Trash Circus

The unholy marriage of rock n roll and cabaret has always attracted me. This second track from the "Micah Barnes" disc tells the story of my touring the previous disc "Loud Boy Radio" across America. (We called it the "couch and cuddle" tour) :) The glitter and glam influence of the LoudBoy rock n roll experience can be felt in the lyric and edgy vocal even though it's performed on voice and piano. From the safe vantage point of the present day I sound like I am out of my mind. Hmmmm. Maybe I was.

Long Drives. Ugly Hotel Room. Bad Food. Medication for the Blues.Filthy Dressing Rooms.

We musicians are lucky to get to make a life of music but we pay the price for the lifestyle. The road can be a depressing experience that makes you feel unhooked from the world and desperate to put your feet on the ground. This song Trash Circus was written to capture both the allure of the road and also some of the sadness and pain I've experienced out there feeling lost and desperate.

I stared writing Trash Circus as spoken word sketches for a about a year and finished it off as a song in Vegas while working on the track "Good Soldier" for LA based rapper Deadlee's disc. His label had a whole bunch of us staying up at a hotel on the strip while we recorded our parts and there was lots of waiting around so I kept working on Trash Circus while I viewed the decadence of Vegas from behind the Neon sign outside my window. Perfect.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103

Venice Beach

Los Angeles is so intense under the easy going vibe. It takes so much of ourselves just to feel like we're doing OK, let alone great, and you need a safe place to chill and feel protected and peaceful and that's how Venice worked for me.

It was built as an amusement park around the turn of the century by Abbot Kinney (Which is how it's high end shopping street got it's name), and designed as a version of the actual Venice in Italy, with little cottages lining sleepy canals and public bathing houses along the ocean back when the public thronged to amusement parks. The freak show boardwalk still exists giving the tourist a destination,(and the drug dealers an office front!).

Back in the day the trolley went out from downtown Los Angeles along Venice Blvd taking inland residents to the big party at the beach and many of them ended up taking up residence in the little cottages. Especially the artists and writers who were attracted by the beautiful light and the idylic lifestyle. Soon Venice Beach stood for "the bohemian lifestyle" and it's denizens including post war european artists, mixed race couple and gays and lesbians who created an enduring stamp on the town. The 60's and 70's saw Venice become one of the destinations of choice for traveling hippies and grew a beatnik culture of it's own. By the time I came along in the 90's after all those decades of being a safe haven for freaks of every kind the decay and drugs and violence had taken their toll.

We moved into a one room railroad style apt on a crack alley and I proceeded to write the material that would become a series of spoken word and music pieces. Digging into myself for the unfigured out chaos under cover of morning fog that would burn off by noon leaving a brilliant sunny day for the wandering and suddenly this Canadian used to four seasons had found a writers retreat that seemed to go on forever allowing me the time and space to cook the songs that became this album.

Blood On The Keyboard

All those years of singing classic pop material in The Nylons gave me a real thirst to talk about my own experience as a solo artist. After some years experimenting and stretching myself combining spoken word and electronic oriented music I finally bought an old acoustic piano and put it in my Venice Beach apt.so that I could get back to creating music the old fashioned way. In time I found that my own songs worked best for the listener when they emerged from deep inner world that I had no way to communicate other than in song. You know,the messy unworked out stuff that is hard to name.

AFTER YOU "I took this ugly room with the parking lot view, so I could small the cheap perfume of lonelyness my love"

Working with producer Clint Yeager who comes from a rock n roll background meant taking a risk. Clint pushed me until I was raw. Both as a songwriter and as a recording artist. He said he wanted the audience at home to hear blood on the piano. LOL. You be the judge.

The first song "After You" on my piano and voice disc is written as a communication to an ex-lover, detailing just how bad things have gotten after the break up. Guys tend to hole up inside and wallow and this song is a kind of celebration of that particular state.

Although "After You" was the last tune written for the disc "Micah Barnes", producer Clint Yeager really felt that it defined the overall mood and would work as a good introduction to this particular journey and landscape....http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103

Making "Micah Barnes"

Greetings Folks!

I thought before jumping into telling you about the writing and recording of the new tracks we are making in Toronto, it would be good to have a little look back at the adventure of the last disc and how it all came together.

I was living in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, a single man recovering from a very messy love affair and lifestyle that had literally brought me to my knees in every which way. Sounds kinda ridiculous now that I am so much stronger but sometimes life gives you the kick in the pants that you really need. Buncha intensely personal songs came out of it and focused the album which we called simply "Micah Barnes".

I was writing and performing shows with my rock n roll band LoudBoy and we had recorded songs with legendary producer Geza X. at his Malibu studio which were already finding license for film and T.V. In the middle of all that my buddy (and the bassist in LoudBoy) Clint Yeager turned to me and said that he felt the songs felt more powerful when I performed them solo at the piano ...and suggested that was how I should record them. It was a resounding shock to hear the truth coming from someone who I so respect (and who can eat even more than me at one sitting). I had started my career at the piano and it really and truly seemed the deepest place for those songs to exist. So I told him great idea but he had to produce the recording. :)

After some fun distractions, (involving a Billboard #1 Club single called "Welcome To My Head" produced by pals Thunderpuss), we got to work on choosing the songs and perfecting the arrangements for my own disc in my little Venice apt on Breeze Avenue. Clint would come out from Silverlake (where we had met performing in bands and working the door together at clubs) and we'd have a good visit, we'd play through the stuff and go eat and go for long drives playing music and talking about how important rawness and passion and personal truth were to pulling off this new kind of rock n roll cabaret material solo at the piano.... more on the songs as we go..

Album available online from CD Baby and itunes!

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103