A Brief Philosophy On Songwriting With Henry Barnes - Amps For Christ Interview

Formed from the genius of Henry Barnes in the mid to late 90s, AFC has been the ultimate spitritual vessel for Barnes self made, self revolutionized music for over 20 years. As diverse as the universe, as organic as nature, AFC is part of a chemical reaction in the brain and in the land, mixed with stellar stringed instruments (all hand made by Barnes) and vibrating electronic chaos. It was a total honor speaking with Barnes as I've been a huge fan of his work for ten years now! In this podcast we speak about life, death, music, politics, nature, beauty and of course what happens after our bones are too tired to carry on!

What is writing music compared to the process of recording and playing it live like for you? What is your particular process when manifesting material?

Hmmmnow, sometimes I just have some melodies and chord progressions floating around in my heathen I put them together in the studio. Once recorded the music is solidified and much tighter live !Sometimes you can work really hard and get mediocre results, it’s best when you seem to be a conduit, a song with all the emotion, melody and images seems to come to you from outside, almost like you didn’t write it, just facilitated it! I used to try to speak with lead solos when I was a teenager, to somehow insert images and words into the notes. I am better at putting word to music than writing music to poetry, but it is best when the words and music come at the same time.

How much does your environment impact your writing and approach to songwriting? How much does the instrument, as you create and build your very own,, play a role in the actual channeling of the music for you as a songwriter and performer?

The environment plays a very strong roll in what type of song you are making. If you’re up in the green hills with hawks flying over head and maybe some deer grazing in a glade, and a young bobcat darts across the trail and disappears into the bushes  maybe your song would contain some of the feeling for beauty of nature. An hour later you’re stuck in rush hour traffic trying to drive somewhere to play music and you see miles and miles of what once were the biggest wine grape vineyards in America in Cucamonga where Zappa used to hang out, fully destroyed by giant warehouses and other giant box buildings built to process the new mass cultures goods and it looks like Mars now! Some instruments whether you made them yourself, or not seem to have songs in them. You tune them up and get your hands on them and they start singing! Then there is making instruments and tube amps for certain jobs. Buzzing bridges and very different string layouts. Lately I resurrected my old Fender Mustang. My dad bought it for me in the 9th grade and it is a 1964 we got used for 150 bucks at Ontario Music which was in Ontario, California back then and I played it in the Claremont High Stage Band. So now these many years later I got it going and I wanted a guitar where you could have the low E string next to the high E string instead of on the other side of the neck so you could have the two strings two octaves appart right next to each other for wide octave harmonies. I put the low E string where the G string normally goes, had no B string. I put an A and D position string on as root and fifth in the middle octave and it all worked out great for my "busy thumb" style of fingerpicking! Most of the stringed instruments I made  have been for a specific sound and purpose. It has a huge impact on what I can come up with musically!

Do you have a set of themes/realms or familiarness you like to commonly touch on throughout your music’s history that is sometimes often found throughout the music?

I always loved the sound of bagpipes. Grampa Barnes once asked me when I was 15; "why do you want to make your guitar sound like a bagpipe? "I really didn’t know what to tell him! Mankind versus nature, mankind in harmony with nature, mankind like sheep on the edge of a cliff (Cliff Parade) also peace surrounded by nature and the love and lost loves as our mates in life. Hatred toward the poisoning of Earth for monetary gain and even self hate for being pulled into it!

What is your particular process and approach when readying for a new album and what kind of headspace is that for you compared to the early stages of writing and kind of roaming around looking for inspiration to write and create?

I do not like the pre-packaged approach. I believe the best music is made when the players are not even thinking about money of status and where we have the freedom to explore. Like making your own soundproof booth where you can scream at the top of your lungs if you want and no neighbors will hear you! A place where you are not paying bucko bucks by the hour so you can have the space and time to use the studio as part of the creative process. I am getting ready to soundproof a section of the garage where I live now to the point where you could have a Marshall 100 watt stack in there on 12 and outside it would be like a whisper. There’s plenty of subject matter right now with all these divisions and yes it seems like an exploding planet in some ways. In need to get that boot done! Last month I got a banjo part recorded for my friend Chester Crill`s version of Manic Depression by the skin of my teeth.

I recorded a solo track for a new Gun Outfit song Same Old Same and got a really good direct sound using this oscillator pre amp I have been building for my friend Dimitri Coats from OFF!, but after getting a good take one morning, I decided to try another the next day and I couldn’t get jack doodly. What if I was paying for time on that second day! Just to exemplify my point about soundproofing, as I was finishing this writing, my neighbor to the south (who I would love to love as myself) started playing "his" music. Funny how a lot of non musicians who like to blast so so loud refer to it as "my music", but if I had a soundproofed booth I could cut all that out inside there and have a peaceful place to create! Seeing the juxtapositions of society, like seeing homeless Andrew who lost the use of his legs in an accident on a fishing boat in Alaska, sleeping on the concrete with a few blankets, his wheelchair next to him as I came to work, then after work watching Jeopardy and this ad coming on for a super high end mattress that probably cost at least a grand! Things like this make me think about and try to get a clue about the meaning of life!