Phil Barker - Town Mountain Interview
Doug Burke:
Phil Barker is the lead songwriter and mandolin player for the bluegrass band, Town Mountain. The band formed out of the top bluegrass jammers in the legendary music scene of Asheville, North Carolina. Town Mountain combines a raw soulfulness with plenty of swagger to create a completely unique contemporary, modern sound rooted in bluegrass traditions. Their music has garnered over six million Spotify streams and led to steady bills on the top tour festivals. They're rocking honky-tonk live performances, bring out their unique combination of bluegrass, mixed with country, old-school rock and roll and Boogie-woogie flavorings. And that has attracted a strong following.
Welcome to Back Story Song. I'm your host, Doug Burke and today we have the pleasure of being with Phil Barker, the lead songwriter and mandolin player with the band Town Mountain. Phil, you guys are out of Asheville, North Carolina. Tell us how you guys got together and formed your band.
Phil Barker:
Sure, Doug, thanks for having me first of all. So we all kind of met here in Asheville. Asheville's become like a hot bed for acoustic music, bluegrass and old time. And we all moved here in the early 2000, 2004, 2005. There's a lot of clubs around town that have jams and what not, we all kind of met in that circle, just became friends, first of all, and enjoy playing the same kind of music, the same kind of bluegrass. I joined the band. Robert and Jesse had already established the band and when their mandolin player left, I stepped in around 2007.
Doug Burke:
So you guys have six albums out, Heroes and Heretics, Steady Operator, Leaving the Bottle, Southern Crescent, A New Freedom Blues. And we're going to talk today about some new singles you've been cutting during the quarantine, which I guess your longtime fans may not have heard yet, but the first song we want to talk to is one of your most played Spotify songs. So your fans clearly like it, the algorithm thinks it's a good song and it's called Law Dog.
Phil Barker:
That's right. That's definitely become one of our most requested songs anywhere we go, we have to play it every night. People really respond to it. And it's not that complicated of a song, it addresses a pretty simple relatable subject which is getting pulled over for a speeding ticket. I guess the impetus for the song came while we were on tour and one of the few traffic stops that we've had over the years is kind of just trying to capture that feeling of what it is to see a policeman on the side of the road.
Phil Barker:
And it's not necessarily whether you're doing anything wrong or not. It's just the feeling it gives you. I kind of tied that in with the term law dog that I'd heard Unknown Hinson, who's a really great guitar player and a singer who has a few songs that mentioned the law dog. And I always thought that was a cool term. And it just kind of came up when I was having one of my writing sessions and drew on that feeling and put in a little bit of some bluegrass acrobatics into it, which has kind of become the calling card of that tune now.
Doug Burke:
Do you remember when you were pulled over? Because I have been pulled over in North Carolina with my brother in-laws speeding and it does feel like North Carolina has a lot of speed traps. You have those country roads where it goes from 65 to 30 or 25 for through the town. Is that where this was when you got pulled over?
Phil Barker:
I remember it was actually in Washington State. We were on our way to a buddy's house outside of Seattle and we got pulled over and now in Washington I would say they're a little bit more lenient when it comes to certain things that you might or might not do on tour. And they let us go with some warnings, but it was a really bad feeling when we got the initial pullover and it's not like back East, it's a whole nother level of anxiety when you're driving around back East, especially up highway 81 or 85, those cops are out to get you for sure. And I think that's why people relate to the song.
Doug Burke:
So should I read a double entendre into the line? Seems every time I'm riding high, you're there to bring me down. Is that what was going on in the band's van?
Phil Barker:
Who's to say.
Doug Burke:
Because it is legal at that speed right?
Phil Barker:
Exactly it is. So there may or may not have been something along those lines. I'll leave that up to the listener's discretion, but thanks for noticing.
Doug Burke:
But do you think that's why your fans like this song so much?
Phil Barker:
No, I really don't. I think that line might blow by a lot of people. You might be the first person that's actually caught that, but most of them catch onto that. It's kind of a bluegrass tradition that vocal acrobatics, I do this little falsetto thing is kind of the hook of the song. And it's just like people latch onto that initially. And that catches them and then they went, it's got a good rhythm to it. So they latch onto that. They're like, "Oh, this is about getting pulled over. That happens to me all the time," or whatever so, they can latch onto the message of it. And that's a trend with a lot of bluegrass, Bill and Rose, Mule Skinner blues, or Osmonds Brothers, Ruby, that big vocal falsetto thing, that's the counts that they get for people and it can be tough to sing sometimes, but I'm honored to have people requested. That definitely feels good.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Well you do start with that falsetto acapella on the song?
Phil Barker:
Yeah. That kind of sets it apart and people take notice of that and it's definitely memorable if nothing else.
Doug Burke:
If you think of bluegrass and sort of the hillbilly roots of it, there's a long history of the screw the man of moonshine, whiskey making type of song. Right?
Phil Barker:
Absolutely.
Doug Burke:
They're not a lot of song saying I love the police.
Phil Barker:
Not at all. Yeah. Just trying to encapsulate the spirit of that. It's like Jimmy Martin, not a lot of that spirit to what he did and he's a huge influence on me and it's a fierce like don't tread on me mentalier, I'm fierce independence and it just kind of this swagger that comes across in the music and the swing and the drive of the music. So people can latch onto that for whatever reason.
Doug Burke:
So one of the things I like about your band is that you guys are taking this classical form with the fiddle, the mandolin, the band Joe and bluegrass stylings, but you're infusing it with both modern lyrics, like there was never a Carter family speeding ticket. I don't think, maybe it was in the 1930s. And you write about modern things and then you infuse your songs with other modern rock and other stylings and make it really contemporary. And I liked that about it, but like here, modern theme of speeding and everybody loves to speed.
Phil Barker:
Yes, sure. That's definitely been our goal. Even in the genesis of bluegrass, it was just a collection of other influences. And so we're kind of just moving forward with that using the influences that maybe we grew up on more of rock radio and folk music and country music and kind of trying to blend it all together into a sound that something that we want to listen to and that's a blend of things. And so while we do use the traditional bluegrass instruments as our vehicle, we try to take it to somewhere else.
Doug Burke:
So another one of your highway songs is Wild Bird. The wild bird on the highway, it's really not a driving song, but, sort is.
Phil Barker:
What? Yeah, it is definitely in the van. You'll find that it's a common theme with my songwriting. That's kind of what we do, I know it gets old. People say don't write about another road song, but that's the reality of being a touring musician is a lot of time doing that. And you kind of write about what you know. And Wild Bird, I actually thought about the chorus when I was driving. You get drawn into the mundane things and every day highway drive, and you notice a lot of birds. The birds will be circling above and you just kind of wonder what they're doing, running in circles, not really getting anywhere. And that kind of is used in this analogy for what we're doing sometimes in the band. We cover a lot of ground, but maybe not in a lot of senses of the word. So, Wild Bird was just trying to relate the feeling of trying to be a touring musician and the struggles that go along with that.
Doug Burke:
But it really is a song about a girl.
Phil Barker:
It definitely has a verse about a girl. That's kind of the ongoing theme of being away from someone you care about, or just like dealing with trouble, relationships on the road can be tricky for people. And so there's a verse about that. And then the last verse is talking about getting on stage and putting on the good show every night can be tough to do sometimes when you're not feeling it and maybe a shot of whiskey will help you get there, maybe it won't, but you try to do the best you can to put on a good show and a good face for people.
Doug Burke:
So do you think of it in terms of lyrics, putting the devil on my tongue, which I love, you take a shot of whiskey, the burn of the whiskey from the, well, never seems to let me down, puts the devil on my tongue, puts a face on for the crowd. What's the devil on your tongue?
Phil Barker:
Well, the devil on your tongue is when you might end up saying something you don't necessarily mean or might not otherwise say, it can have repercussions when you have a one to few whiskey shots, but that's just kind of where I'm trying to ride that line of getting into a good mood and then maybe once it goes too far, it can have negative consequences to it. And then the face on for the crowd is trying to put on a, maybe that shot of whiskey puts you in a jolly mood that comes across on stage of just what people want to see, which most of the time you're there anyway, you're playing music for a living, but there are nights when you're struggling to get through it. And you kind of put on a face.
Doug Burke:
Yeah I know. I can imagine, it's not as glamorous day in day out as a lot of people might think, I imagine. Especially if you were chasing a gambling girl.
Phil Barker:
Well, that was kind of leading into the next line, it was ace. It was all she'd ever thrown. It's kind of a girl that's never always been the one breaking up with people. Never had her heartbroken. She's always been on the good luck side of things. So the gambling girl was just leading into that second line.
Doug Burke:
Just a girl who always had her way. Who always had aces and-
Phil Barker:
She always had aces. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Never got deuces.
Phil Barker:
Yeah. Every song that I have, or a lot of the songs I have will reference some sort of lost love or talk about a girl in there, which is kind of just the recurring theme of songwriting in general. But it's a writer out about relationships. And well I'm happily married at the moment, I had my heart broken and that's when I started writing songs to begin with. It was when I had my heart broken for the first time, really, and it's kind of this sadness or this feeling that you can kind of tap into and you draw from it and you can relate to it and you try to express how it makes you feel and there'll be one of those and in a lot of my songs, I'll still reference that feeling because it stays with you.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. This girl seems like trouble to me because she's got a soft smile and a cold heart. And that doesn't seem like a good combo.
Phil Barker:
No, not at all.
Doug Burke:
Make you drink whiskey and put the devils on your tongue, I guess.
Phil Barker:
Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Take It on The Mountain Side. I really liked this song because it really captures what's going on in a big part of America in a lot of ways, when I listened to it. But why don't you tell me, what is this about?
Phil Barker:
Well, this is a song about the over development of the mountains, especially out here in Western North Carolina, Asheville specifically. I had a buddy of mine, real good friend who bought this piece of property outside of Asheville, maybe about 30, 40 minutes outside of town. And man, it was like on the top of a mountain, you had to drive a dirt gravel road like a 60 degree angle to get up there in four wheel drive only. And like out in the cut, way out in the cut, he was doing this on purpose, he wanted to get off the grid and he found this great spot, 10 acres on top of this mountain.
Phil Barker:
And sure enough, two years later, there's a development company in the South East called the cliffs and they bought the backside of his mountain. Started to turn into a golf course. I said he was my buddy all the way outside of town as far as you can get, and then he's still waking up to the backing up of industrial construction equipment and literally right on the other side of the mountain from him is just like this huge development going up. And it was just like, there's no stop to where people will go for a dollar and what they'll do. And around here you notice that people will throw out condo developments just right up the side of the mountain. So that's what you're looking at now when you see Reynolds Mountain in Nashville. It's a bunch of condos and second homes for people that aren't usually there and I don't know. Just driving around town, that kind of caught me.
Phil Barker:
These are mountains that you want to have a view of and you want other people to come to Asheville and have a view of, but now they're just these developments everywhere. And it's just trying to speak to the... Maybe there's a more conscious way to develop mountains and I'm not trying to keep anybody from making a dollar by any stretch, but I just feel like it could be done a little more environmentally conscious and just socially conscious around here.
Doug Burke:
I really love the verse where you put yourself into the working man's shoes and the oxymoron of being a construction worker, helping that movement happen in order to make a living in this town and yet not really being psyched about it.
Phil Barker:
Yeah. And that was true. I did work in construction for a time around here and was curious working on houses that are three stories high on the inside and it's just like, you do it because it's a job and you can't fault the people for taking the job or doing the work. That's just part of reality but you just wished there was a better way to preserve the natural resources in your area.
Doug Burke:
Well, I haven't been to Asheville, but it sounds like a beautiful place, but I do like that verse, "Still I helped move that dirt, can't stand it boys, but I need the work. I pay my debts and close my eyes."
Phil Barker:
Yeah. That's just getting through the day. That last verse was a little nod to towns. The future like a bullet flies. Town's always had that sand, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. I always kind of just try to pull something in there that kind of relates to towns in a lot of my songs.
Doug Burke:
Oh, you talk about Townes Van Zandt?
Phil Barker:
Townes Van Zandt. Yeah.
Doug Burke:
Okay. That was the inspiration.
Phil Barker:
Yeah, absolutely. This Townes Van Zandt set a huge influence on me and my writing and yes, that is a off the cuff reference to a saying that towns used to have. I'll throw those into my songs here and there just because I'm a big fan of his work and his musical spirit, if you will.
Doug Burke:
He was a great complicated character and a half. Even Stevens talks about writing with him on one of my episodes. He actually met with him and drank a bottle of booze in the morning.
Phil Barker:
Wow. Yeah, I will definitely go listen to that. That sounds interesting.
Doug Burke:
So is there an anti-development movement going on in Asheville, North Carolina?
Phil Barker:
Somewhat, that will all really slow down at the housing market crash in 80, that golf course I was referring to froze and was never developed. The land was cleared, but the golf course never went in, but there is more so it seems like downtown where they're trying to put up a lot more hotels and stuff. People are trying to speak up about keeping the character of Asheville and keeping some of the older buildings around but it doesn't seem to be slowing the progress much. Unfortunately, the city council and mayor and what not are tied to economic dollars as much as they are to a community cultural preservation. It seems like they got to feed one beast and try to maintain the other. So not as much as you would hope.
Doug Burke:
So the next song we want to talk about is Ruination Line and this is an interesting song to me because it's a train song. And usually I think of the train of freedom, the peace train, the train of glory. Like trains taking you to a good place and this is like, not that.
Phil Barker:
No. Not so much. Yeah, Ruination Line it's one of our older tune. Well, it's actually the first one I brought to the band. I wrote this one after I was turned down for health insurance for the second or third time because of a pre existing condition that I had from a minor heart procedure I had in high school and I couldn't get insurance because it was the pre existing condition thing. And I wasn't in a particularly good place in my musical career or in feeling good about my health situation nor my financial situation. So this was kind of just being frustrated with how things were going around me at the time. Music is an outlet and I hate to keep bringing up all these negative things for my songs.
Phil Barker:
It's more of an outlet for negative thoughts like that sometimes, but maybe it's more cathartic to do it when you're feeling down and when you're feeling high. So yeah, this one, it refers to can't afford to pay a doctor or no ambulance ride, kind of referring to my insurance situation at the time. So this was also when gas was super expensive. And so there's a part in there about the corporate prison. Your freedoms for sale 155, a barrel, which is kind of a castle was at the time. It's not that now, but it's just kind of a reference on how I was feeling in society at the time. And it wasn't in such a great place
Doug Burke:
And the train is going to take you to a ruination line, right?
Phil Barker:
The train of society, if you will, it's going to ruin you. If it keeps going the way it's going,
Doug Burke:
This song and a lot of your songs you've got this combination of fiddle banjo mandolin. How do you guys do that? Like sometimes you guys just all start together. It amazes me, and this blend of these different instruments and guitars. If you've seen your videos, it's really amazing to watch all these pickers playing different instruments in this combination that just... Do you write that? How does that come together?
Phil Barker:
Well, the foundation of it was written by Bill Monroe, just putting those five instruments together in this unique form to create this driving rhythm. A syncopated banjo and the fiddle kind of rides on top of the rhythm. And the guitar does a certain thing and the mandolin, it's the snare drum, the bass is the kick drum. You learn that when you're learning the beginnings of bluegrass and when you start playing bluegrass and jams with other people, you kind of learn how to put that together. So then it's like you take those tools and you want to build something else with them and you learn to take those same instruments and create a different rhythm that maybe is a little more rock influenced or a little more emulates a different type of rhythm that you've heard somewhere else, but you still know how those instruments work together. So you can figure out how to build it in this different way, which is what we try to do.
Phil Barker:
And it's a lot of time at rehearsals, trying stuff, it doesn't work. Maybe somebody, the banjo player, Jesse will hear something that I don't hear vice versa. And we'll try to bring out this one lick that everybody's playing this one time. Well, let's fiddle on the mandolin play that or a fiddle and banjo play that at the same time. So it's just like anything else, you get your training learning to play in a bluegrass band, because it's an interesting dance in and of itself. And then you take those tools and try to build something else. And that's kind of your foundation, if you will.
Doug Burke:
So Phil, when and why did you start writing songs? And did you start with bluegrass songs and I guess was mandolin and your first instrument?
Phil Barker:
No, guitar was my first instrument. I was playing guitar coming up through high school and got a mandolin right about when I went to college and started exploring through the grateful dead, David Grisman and then Sam Bush, and then kind of got into the older stuff, Bill Monroe from Sam Bush and Del McCoury. And then, when I went and saw a bluegrass band live, the Del McCoury Band, that was when I knew that I wanted to try to do that. I was just blown away by seeing the music live and just the energy it had with those five particular instruments doing their thing in this bigger sound that it created. And so that was kind of the first step was knowing that the mandolin, being drawn to the mandolin and just the rhythmic sense of the mandolin. I wanted to be a part of that.
Phil Barker:
So then I was also the same time going through a particularly rough breakup and was having my heart broken and started writing songs about it because that's how you deal with it. And once you've had that happen, you hear music in a whole new way and hear songs in a whole new light. And I kind of found that it was fun to start with bluegrass tunes, made me want traditional songs because they were a little bit easier to write. It's three verses in a course and particularly short versus a lot of the times. And you can make it work in that bluegrass context. And then I just kept challenging myself to write more intricate lyrics or I keep pushing myself lyrically and melodically and developed over time, keep trying to do something new and something different. It's kind of led me to where I am now.
Doug Burke:
So it was a breakup with a girl, I guess you got dumped?
Phil Barker:
Oh, yeah.
Doug Burke:
Not to make you feel bad on the factory song, but you turn that into a muse that you said, "I got to write a song to make myself feel better."
Phil Barker:
Exactly.
Doug Burke:
And did that work?
Phil Barker:
No, but it led first some good thought.
Doug Burke:
You didn't feel better after you write the song?
Phil Barker:
Not immediately. It is a release of some things you may or may not be feeling or feel like you need to say. And so, yeah, it's good in the moment. That's your muse, that's your tool more, I would say. It's just that feeling that you never forget it, not to say that you don't get over it, but you can tap back into it when you're trying to write a song that you want people to relate to on that level.
Doug Burke:
I know every song is different, but how do you know when a song is done?
Phil Barker:
A song is never really done. I could just keep working on any number of these tunes, but at a certain point, it feels complete enough to where you that it can be, the statement that you're trying to make. Okay. The best way to do it. It's like when I can read through a song and don't cringe at any particular line, I'm fine with putting it out there because I hold myself to a pretty high standard. I feel like if it's something that I'm not cringing about, or if I feel good about it, then I'm ready to give it to the world. So is it ever really done? I don't know, but it's done enough, we'll say.
Doug Burke:
Do you test them and change them in front of audiences? Play it, iterate, play it, iterate.
Phil Barker:
Absolutely. Yeah. I change small maybe arrangement ideas or maybe a lyric or two or a word or two, if it's not singing very well, if it's hard to sing it, the harmonies are a challenge. Maybe we'll change the key. But for the most part, I would say we don't alter it too much based on our live performance. It's mostly like we'll add maybe another couple breaks if we want to extend the song for people dancing or whatnot.
Doug Burke:
Tell me how the harmonies come together. I imagine you don't write the harmonies or do you write the other parts or they just sort of naturally happened for you guys in your songs?
Phil Barker:
It comes very natural to us at this point. Again, jumping back to the bluegrass is the building blocks. That's kind of a hallmark of the bluegrass sound is that it takes into account the gospel influences of vocal quartets and trios and duets. And so there's this standard that the lead is going to be here near the root. And then the 10 year old would be a third above that. And then the bear town will be the fifth, but it will be below. So we know that framework, but then we've kind of found that you don't want to put harmony over the whole thing. You got to pick and choose your spots about a particular note in a chorus that holds out for a certain amount of time. So you find, pick and choose your spots. But again, it's just based on that, the bluegrass framework that we all are so familiar with within the band.
Doug Burke:
Wow. It's like instinct for you guys.
Phil Barker:
It really is. It doesn't take us long to figure it out. We're in tune to what our capabilities are and to what will sound right for us.
Doug Burke:
So another one of your road songs is North of Cheyenne of sorts.
Phil Barker:
North of Cheyenne. The idea for this song came on a tour maybe four or five years ago. We were on tour in Colorado driving to a private function in Wyoming. And the night before we had played in somewhere in Pittsburgh or maybe West Virginia, and we'd taken a red eye out to Colorado and then started driving to get to this private function. So slept on the plane, whatever you call that. It's all a little groggy and we're traveling in two vehicles at this point. I'm in one vehicle with two guys and then there's another vehicle traveling behind us, at least, so we thought. And so the first vehicle shows up to the gig and we're loading in equipment and getting things going. And I called the other guys and they're running a little bit late now.
Phil Barker:
So I call him up and like, "Where are you guys?" And he says, "I think we're about an hour North of Cheyenne." Which is in the wrong direction and his lonesome in Wyoming. I don't know if you've ever driven through Wyoming, but there is nothing an hour North of Cheyenne.
Doug Burke:
Yeah, I have.
Phil Barker:
So I needed to say hearing that phrase, like being that sounds pretty lonesome, I'm going to hold onto that and put it in my mental Rolodex. The initial idea for it was from a wrong direction taken by my band mates and on tour a few years ago.
Doug Burke:
Did you know that only 3% of all the land in Wyoming is developable?
Phil Barker:
Wow.
Doug Burke:
97% is like BLM land or federal park and Yellowstone and-
Phil Barker:
Wow, that's incredible.
Doug Burke:
Part of what makes it so beautiful. And that 3% men in Jackson, in Alpine they're building and building and building up there.
Phil Barker:
Yes they are. But it is a vast expense of not much out there when you're drive it around, it gets pretty lonesome.
Doug Burke:
So played every bar in town from 21st on down, is that Denver?
Phil Barker:
That is Denver, this kind of taps back into that wild bird feeling a little bit plan bars. And you meet all these people that you're friends for the night and you kind of get to know them a little bit, but it can feel kind of empty night after night. You'll see. There's the girl verse, the next one.
Doug Burke:
Was that inspired by any particular girl? Or was that's not this girl that dumped you earlier that we talked about?
Phil Barker:
I don't know. Maybe it is. It's just another feeling.
Doug Burke:
I like what this girl does to you. It's not...
Phil Barker:
We're giving her too much credit.
Doug Burke:
It's a good song material. It's good stuff of songwriting. I didn't have to look up how you end the song up where the old man bends meets The Perry Winds and the sweet Borealis plays when it occurred to me, am I alone or free? Well, it just ain't the same. The old men, I didn't know where the old man bends.
Phil Barker:
Saskatchewan. We had just played a festival up in Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. And we saw the Northern lights, which is the reference there. We didn't necessarily see the old man, but it's up there. And sometimes you kind of deal geographical research when you want to talk about a certain area and find maybe a cool landmark that sounds cool. And old man bend sounded good to me. Just want to describe this guy, just getting out of there. He's just driving at this point. He's just driving to get away from it all. And he's going North headed to Canada.
Doug Burke:
It's an Alberta, Canada, and I love the double entendre of an old man bending and then calling a river, an old man.
Phil Barker:
Thank you.
Doug Burke:
So let's talk about some of your new material that's coming out.
Phil Barker:
Absolutely.
Doug Burke:
Well, first off, you guys are in quarantine like all of us, you're not on the road. So you're using your time to create new records. Is that what we have going on here?
Phil Barker:
We're gathering material and putting songs together, we're trying to rehearse them as best we can, being socially distant. We got together last weekend and sat around six feet apart, ran tunes, but it's hard to get into a studio or get all that doubt and which working on it though. So yeah, we've got new material coming and the latest single, You Can't Win Them All, was actually one that we had recorded on tour last fall. And so we had the rough tracks together, but it was kind of incomplete. And I was envisioning this slow country. God, I wish George Jones could sing this song, kind of late night jukebox song.
Phil Barker:
And I sent it to our buddy, Joelle Safwan down in Lafayette, Louisiana, because I know that he is really in tune with classic country tones and vibes. And he knows some great players in his socially non-distant circle, if you will. So he was able to add some of the non-traditional to bluegrass instruments to it.
Doug Burke:
Oh wow. So he's on this song?
Phil Barker:
He was producing it.
Doug Burke:
Wow. Okay. It's a great song. So tell us what it's about. You Can't Win Them All.
Phil Barker:
Yeah. You Can't Win Them All. That's kind of a phrase we've thrown around the van for years. Everybody has one or two losses during their life and everybody's going to run into things that don't work out for them. And it's kind of a way, a quick phrase that we've always used just to be like, don't let it get you down. You can't win them all. Something that you say when things aren't going right. And it's in the notebook. It's one of those phrases that I keep around and I just kind of wrote the first verse as I was going to bed one night, just straightening up my room or just getting things together and just turn down the lights, drawn every shade. But I can't stay on the side of the mess that I made.
Phil Barker:
The house was a wreck and just went from there. I kind of took onto the loss love thing. There goes that feeling again and I jumped right onto it and Can't Win Them All, it's something I've wanted to write about for awhile. And so that fell into the course is like you can play every game, but you can't win them all. You're going to have some losses. You got to learn to accept it and learn to live with it.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. No one goes undefeated in life. Right?
Phil Barker:
That's it. That's the thing. So I found that people can definitely relate to that feeling.
Doug Burke:
Another girl in this song, I saw a hair of gold, pretty eyes of blue.
Phil Barker:
Yeah. When I was writing that one it was more of like, I was really trying to put myself in a George Jones song, keep the lyrics simple and really try to get to the emotion of it. And don't worry about any kind of vocal acrobatics. And don't let people get caught up too much in what you're saying, lyrically, it's more about the melody and the feeling of the song.
Doug Burke:
This is releasing soon for everybody. Where can we find this on? On your Spotify?
Phil Barker:
This has actually already been released. It has been released. It's been out for a couple of weeks now. And it's fully downloadable, streamable, videoable. It's everything. Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music, all the places. So yeah, go check it out.
Doug Burke:
Let's close by talking about another song that's coming out on your new album, which hasn't been named yet. And that's Daydream In Quarantina.
Phil Barker:
Yes. This song is kind of a tribute to John Prine. Losing Prine was pretty heavy in just the music world in general, but as someone who plays in the Americana and kind of singer songwriter, greater John were like he was a hero and a captain of that ship and losing him was hard to take. A lot of these musicians, when you lose them, there's a big show that comes a couple of weeks when you can get together with everybody or everybody gets together and they play a song and it's a big tribute.
Phil Barker:
I'm sure there'll be something at some point and there's been stuff online, but I was just feeling like I really wanted to play something that was in his spirit and something relatable to the current day situation and what I'm dealing with and what a lot of musicians are dealing with is all this time on our hands because they're not able to do what we're accustomed to doing. And so it's kind of just dealing with that feeling and common anthem to when we can get back to doing what we love, written in the style of maybe what John Prine would do.
Doug Burke:
We lost him to the COVID and Charlie Daniels as well recently. A bunch of artists of that age, which is the COVID virus' been attacking the elderly at a much higher rate than the rest of the population. But it's real sad loss for us because John Prine was a great one.
Phil Barker:
What a legend.
Doug Burke:
I love this line that said, "He's got a luncheon with Baezas, and a meeting in Congress." Did he actually have that?
Phil Barker:
I'm actually referencing two lines before was this God talking to the devil himself. The devil don't have time to mess with me because he's got a luncheon with Baezas and a meeting in Congress. It's kinda like playing on the idle hands are the devil's playground kind of idea with all this time on my hands. Even the devil doesn't have time for me. He's got other things to do in this day and age.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. He's busy on Amazon. Although we do encourage you to buy the albums on Amazon.
Phil Barker:
Heck yeah. Wherever you can please.
Doug Burke:
We need all the help we can for our songwriters. And you also referenced The Stairway To Heaven and The Free Bird here.
Phil Barker:
Oh man, that's the constant for myself. And I'm sure a lot of songwriters is writing. You start playing something and you're like, "Oh man, this sounds great. What is this? This is going to be awesome." And then about two hours into it, you realize, "Oh, that's because this songs already been written and it's so familiar." That's a lot. And so this was just kind of playing on that. I do a lot of staring at this Martin trying to write a song and ends up being something that's already been written. You started writing about a heavenly stairway and it's kind of playing on the... That's already been written man. And that's just kind of me dealing with the struggle of continuing to try to write something new. It only gets harder in my mind. Seems like it only gets harder to keep pushing yourself to new places of thinking of new things to say,
Doug Burke:
Have your fans yelling for you to play Free Bird in a cliche?
Phil Barker:
Oh yeah. You always get one or two of those guys or girls at a show. They always think it's the funniest thing ever that no one's ever done. But yeah, we just left that one off.
Doug Burke:
So I asked every songwriter on the show, if they have an ideal "voice and song" that you've written, that you would love to see any voice in the world record one of your songs, do you have something in mind? And it's fair if you don't.
Phil Barker:
We talking in current or living or dead or anyone?
Doug Burke:
Preferably current. Because I'd like to get the current artists to think about doing it from the show virally.
Phil Barker:
My head too would be George Jones or Keith Whitley singing Can't Win Them All. That would have been the best. Those guys were tapped into something completely different. George Jones is the pinnacle of country music singing and he could sing the phone book and turn it into a number one country hit. But that would be one that would jump out at me is having one of the country music icons like that sing that song because I feel it has such a classic sound in such a classic emotion that they could really take it to another level. Not that Robert didn't do a great job.
Doug Burke:
Yeah. Both of those guys have passed. If there was a contemporary voice to sing one of your songs or You Can't Win Them All, would you pick up a voice? And that's fair if it can only be done by Town Mountain because it's Town Mountain song. That's fine too.
Phil Barker:
Yeah, I would say... Gosh, that's tough. I hadn't thought about... The current country music class isn't quite in my mind on the same level as George Jones and Keith Whitley where it's kind of morphed into something else these days. But I would say maybe Kat. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to have to-
Doug Burke:
It could be Bruce Springsteen. My buddy from yarn who lives in your North Carolina neck of the woods, Blake. He wanted Bruce to cover one of his songs. I was like, "Wow, that's cool. I'd like..." Oh, he said, "Tom waits." I was like, "Wow, that's not the cleanest voice on radio."
Phil Barker:
No, I'll say, if I was thinking outside of the country music genre, I really love Oliver Wood from the Wood Brothers. He could sing any of my songs and that would be a real treat. He is such a soulful dude and such a great singer.
Doug Burke:
Well, Phil Barker, this has been a true pleasure. Phil Barker from the band Town Mountain. And we can't wait to get beyond this Coronavirus and see you guys on tour again. Good luck with the new album. Good luck with the new singles. Is there anything you want to thank, promote or talk about?
Phil Barker:
Sure. Yeah. Just keep in touch with us on social media, Facebook and Instagram, where you can find us at Town Mountain and townmountain.net. Can't wait to see everybody out there.
Doug Burke:
Thank you again. And thank you DJ Wyatt Schmidt. You're the best, we could not do this without you. You can find his YouTube channel out there 24/7 streaming, and thank you to our Back Story Song listeners.
