Barry Walker Jr. - North Americans/Rose City Band - Interview
Are you originally from Portland, OR? What was your childhood like? When did you first begin to fall in love with music? Were these things that were relevant around your household growing up?
I am originally from just outside of Nashville, TN. I am lucky to have a mother and father who love me greatly and have always encouraged me to do things I liked to do, music included. My childhood was a totally innocent time, as much as I can recall. There was no internet and I didn’t have cable TV. My world was my family, our one acre yard, and the yards of my neighbors’. I began to get really into music later in life, in my teens, but music was usually present when I was a kid. We’d go on car trips. Lots of Beatles, Yes, Randy Newman, James Taylor, classical music (NPR) and then a little later, various bluegrass. I specifically remember hearing Ricky Skaggs a lot, a figure that looms large and gangly in my own bluegrass obsessions. My mom wasn’t as vocal about what we’d listen to, but I know she liked older stuff like the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, gospel songs, and just old songs in general. She used to play Malagueña on the piano. She’s always listening intently to lyrics. I sent her the Michael Hurley song Werewolf when I first heard it and she thought the lyrics were wild—“nobody knows my pain when I see that it’s risen, that full moon again”. Potent stuff. Anyway, music was definitely relevant growing up, but mostly we were just a reasonably happy family. My dad and mom both worked jobs, the importance of which they always stressed to me.
Do you have any siblings? What would you and your friends do for fun growing up? Who were some of your earliest influences in your more formative years? When and where did you see your very first concert? When did you realize you wanted to spend your life pursuing music? I understand you’re also a geologist teacher, that’s awesome!
I have two lovely sisters who are a bit older than I am, so really they acted more as mothers. They looked after me a bit when I was very young, and then they were off to college. They were into the music of the time. I remember Duran Duran and Bruce Springsteen, and whatever else was on the popular radio in the 80s. The Police, Jimmy Buffett, REM, etc. There wasn’t much in the way of digital entertainment when I was young, so my friends and I mostly played outside--rough housing and sports. We also loved to walk around in the nearby creeks catching crawdads and generally having a good time. I grew up just under a mile from a farm owned by Larry Gatlin. Many hundreds of acres I’d guess. Huge farm. We would always be going onto that land and just messing around. There were animals, barns, electric fences, an airplane hanger, hay bails, lots of woods, and several creeks. When I think back, what’s shocking to me is that nobody ever came and told us to leave. Not one time. It was a great resource. Maybe Larry G. had a standing policy to let kids wander around on his property? Who knows? These experiences were some of my earliest influences. I would later pay him tribute by singing his songs like Broken Lady and All the Gold in California with friends in college. I saw my first concert at the Starwood Amphitheatre in Nashville. Huey Lewis and the News. I remember they played Stuck with you and Back in Time, but not Hip to Be Square which was my favorite song.
This was probably 1986, or so? I had a great time at that concert, though I was only about five years old. I know I also saw live music at Opryland, a country music theme park that existed at the time in Nashville. They would have bluegrass and country bands set up around the park, playing standards. But, I was definitely more interested in the rides than country music at that point in time. I wouldn’t say I ever “realized” I wanted to spend my life pursuing music. Up until I was about 30, I was a student in some official capacity. I earned advanced degrees in Geology studying the processes that we think occur in magma chambers below volcanoes. If you asked me what I pursue, I would probably first say “teaching”, as that’s how I earn my living. And I love the earth sciences. It’s an obsessive passion equaling that of music for me. All the while, though, I’ve continued to play. I started playing in bands in high school, and just never stopped. Part of what compels me now is discovery. New sounds, new music. Music that I once thought was bad appeals to me now. I like a challenge from any direction. For a long time, I felt like so many people had said and played so much that it wasn’t really my place to try and add to it. That’s still true I suppose, but I still play. Really, I’m a folk musician at heart--I like playing for people, and I like making people happy through music. But, I also like to explore my own interests in noise and aleatoric methods.
How did you initially come to be in groups such as Hearts Of Oak, Mouth Painter and Sinthaxis before Rose City Band and North Americans? What were those early days of participating in those groups like for you?
Mouth Painter is the band I have with my wife, Valerie, and our friend/bassist Jason Willmon. Valerie and I have been playing together for pretty much as long as we’ve known each other. We have two children, and one is very small (4 months in June 2023), so we have very little collective time to devote to music for the moment. However, though Mouth Painter is on a hiatus, the project lives. And readers can expect more albums. Related to Mouth Painter was the Sinthaxis project, which was a one-off instrumental collaboration between Valerie, me, and our Uruguayan friend Fede Cernuschi. Fede and I shared an office at Oregon State University. He taught me a lot of Spanish. And, he was always hassling me about being “too country”, and demanded we record an album that was a mixture of my and Valerie’s folky sensibilities and his Uruguayan/candombe feel. Get in touch with me if you’re interested. Hearts of Oak is/was a psychedelic country rock band comprising several of my close friends here in Portland. I played pedal steel in the band. It more or less split into two groups (Supplemental Pills and Radio Receiver), neither of which I am in. They booted me! No, this actually occurred over the pandemic. I was a new father and could not devote much time to anything but my family. But, one of the crucial aspects about Hearts of Oak is that we were loose and we practiced and played live a lot, so we got a chance to explore the crevices of our instruments and songs. We all had a lot of comfortable freedom to pretty much run a song into the ground with, for example, walls of noise or experimentation. So it was a critical band, for me. In a disturbing and terrible turn of events, the Hearts of Oak bass player, Aron Christensen, was killed in the woods in Lewis County, Washington under very questionable circumstances last year. Look up #justiceforaronchristensen for more details, and if anyone has sway with Washington state politicians, please pass the story along. RCB recorded their debut in 2019.What was the overall vision for the self-titled LP?
How did the deal with Jean Sandwich Records come about? Would you mind walking me through some of the songs that are featured on the album? Skipping ahead a bit, you guys released your highly anticipated 2023 album “Garden Party” with the folks over at Thrill Jockey. Tell me about writing and recording this record and would guys ultimately want to express and achieve with this material. How did the deal with those guys come about?
The first Rose City Band album I played on was Earth Trip (2021). I added pedal steel to about half of the songs on the record during Covid lockdown in early 2020. Ripley Johnson (the band leader) was fairly general about what he wanted, and gave me leeway. That said, I was familiar with the project so I felt like I knew what I needed to do. Ripley already had a long-standing relationship with Thrill Jockey via the Wooden Shjips, so I suppose they were interested to get involved with this project. The recording of the new record (Garden Party) was very similar, for me, to the previous album. I was given not-yet-complete tracks and asked to play pedal steel on them. Seems simple enough, but it’s quite a challenge to figure out what to play. I wouldn’t call Ripley a minimalist, but his compositions and vision are uncluttered. He and I have talked a lot about music over the relatively brief time we’ve known each other, and it seems we have vibrational agreement on a lot of musical ideas. Certainly not everything, but enough to have a surprisingly specific common understanding and trust. I have deep respect for him and his music, and I sincerely appreciate the trust and respect he affords me. I feel fortunate to play with the Rose City Band. The live band (keyboardist Paul Hasenberg, bassist Dewey Mahood (cf. Plankton Wat), drummer Dustin Dybvig) is really locked in and is so fun to play with. My FTE is on a downward slide right now due to my family and working, but go see the live band if you can. North Americans also released their anticipated follow up “Long Cool World” on Third Man Records this year! What elements are most important to you when creating music and what exactly does it take to keep up with the flow and energy of music nowadays? What’s going on this spring/summer? I imagine some shows and tours are in the works!
Is there anything else you would like to further share with the readers?
I am also very thankful to be a part of the North Americans project. Patrick McDermott is a charitable collaborator and a gifted organizer of ideas and music. And I want to specifically say that the folks at Third Man Records have been so encouraging and helpful with this project. The last two records we have done have been quite focused, especially “Long Cool World”. It’s a song cycle of sorts, though we did not fashion it to be so. We are in the brainstorming process of making the next album, which we’re both looking forward to digging into. New news? I have a new pedal steel record 99.9% done, with my friends Rob Smith (drums) and Jason Willmon (bass). Should be out next year but I don’t have any specifics. I’ll be with the Rose City Band on a string of dates in late July. Other than that, livin’ and lovin’ as the expression goes. I hope everyone is getting by as best as they can.
