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 at the same time. I feel like my arm is about to give out! She’s been a terrific addition to our family here in Richmond, Virginia. Our family of animals, good friends and family members. It has been wonderful. I finished touring in December. It’s mid March and I’m not leaving again until June. I’m currently a stay at home dad. It’s strange, I bumped into one of my old house mates earlier this morning, whom I lived with for twelve years. He said, “You’re home for six months?!? We’ve been friends for twenty-five years! I’ve never known that you’ve been home for that long, ever!” I’m home with my daughter. I’ve been working, setting up tours, writing songs and getting my head together here for a little bit. The weather is about to break and this wanderlust I have really kicked in. It’s a difficult thing to deal with but thankfully my partner Sarah is very supportive and very wonderful. I do still get the opportunity to get out there and ride trains and do my thing. It’s really fucking cool. Lela Jane Barry is her name and she is now a fifteen pound hammer, with big blue eyes!
How scary was it having this kid? Was there a chance that you might end your vagabond lifestyle?
Not scary at all. I’m the master at thinking things through. The woman that I love, Sarah, when we met I knew right off that this was something that she wanted. So I allowed myself to grow with her and make it something that I wanted as well. Lela here was totally planned. I’ve never been scared. She’s six months old today, so it’s a little premature for me to say, but I’m not sure what many of my parental peers are talking about when they say it is a really difficult thing to have a kid. It’s possible that the crap I have put myself through in my life has been more difficult than having a child. Also, I’m old and I don’t have the urge to go out to the bar till two in the morning anymore. I really do like to stick around at home. Most of the things that make me happy are around here. I don’t fight with the urges that some people have with their children limiting them from. Honestly, maybe I’m the only male out there who was not scared to death, but it has been wonderful. The only complaint that I have is that I hate driving. Now that I have a baby and she is so young, I just can’t strap her onto the back of the bike and do all of my errands. So I drive a little more than I would like to. Truthfully, you sleep less when you are on tour than when you have a child. There is no sleep on tour, and you follow other people’s schedules the entire time. Being at home, even if I don’t sleep as much as having a baby, it is far more than I sleep when on the road.
I’ve read you write songs with and they have a certain color to them. How has having a child influenced the color of the songwriting?
They are the same colors! There is a word for this, I was reading about a Richmond soul writer who has been recently rediscovered and was saying the same thing in an article for our weekly paper, called Style Weekly. I was excited to know that other people see these same things. There is a word for it, but I’m not sure that I know. Really, what happens when a song pops up, which is how many of us songwriters do it. Songs just show up. You feel the urge or you are compelled to start penning it or playing it. Only the songs that have very strong color imagery in my head, are songs that ever make it onto a record. The colors have not popped or changed too much. They are fairly consistent. I still drop all the songs that do not have a pronounced color. One of my favorite artists, Ed Trask, a Richmond artist here. His main colors for many years were black, white and gray. He does these terrific, terrific paintings. As soon as he had his first daughter, his paintings exploded with all of these bright colors! I’m talking from Black, Whites and grays to crazy pastels! As he had his son, they got even brighter and brighter! I was really eager, after following Ed Trask’s art for all of those years through him being a parent and thinking this was going to happen to me. The truth is I find that I am writing more sentimental lyrics, instead of the colors changing. The tone of the songs might be a little more hopeful, or maybe even more tragic. I don’t know.
Have you taken your daughter on any train rides yet?
No! Lela is not worthy of the train stuff. I was joking with Sarah the other day about the time she turns twelve she can start riding trains. Sarah just rolled her eyes. Lela will do what she wants. When we get off the phone today, I’ll put her in the stroller and grab Emma, my dog, and we’ll go down there and watch those big freight trains pull out at the river, right next to our house. She’s use to them. The engineers wave to her and all the guys on the ground know her. It’s pretty funny. We’ll see what she ends up doing. She can do whatever the hell she wants.
What do you have in the works right now?
I’m currently writing. I’ve decided I’m on side B of the new record. I have six pretty good songs, so I’m just going to put them away and start something new. It’s side B I’m working on. Then, June I go to the UK and do a follow up tour. I was just over there with Frank Turner and the tour went really well for me. So I’m going back to do a headlining tour with another player by the name of Sam Russo. We’re going to do a pretty extensive UK tour.
I’ll come home for about a week and head right out into the United States. Because it all has not been announced yet, I can’t really say where exactly we’ll be going or who we’ll be touring with. I’m really excited about it, and I’m really excited to get back on the road and fall back onto that pattern in my life. At the same time being at home for six months, holding this baby all this time, is going to make it very difficult. What I’ve done is I’ve gridded it out. I’ll go out for about ten days at a time. Then come home in between for a week or so to make sure that Sarah and the baby are doing well. Then I’ll get back out there. I’ve got shows on and off for the rest of the year. Festivals and one off dates.
I’d really like to get back into the studio. I’m going to spend my off time here, doing the best I can to get these songs all together without rushing them. I don’t believe in forcing creativity. I’d still love to get back into the studio and record another record soon. It’s coming out pretty mellow. I’m pretty sure I should name it Tim Barry: Adult Contemporary Folk-Punk. I hate Adult Contemporary and also I hate the term Folk-Punk. I figure that might be the title of the new record. It’s pretty laid back, but still abrasive as I am.
You create such rich characters, have you ever tried you hand at writing a book?
I feel pretty bad about this. I did commit to a publisher with a handshake/verbal agreement about two and a half years ago to begin drafting a book. They wanted more autobiographical type stuff, but I had some other ideas. We came up with some pretty cool ideas. They sort of had editors on standby for me. I have a problem where if I am writing songs, then that is all I want to do. I’ve found it difficult to interchange between songwriting and writing words for a book. I have not fulfilled my obligation. So it’s interesting that you bring that up. I think whenever I decide to put down the guitar I’ll know when that time comes because things will just naturally burn out. I think I will write a lot. Right now I’m having more fun playing music and writing songs than I ever have.
I read an interview with the writer John Irving the other day. He writes all his novels with a piece of paper and a pencil. With Typewriters and computers, he spends too much time trying to fiddle with them and not completing the art that he wants to create. I find myself trying to do that with technology. Instead of recording a song or writing it, I spend my time playing with the recording device. Sometimes technology is bad ass, but sometimes it gets in the way. [Laughter]
You’ve been battling with Type 1 Diabetes in recent years. How is your health?
I’m killing it! I’m just one of those people. It’s scary knowing you are going to die before a lot of my friends. It’s almost easier to think about it that way. I can’t give up on anything. I just keep getting healthier. This chronic disease that I have been given for whatever reason, is not going to beat the shit out of me. I’m going to beat the shit out of it. I get up at five in the morning and I go running. Then I go to the gym and lift weights. I eat really good food. I keep chickens and I have my own garden. I know where most of my food comes from. I’m stronger than I use to be. I’m more fit than I use to be. I think that other people can do the same thing. If they can find the discipline to do so. I still smoke weed. I still drink beer. I think there is a way to learn balance and moderation. Even when your health is “in decline.” Mine is not like that. Fuck that, I’m getting better! My health is good! It doesn’t mean I’m not going to die tomorrow, but I’m going to have a good day before I do.
I would eat pizza every night if I could. The discipline has to come in when you know that eating pizza every night is actually going to expedite your death. The real discipline is getting up at five in the morning and having a few hours of exercise before your daughter gets up, but I do it! I’m a happier person when she is awake.
