A Conversation with Danny Barnes (continued)

PM: Hey, tell me something about the guy who wrote that incredible song "Corn Kingdom Come."

DB: His name is Mark Graham. And he's worth checking out. He's got a record called Inner Life. And he's got a lot of records, actually about four records. He and I did a record together. But he's an unbelievable songwriter.

PM: That's a great song. Where's he from?

DB: He's a Seattlite.

PM: I've never heard that, a "Seattlite."

DB: Oh, he's got a bluegrass version of Herman Melville's Moby Dick.

PM: [laughs]

DB: It's really awesome. And he writes a lot about Greek mythology, but like in old-time music. He's a totally unbelievable guy. He's got all these songs like, "Can I Have All Your Stuff When You're Dead" and--

PM: [laughs] That's great.

DB: And, "I Can See Your Aura and It's Ugly." He's a brilliant guy. A good musician, a really good guy.

PM: And so you've done an album with him already.

DB: Yeah.

PM: Was that his record?

DB: Yeah, a self-produced record of his. He's just a friend of mine, a music friend of mine. I'm a fan of his work. And we co-wrote a couple of things. Like one of the Bad Livers' songs, "Lumpy Beanpole and Dirt," he and I co-wrote that song.

PM: [laughs]

DB: And then we co-wrote a song called "Fun Time" on the record I did with a band called Thee Old Codgers. But he's worth looking up. He's really a brilliant guy. He's written just dozens of great songs.

PM: So what inspired the song "Wasted Mind"? You got kids?

DB: No, I don't have any kids. I've been married eighteen years, but we don't have any kids. But it's just from watching kids, watching the choices that they make, and things like that. When I grew up, I think what saved me from ruin was just being obsessed about music, being obsessed with something that wouldn't kill ya. It saved me, because I had something that if you sit and practice your guitar for eight hours, it ain't going to hurt you. A lot of the kids that I've known, and that I see, don't have a passion for something of substance. I don't know, they get passionate about appearances, and passionate about getting rich, passionate about owning certain things. But the mechanisms are skewed--for instance, things like the lottery, being obsessed about the lottery, as an investment strategy.

PM: [laughs]

DB: And like I looked at the back of the lottery ticket. I think your odds are about the same whether you play or not.

PM: [laughs]

DB: And so I don't know, in one sense I feel sort of old, man. I don't really relate to that whole thing. But like at any point in that song, that guy can make better decisions. That whole record is really kind of based on cause and effect, lyrically. Like all those people in that movie, whatever, that record, they're all just making really hideous choices. And it's all somebody else's fault.

And they can't figure that they're actually the architects of their own destiny. Maybe one or two of the characters are hip to that, but most of them are totally unable to see that. And they're at various stages of being smacked in the head with that two-by-four of that realization and being ignorant of it. I've been guilty of that, and I see that as a race it goes on.

That's something that they don't teach you in school: how do you live life, how do you be happy? They never talk about that. "How do I make a choice where I can live with myself and where I'm not hurting other people and not hurting myself? How do I do that?" They never talk about that in school. And it's hard to teach people that, because you kind of have to know it beyond verbiage, you have to grok it, to use Heinlein's word.

PM: First of all, the teachers have to have grokked it.

DB: Yeah. And then you can tell somebody that kind of stuff until you're blue in the face, but until they really realize it, they're really lost in it. That whole record--and there's a certain amount of humor in that, too--like that joke about the guy beating himself with a hammer in the head, and it feels so good when he quits. At least he knows where it's coming from, or whatever--there's a million punch lines to that joke.

That song there, "Wasted Mind," I got on the bus--I write down a lot of my lyric ideas from what I overhear. Like when I ride the city bus sometimes in Seattle, or when I go to a recording session, I take a boat across, and then I'll just jump on the bus with my banjo and take a bus to the gig, because I have to take a boat to get into town. And I just write little things down that I hear people say. And I have this little book, and I write it all down. And then later I go back through it and sort of add it together and make longer work out of it. But that one came from--I was on this bus with this kid--

PM: It's like found words.

DB: Yeah, exactly. But that song--I was sitting on a bus with this kid. And he had the whole baggy pants thing going on, the hat on backwards--just like he watched TV and dressed like the guy on TV.

PM: He had the uniform on.

DB: Right down the row, yeah, right down the row. And he sees me with this banjo, and he starts saying, "Hey, I'm going to be a rapper." And I was like, "No kidding?" He said, "I ought to be able to do it. It looks pretty easy. I think I can do it." "Oh, yeah, I guess. Well, good luck."

PM: [laughs]

DB: And so anyway, he hands me this--he had this CD of all this rap stuff that he'd done. And I was listening to it, and it was this "bitch this," and "ho that."

PM: Yeah.

DB: Selling dope, and all this stuff. He was like some middle-class white kid. But he was about eighteen, he had a kid, he was going through court-ordered treatment, and all this stuff. And it was just interesting talking to the guy, and just seeing, "Oh, wow, this is the youth of America right here."

PM: Right.

DB: "This is the youth of America," like that poem Howl, "fat, horny and strung out," or whatever, that Ginsberg poem--I mean, this was that guy, man. This was him, the modern version. And it was just really interesting to see how his mind worked. I didn't really react to him. I just kind of let him talk. And just the way his mind worked was pretty fascinating.

PM: And he became the hero of that song.

DB: I sort of used him in that song.

PM: And he'll never know.

DB: Yeah, he just can't understand why all this is happening.

PM: [laughs] I don't know if you'd like to talk about her, but I'd like to hear about your wife.

DB: Oh, yeah. I got a great wife. Her name is Susie. We've been married 18 years. She's part owner of a business that repairs vintage sailboats, and works on classic maritime pieces of things.

PM: So did she come from Texas, then, too?

DB: Yeah, she's from Odessa. And that's what she does. She works in Port Mayor, which is right by the water. So when she takes her lunch break, she walks on the beach by the salt water. She lives there. And her birthday was just Friday.

PM: Oh, wow. Now, what does she tend toward musically? What does she like?

DB: She likes music just in a normal way. She's not really into music, which is one of the reasons why we get along.

PM: Yeah.

DB: Because when I go home, I don't want to talk about music, because that's all I talk about to everybody that I know. I don't even know anybody who isn't in a band or owns a recording studio or has a music store.

PM: [laughs]

DB: And so when I go home, I don't even want to talk about it, because I want to talk about the yard, or what's in the paper, or some movie.

PM: The boats.

DB: Yeah, yeah. So we get along like that.

PM: Fishing and bicycles.

DB: Yeah, yeah.

PM: Do you skateboard still?

DB: Yeah. I'm into long boards now, because we get all padded up and bomb down these long hills. And helmets and everything.

PM: That scares the shit out of me. I'll do a lot of stuff, but I never got on a skateboard. It's just like, nah, nah.

DB: You might like it.

PM: Really?

DB: Yeah.

PM: Being low to the ground and all.

DB: Yeah, you might like it, but just--all you got to do--and they've just come so far in the padding. Like they make really good pads now. You can get really good wrist guards.

PM: Cause you can take a wicked fall.

DB: Oh, dude, yeah, you can totally eat it. I've been told it's kind of like skiing, it's like a slalom. You control your speed by carving the hill and turning. That's my current thing, I really like skateboarding.

PM: Because you're an awfully big guy for skateboarding.

DB: [laughs] Unicycles, too.

PM: Yeah, right. So anything more we want to say about Susie before we get off that subject?

DB: Well, I just--it's been really great having somebody that's supportive. Because so many times I've talked to musicians and they say like their wife doesn't want them to do this or that, or their husband doesn't want them do this or that.

PM: Big time.

DB: And I've never gotten an ounce of static from her. Of course, from the first date that we had, the next day I left for a thirty-day tour of Europe. That was our first date.

PM: So she got right with it right from the top.

DB: Yeah, she knew what she was getting into. For instance, I like to shoot black powder rifles. And one day I left a keg of gunpowder in the living room.

PM: [laughs]

DB: I forgot about it. And I was driving to this gig, and I'm driving down the road, and I'm like, "Oh, man, I forgot to put that up." It's like a keg--it's only nine pounds, but it's in the middle of the living room. And she doesn't make any fuss, just puts it up for me. A lot of women might get pretty freaked out by that.

. . .

Editor's Note: The second side of the tape ran out here. The only other time that had happened, it'd happened at the same table, at the back of the same coffee shop, with Darrell Scott. I think the only other question I asked Danny was whether he was a spiritual person. He thought about it for a little bit, and then asked if he could consider that for a while before he answered. After that, though, I thought maybe I'd just leave that lie, unless he wanted to email me about it. But I suspect he forgot about it straight away, and is playing his banjo somewhere. Don't miss him when he comes to your town--solo, with Tim O'Brien, Robert Earl Keen, or Bill Frisell.

[Our thanks and sincere apologies to the many uncredited photographers whose images we've mercilessly cut up to form the illustrations for this interview, as well as to the numerous sparkler enthusiasts whom we rendered invisible except for the occasional hand (and, of course, their sparks).]

	print (pdf)
	listen to clips
	buy the new CD here
	dannybarnes.com
	terminusrecords.com
	badlivers.com
	thanks to:
	judy tate
	bongojava.com
	puremusic home