The Barr Brothers is the most recent project from Brad and Andrew Barr of The Slip and Surprise Me Mr. Davis. On their debut self-titled release, the brothers enter new waters, exploring a stripped-down acoustic folk sound that relies heavily on poetic lyrics and beautiful melodies. Shortly before they went off to perform New Year’s shows with their other outfits, The Slip and Surprise Me Mr. Davis, they took some time to talk to jambands.com about realizing The Barr Brothers was a possibility, the new album, their ongoing musical evolution, and even a life lesson handed down from Trey Anastasio that remains with them until this day.
Can you talk about what the process was like going from recording an album like Eisenhower to recording the Davis EP to recording The Barr Brothers album? How did you approach each of these projects and what was the main the difference in the process?
Brad: The main difference between all of those records is time. The Surprise Me Mr. Davis EP was, for the most part, recorded and mixed in two days, maybe three. But pretty much the whole thing was done in three days. Eisenhower spanned about five months maybe. And The Barr Brothers record was almost two years. That would probably be the biggest, most immediate difference. And then, the different ways that we collaborate—the chemistry between the people involved—is a big difference.
And then, the type of studios that they were done in… Eisenhower we probably spent the most money on, because we were doing it in a nice studio with an engineer/producer. The Slip was ready to make a record like that. Surprise Me Mr. Davis was done in two days because we were supposed to record it in our studio in Montreal and then we couldn’t get Nathan over the border, so we found a friend in Burlington who had a barn and we just spent two days up there in his barn studio. And then the Barr Brothers’ record was made in our own studio so obviously we had all the time in the world to tweak and add, and we built it up and stripped it down and tried six different versions of the songs, not even really aware that we were making a record. We just thought we were just laying down tracks for the hell of it and I guess that would be the first thing—the intention behind it. The Davis EP was meant to be a demo in the future, Eisenhower was very much intended to be a record, and The Barr Brothers thing was just something that we recorded for fun. That’s a lot of info, but that’s pretty much it.
In terms of the actual songwriting, The Barr Brothers material is much more revealing, whereas The Slip is more progressive and the Surprise Me Mr. Davis has more of a folky Americana type sound. Is the songwriting process very different in each group or do you follow a similar routine in all three?
Andrew: Brad does most of the songwriting in The Barr Brothers and The Slip and in Surprise Me Mr. Davis it’s usually a combination between Nathan and Brad. In Davis, it seems like both Brad and Nathan will have songs that they write that just seem like they fit that Davis mold. And there’s something classic about the Davis songbook. There’s something when you write a song it harkens back to a simple kind of rock song, something that anybody could learn one time through. I think Davis kind of has that because we never really had time. We always just kind of got together before tours and learned twelve songs and went out and played them. Some piano player got up and sat in with us and learned them halfway through. Davis always kind of had that simple vibe. Although, the newest record we did spend a little longer working out arrangements. Then The Barr Brothers was all songs that Brad had written over the course of The Slip taking time off and Brad and I moving to Montreal which was a big shift. And like he said, it wasn’t necessarily meant to be a record it was just a bunch of songs that Brad had written. It was a pretty major time in our lives, I mean it was a big shift in our lives…The Slip was going to stop touring indefinitely…and deciding to make this big move. So those songs came out very naturally, it wasn’t like “Ok, we have a record to make. We have to finish 20 songs.” It just kind of came out of necessity of being the songwriter that Brad is, and the way that he operates.
Brad: it’s a pretty intuitive thing of knowing which group the song is going to go to. And only with a few songs have I had conflicts like “Who should play this one? Maybe we should try playing it in a couple of the groups or in all three.” But it’s kind of this intuitive thing. Usually a song comes out and it’s fairly clear who’s going to get it. But yeah, the more progressive and electric tunes end up in The Slip repertoire; the stuff that feels like the kind of good-times, gold old boy but still sensitive and poetic stuff ends up in Davis; and in The Barr Brothers I’m thinking a lot about the instrumentation—the harp, the pump organ, Andrew’s array of quieter sounds. I think about that stuff when songs emerge that seem like they’re a Barr Brothers’ song. It’s like “Yeah, I can really see the harp enjoying this.” But just to add a footnote, it’s also really interesting for me to think of a song that I would naturally think is a Davis song and imagine trying that in The Barr Brothers or something. Something like that just to keep it interesting.
Do you find these simpler songs come to you with greater ease as oppose to something like a Slip song that requires a heavier and more technical arrangement?
Andrew: The Slip stuff was definitely the result of three people working a lot together. And a lot of the Slip’s material was less the arrangement than the people playing the instrument. I think that the progressive thing that we talked about really comes from three people that are really into exploring sounds on their instruments. But we do that in all the bands.
Brad: [In] The Slip we’d be really just throwing the kitchen sink at it. I mean, Marc has a lot of big ideas with synthesizers and there was not really any way that [The Slip] was defined, in a sense. We could really just do whatever. The boundaries were very limited. With Davis there’s a bit more of a confine, which is a really nice parameter to work with. The limitations that we have with Davis, whether it’s just the character of what Mr. Davis himself would do, are really nice parameters to work with and they prevent us from doing a lot of that more progressive stuff, which is nice for us—the simplicity of it. The Barr Brothers could fall under a lot of that area because everyone in the band is fairly proficient on their instruments. It’s the idea of making that sound easy is kind of what The Barr Brothers like to do.
What made you decide to bring on a harpist on The Barr Brothers album?
Brad: It wasn’t as much of a decision as it was a destiny. Sarah [Page] lived next door to me and I could hear this woman practicing harp next door to me and I used to just listen to all these beautiful melodies come through the wall and wondered who she was—I assumed it was a woman because I don’t know too many guys that play harp. One day I hear her playing this song and I grabbed my guitar and I learned the song and went over and knocked on her door and played it for her, and she had no idea what it was. She didn’t recognize it. So I ended up continuing what I was writing because I figured if she didn’t claim it, I’ll keep writing it. So I wrote it and I taught it to her and we started performing that, and that just evolved into writing more songs for the harp. At that point it wasn’t called The Barr Brothers. It wasn’t really called anything. We just started playing together and performing and then started recording. Next thing I know we had about 10 or 15 songs and Sarah was integral on all of them. It was just a revelation of what was possible with the harp.
Are you renting the harp at each stop on tour or do you bring it with you on tour?
Brad: The last tour we did we had to rent the harp in every city, which seems like it was a big deal but it was pretty easy. We ended up with all these different harps with all these different stories. We used the harp that was on the soundtrack of The Predator movie, that was awesome.
That is awesome. You also brought on Liz Powell from Land of Talk on The Barr Brothers album. Andrew, is it true you met her in a coffee shop in Montreal?
Andrew: Man, that probably is true. There’s this coffee shop [in Montreal] where all the musicians go to get coffee in the summertime. I can remember two or three times that I got asked to play drums for people just sitting there having a cup of coffee. But Lizzie and I had mutual friends and she was looking for a drummer and I saw her in the coffee shop and she asked if I wanted to come play on her record called Some Are Lakes.
So do you guys have plans to tour more as The Barr Brothers in 2011?
Andrew: Yeah, definitely. We’re looking into it now. Taking the harp on the road is a pretty big ordeal, so we’re making sure that we have a pretty nice tour lined but you’ll definitely see us hitting the road in 2011.
Brad, you play piano on the Barrs’ record, and obviously you’ve played piano in the past with The Slip, but you seem to have stopped playing it in the live setting. Is there any reason for that?
Brad: Well, it’s funny you mention that because we brought a pump organ on the road with The Barr Brothers, and I keep thinking I want to write a song where I can play a pump organ. It seems like everyone gets to play the pump organ except for me. I love playing piano, but whenever Marco’s around, well, there’s really not much point in me playing piano. But also, you know, the biggest thing is it became hard to bring around. With The Slip we used to bring the Wurlitzer around and set it up for one song and it became kind of like “I don’t want to lug this thing around for one song.” But yeah, I love playing the piano. I try to play every day if I can. We’ve got one at our studio.
You guys were recently in the studio with Surprise Me Mr. Davis working on some new tracks. How far along is that album?
Brad: We did the basic tracks in nine days in this amazing situation called Studio House. Paul Green used to run School of Rock and he set up Studio House out on Long Island. We had a really good time and we recorded something like 20 songs and the next stage is to add a couple more overdubs. Nathan nailed a lot of the vocals. I just have to re-sing a little bit. You know, put another something here, organ there, percussion there, but the songs feel pretty complete. We’re going to try and mix them some time in the next two months and then we’ll talk about releasing it and when that should happen because it’s going to compete with a couple of things. You know, The Slip record is looking to get released, and that’s in the same phase as the Davis record. And of course, The Barr Brothers record which is finished, and we’re trying to get it released. So trying to release three records from three different bands is proving to be one of the biggest hang-ups.
So The Slip album is basically finished you’re saying. Can you talk about that album? Are there plans to release that in 2011?
Brad: We’re doing it in our studio right now, and until that changes we’re going to keep having fun with it. This record, or whatever we’re making right now, it’s been a cool experiment in recording, in our approach to a song. You know, taking an acoustic song and putting synthesizers on it to just spin it around—just kind of trying to slip everything on its head whenever possible. That’s about the status of The Slip record. There’s no release date planned but we’re having a good time with it. We’re learning to have more and more fun in the studio with all of these different projects. It’s pretty good.
What type of musical direction did the band take with these new Slip songs?
Andrew: I think that’s going to be a surprise to everyone including ourselves. It’s going to be different than Eisenhower, for sure. But I guess you’ll have to wait and see.
In terms of Improvisation, how has your approach changed through the various musical genres you’ve explored with each of the different bands?
Andrew: That’s a good question because I feel like there’s become this new phase of recording improvisation that we’ve all entered in having home studios. And a lot the things that really surprise you and shock you about yourself come from ways of combining different sounds and distortions and a lot of improvising of sounds. Sometimes I’ll play some of the simplest drumming I’ve ever done and then throw it through some super-duper distortion machine and all of a sudden there’s a whole new sound out there to kind of play with and then maybe I’ll rerecord the song with that in mind. The difference, to me, is in terms of recording and I think a lot of what that has to do with is sounds that we’re working with.
But in terms of actually just improvising, The Slip used to improvise sometimes for 45 minutes during a show and we would really span for the outer limits, and then, it depends, but you might forget what song you’re playing. As The Slip, that was 16 years of three of us playing together, we focused more a lot more on finding nice arrangements and song forms that we ourselves are writing and finding little places to open them up. These days, it’s funny, it’s like I can play an entire song and feel like I’m improvising even if it’s a part I’ve played a dozen times. It’s more the simple little nuances that seem like improvisation and less of creating a composition and hoping that it feels good and sounds good. These days the improvisation comes in the simplicity and the inertia of how you play songs you’ve written.
Brad: Yeah as Andrew talked about there, I was thinking how for me, a lot of it’s come down to being concise. Maybe some of the solos that I take these days are not as epic and as long as some of the solos I used to take with The Slip, and those long improvs, either group improvisations or individual style improvisations…it’s a beautiful thing that we have these epic journeys. And sometimes they turn out great and sometimes you land on your face and wouldn’t always get going. You know, the nice thing about improvising like that it feels like it calls upon every part of you—mentally and physically—to move like that. That’s why jazz is such an inspiring thing is because someone like John Coltrane has to constantly be in a way of practice—physically keeping his chops up and mentally where he can do a lot to open himself up to a lot of that stuff. And that inspired us a lot back then.
Lately I’ve been into the more concise kind of improvisation where you can arrive at a melody quickly, do something that charms you and makes you feel good in a shorter span of time. That will probably be one of the biggest changes in improvisation for us. But, that said, I’m really excited.
I think that everything informs itself. I think those really long form improvisations really helped us as songwriters and being able to get to the point quicker. And I think that the same thing happens when you spend a while working in a concise art form, it really informs your sensibilities when it comes to longer form improvisations. At least that’s my theory.
In the sense of the way you’ve evolved as musicians, I see a parallel to an artist like Miles Davis—who never stopped evolving—in the way that you’ve gone from one style to another without looking back. Can you talk about what inspires you to constantly evolve in this way?
Andrew: I think it’s just the thing that makes the most sense when you’re coming from the heart—to do what you want to do. And we’ve been really lucky that we’ve had an audience that’s been there and interested in what we want to think. I think what any of us has learned, whether it’s from Paul Simon or Miles Davis—these people that have constantly surprised themselves and surprised their audience. So it’s been a path laid down before by artists who have shown us to follow the gap and there will be a body of work in the end that makes sense and people, hopefully, will go along with it.
Brad: I don’t know if it’s the same as it was for Miles Davis and Paul Simon but I feel like I’m always writing better songs than I did in 2001. I feel like that part of me—the songwriting and the singing—is one thing that’s really improved, as far as I feel. That’s a matter of opinion. I just enjoy singing the more recent things that I write. Hopefully someday there will be, like Andrew said, a body of work that can be drawn from. But, you know, singing “Honey Melon” [on] From the Gecko doesn’t interest me at this point because, I just didn’t know as much then as I do know as far as using my voice and writing lyrics. I feel like I’ve improved since then. But you never know, sometimes you get drunk enough and it just might pop out. If somebody buys enough shots for the band it could happen.
So would you say it’s a matter of musical maturity in a sense?
Andrew: Yeah. Definitely. It ages and it blossoms— I’m not going to say it’s any better or any worse—and I’ve noticed that my eyebrows are less clinched when I’m playing drums, which makes me really happy in 2010.
Do you still rely heavily on your jazz background or was that more a part of your early songwriting?
Brad: We were using the jazz concepts to learn and understand our instruments. There’s that stage in life between 17 and 25 when you’re learning and absorbing and you’re imitating and assimilating at the same time. And then we’ve gotten older and we’ve sort of learned to find where our contribution is. And I still would like to think that that spirit, you know, when you were very cut loose on a theorem and suddenly there’s no ceiling there and you see the roof and you see the skies and you see the cosmos and you see how far you can go, that that spirit is there. That’s the freedom that we all got into this to feel. That’s what we want. As much as things have changed for us in the evolution and the song styles have changed and the writing styles, in my mind, there’s a time and a place for everything. There’s a time and a place for a really sweet song to be delivered without any solo and there’s nothing but that song and the feeling and the tenderness, and then times for the roof to get blown off and you send yourself and your listeners on a huge journey that can engulfs everything that you’ve come to learn. It’s just knowing what to do and what context to do that in.
Brad, on your website you mention that you met Trey in ’92 at guitar camp and he instructed you to “turn left.” Can you talk about that experience and the effect, if any, that it had on you?
Brad: I remember the moment. I remember it was me and Eric Krasno sitting backstage and we were asking [Trey] all these questions and I remember him saying that but I can’t remember what it was in reference to. I remember asking him about the whole concept of being in a band and what you’re supposed to do. You know, you want your band to get big but you want to retain your sense of individuality and integrity. I think his answer was something like “Always pretend you’re just playing in your garage. Always keep that in mind. Don’t start writing like your some big rock band.” It’s pretty obvious now, but that was what I remember the most. And I guess it turned up to.
Yeah, I guess you could say that lesson stuck with you.
Brad: Yeah, Andrew and I are still playing music the same way we played in our basement. I guess Phish, back then, if they did anything for me it was that group dynamic. I know that kind of came and went for them, and some stuff was more spread out than other stuff, but overall they really have a good dynamic and that’s the thing, to always play with people who you like. Find out who you like, and see if you can play with them. And that should be one of the bigger lessons you learn when you’re playing with people because when you get older that’s what you do. That’s how you make a living—playing with people.
