that scene. If no one's looking you have more freedom," says Barnes, offering enlightenment on how to avoid getting stuck on the industry's barbed wire. "You can make your own scene, form alliances with other bands. If you are looking at the beast and saying, 'Why isn't it doing this other thing?' you're going to be unhappy. But there's ways around it, ways you can control the parameters."
"Somehow it works," Barnes muses, "but I have to work hard and be willing to hustle. I think with age you get that wisdom [about] what battles you can win and what battles you cannot win, where your strengths are, when someone is pulling your leg."
Our conversation wraps up around the concept of faith. Barnes puts incredible stock in "The Great Magnet."
"We're a very analytical society and there's so much irony in everything, and that's a missing link in our culture - having faith – because a lot of times when something's not working out it's not working out for a reason. So many times when you are working towards a goal, you are trying to get there and it doesn't work. But then this other thing happens and its cooler than you thought it was going to be. You sort of take this little path and it just keeps getting better, you know?"
We are skimming across the surface of some mighty deep water. Watching Barnes' continuing evolution, particularly with FolkTronics, is persistently intriguing. In the musical culture we surround ourselves with it's rare to find a musician you can describe as original. His career continues to be, as it always has been, reflective of his constant inquisitiveness, genuine humility, fierce independence and persistent enthusiasm for the living sonic cultures that give color to our years, keeping up the good fight against that which would cast us all in shades of condo beige.
You can check up on Danny at his website and his FolkTronics site. Download Danny's music at the Archive.
JamBase | Seeking
Go See Live Music!
|
