tim barry

Editor’s Note: This is the raw draft of the interview published by New Noise Magazine. This draft has not been seen by an editor. There will be errors. In the year since TIM BARRY has released 40 Miler on Chunksaah Records, he has celebrated the 20th anniversary of his first train ride. He has also become a new father to his daughter Lela Jane Barry. We join Tim and talk about his early train ride memories, battling diabetes and how having a daughter may or may not change his song writing. I’ve read that as of March, it has been 20 years since your first train ride.  That is correct! It was actually right about this time of the month, too.  It was about mid March. I can’t remember the exact date, but my buddy Ronnie [Lee Graham] took me on this first trip. We debated the date a whole bunch. I kept saying it was 1994 and he kept saying 1993. I decided it would sound cooler if it was ’93. So that is the year I went west. He was probably right. So 20 years ago, right about this time of the month, I took my first freight train trip from Richmond, Virginia down to Rocky Mountain, North Carolina. We hitchhiked down to Raleigh and rode some more trains around North Carolina. I don’t even remember how we got back, but it was the first of those wanderings that I did.  What was that experience like? The guy I was riding with, Ronnie Graham. He grew up in a trailer park in Salisbury, Maryland. He didn’t come from a family of wealth. He didn’t come from a family of wealth and like a lot of those families, they had chronic health problems. A lot of his family died young. Others were in prison. His dad was in prison for a long time. He had a transient uncle who rode trains and he sort of turned Ronnie onto it. Ronnie had ridden trains a bunch, just out of necessity. I was sort of obsessed with Woody Guthrie and a lot of the early folk singers, back then 20 years ago. I had instructions. I had a person with me who had experienced so much, so my nerves weren’t as shot as if I had done it on my own. He did most of the footwork. He went into the train yards and talked to the workers and found out which train we wanted. We found an open box car and just drank beer waiting for the train to leave. I was more fatigued by the time the train rolled out at six in the morning heading south out of the CSX ACCA Yard. I was more fatigued at that moment than anything else. It was a hell of an experience. Do you think you would be the person you are today, if it had not been for that first ride? I think I probably would have found another obsession. That’s just the kind of person I am. I just have an instinct to keep moving. I don’t want to sit down. I’m always making plans. I rarely think about things that I have done. I generally focus on things that I want to do. I do many things that are considered normal or abnormal: Music, gardening, camping, canoeing, and riding trains. It never ends. I guess you are where you come from. So yeah, I would be a different person if I didn’t start riding trains all those years ago. What I like about trains is not just the fulfillment of my wanderlust. It is that they are a parallel for life. When I think I have a specific train route in time and the crew change points down, they change. It starts all over again. It becomes another mystery that I feel the need to conquer. Is it track maintenance? Has there been a derailment? Was there a bridge collapse that forced a reroute? I just start ticking and ticking. Again, it’s a parallel for life. Once you think you feel pretty scheduled with routine and with things falling in place, it is thrown for a loop. You have to start all over again, and learn it all over again. I think that’s what quelled my interest. A lot of the people who are obsessed with trains, like myself, are also obsessed with illegal forms of art on the trains. They’re also obsessed with things like birding, tree identification, and hiking every trail in the state. It might even be a neurosis because I find myself interested in all those things as well. It’s very strange the way the brain functions. [Laughter] Train Riding was such a large part of the cultural landscape of the depression era. Many of your songs have a depression era quality to them. Do you ever feel that maybe you were born in the wrong time? Nah! [Laughs] Josh Small is my right hand man and plays music with me. The first time I met his father, Rev. Bobby Joe Small; he is from the first generation of a gypsy family that settled down. Mr Small said to me, after seeing Josh and I play music together for the very first time, “Tim, you old timey in a modern way!” I’ll take it.  I don’t mind being old timey in 2013. I think we have a lot more conveniences than the dust bowl era. In the year since TIM BARRY has released 40 Miler on Chunksaah Records, he has celebrated the 20th anniversary of his first train ride. He has also become a new father, to his daughter Lela Jane Barry. We join Tim and talk about his early train ride memories, battling diabetes and how having a daughter may or may not change his song writing. Congratulations on your baby daughter!  She’s about fifteen pounds and in my left arm as we talk right now, while juggling her and the telephone … Read moreTim Barry interview on 20 years of train hopping, how his daughter changed his world and more! (New Noise Magazine Issue 01 – March 2013)