ATLANTIC STORIES

                                                                 

This is it! I am finally on the plane to our beloved Halifax. (Porter airline which leaves from the island airport in Toronto is only minutes from my door!).
 My history with the city and the province is a long one. Way back when Daniel and I were fresh out of high school we made an East Coast swing with our Jazz Cabaret trio that included both St John's and Halifax and made for some wonderful memories.  It was then that the idea for the song "I'm Coming Home" (from the latest disc "Domesticated") was born, during a walk by the rough grandeur of the Atlantic ocean.
  I visited to perform often during my time with The Nylons and Marc Conners and I always agreed that Halifax was our favorite Canadian city (outside of Montreal of course!). The size, the history, the close knit sense of community really attracted both of us and we day dreamed about moving from our crowded Toronto lives to a kinder gentler place.

                                                                     
The last time I performed in Halifax was a few years ago as a solo artist  at the Rebecca Cohen Theatre on tour with jazz diva Molly Johnson. I had returned from California with a little disc under my arm that Molly fell in love with and she promptly invited me out to open the show and join her singing back up on her national tour. Halifax was a sweet stop for us and I vowed to return as soon as it was possible.

Thanks to a couple of dear friends in the business I am now back on the plane heading east and I can't wait to see old friends, meet new ones and enjoy the vibes  as I play shows and coach workshops through the week.

St FX Wed Nov 28th
Stayner's Thurs Nov 29th
Details up at http://www.facebook.com/events/332163900212546

Join the adventures on twitter!https://twitter.com/micahbarnes

The Grand Piano

                                                  Liberty Village to Queen West

 I grew up in a skinny dark victorian house in The Annex area of downtown Toronto. It seems that all of the houses had an old out of tune upright piano left over from earlier days in what would have been the parlor.
                                    An old fashioned home entertainment system!

That's how I grew up playing the piano to accompany myself on those glorious standards in my parents music books.  For some reason when I play an electric keyboard it all becomes intellectual compared to when I lay my hands on an actual instrument and can "feel" the sound.

     My father Milton Barnes was a classical composer and so one would assume that he would have worked on a real piano. It was always a heartache to me that he created all that beautiful music on an electric piano, and I always vowed that one day I would own and play a grand piano. So when brother composer and drummer Daniel needed to move out of his Liberty Village studio this month I made the purchase of the baby grand that has graced his studio these past years.

Perfect timing.  I am right at the place in the writing of new material where working on a real piano could deepen and open up the musical possibilities. Besides supporting my composing life the piano also gets to aid in the support of my clients at my Singers Playground coaching studio.

What every artist needs..... The best tools available to create with.
Here's to you Miltie!

 http://www.micahbarnes.com
http://www.singersplayground.com

On The "Cover" Tune.

                                                                     

              People often ask me how I pick which tunes to cover. Usually I start with being attracted to the words and melody on an intellectual level. I always have to learn and sing through a tune before I know whether it's something I can make my own.  I find myself having to live with a song a long time before it really feels like I'm singing my own experience. But once that happens it can really and truly feel like I "own" the song.
          In particular I am  attracted by the richness and depth of the jazz ballad  A powerful musical tradition that I first understood from the intimate voodoo of Billie Holiday first and a little later Nat King Cole's rich and intelligent dreaminess. The "American Standards" tradition has overplayed some of these gems but that doesn't take away from the brilliant construction and magic of songs like "Body and Soul", "Lush Life" and "Lover Man": Sacred texts that bear exploring over the course of a lifetime.
            In my early teens while learning the standards I was really attracted to the irreverence of Fats Waller. The sheer force of his comic personality overcame the 30's tin pan alley triteness with a rollicking bawdy combination of humor and virtuosity that really captivated my imagination.  In my current set Fats is well represented by "A Porter's Love Song To A Chambermaid" as a joyful counterpoint to the more moody stuff.
            Also included in the current batch are songs by a very different kind of musical personality, Smokey Robinson, a man who Bob Dylan once called "America's Greatest Poet" Smokey's grace with a lyric and soulful delivery were an early contribution to the Motown factory system that set the standard for everything to come.
         These days I am also featuring favorite songs by Cole Porter, also an early inspiration, having written both words and music to his clever ditties, which were so key to moving the popular song from the dusty parlor into swinging Broadway and nightlife of the 30's. Writing in New York allowed me to drink in last years excellent Broadway revival of "Anything Goes" a few times.

Mr Porter's music was considered edgy and hip back in the day but they still speak to the restless romantic spirit today.
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And hear the developing adventures first hand at   Twitter

To download Micah's latest disc "Domesticated" please log onto  Itunes

"The Dangerous Game"

 Up at the boathouse end of summer, wearing thermal socks and drinking hot coffee to be sure!


   I have been digging in and building the material for the Winnipeg show, taking the ideas that worked last time around our West and further shaping everything so the audience goes on a stronger ride, gets a deeper experience.
     The last time out the show was mostly cover tunes, this time my job is to include the originals from my solo disc's that tell more of a personal story while including classics from the Jazz and Blues, Pop and R&B and of course Nylons repertoire worked in.
    I am loving starting out the new version of the show with the song"The Dangerous Game" it's kind of like the title song of a mini musical.
     I learned very young that songs from the Jazz standard songbook mostly started out as show songs and have always felt it was important to understand what the song was originally built to "do" in the original context, move plot, tell story, reveal character, motive and truth. After all the great work is great work and it's important to know why it's speaking so loudly to audiences.

  Having originally sketched the musical and lyrical themes of "The Dangerous Game" in New York city last August, I was deeply under the influence of the great theatre and musicals I got to see that year while my partner was working on Broadway.
   The stand out productions for me were the simple joys of hearing Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" score, especially Sutton Foster's fresh take on old standards like "You're The Top", "I get A Kick Out Of You" and "Blow Gabriel Blow", "Easy To Love" and of course the tap a da tap a da tap dancing title song.

I also loved hearing the Sondheim's score for "Follies" in full production, although the show ended up feeling strangely flat, a show so chocked full of classic songs that it works just as well as a concert. 

   BUT the stand out experience was, of course, Audra McDonald reinventing Porgy and Bess both musically and dramatically for all time; playing Bess as written, a desperate and anguished drug addict. Her full and powerful upper range drawing every hurt and desire and complexity of emotion possible in the score. The production might have felt a little light in places (especially the choreography) but in truth her performance grounded the whole production in a reality so heart searing that it was actually life changing to see it. ..

Yeah, so New York City musical theatre. Very influential to my writing and building of a show these days.  After all I'm trying to make a story through song happen on stage ...not so different from the guys building these shows and these scores.

Preview songs from solo discs at: http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/micah-barnes/id324429103

FB fanpage is at:http://www.facebook.com/micahbarnesmusic

Info on Winnipeg show:http://www.wecc.ca/site09/performers/Micah_Barnes.html

CABARET:The World Of The Solo Performer

                                                                     
 
                                         I don't believe that Cabaret is a dead form.

     Although cliches of the genre abound, the reason I was attracted to it as such a youngster (I started playing the coffee houses and cafe's in Toronto as a teenager) was that it spoke to me as a kind of living art form that could  allow me to blossom.

         Lets not forget that in the 70's we not only had breakthrough performers like Bette Midler and Liza Minelli but also rock n roll stars like David Bowie and Lou Reed borrowing heavily from the world of Cabaret and reinventing the concepts.

                                                                           

           Lucky for me Toronto had a vibrant Cabaret scene in the 70's and early 80's which allowed me to perform 7 nights a week and be able to pay a band while I worked out a way of entertaining crowds night after night.

            My current solo show is a reflection of what I learned at that time, combining Jazz standards with originals, reinventing R&B and classic Pop covers to suit my musical personality and combining them all in a kind of narrative that tells my own story.

Although I love working with musicians, the challenge of the one person cabaret show is something I've been working with a long time, and it feels like a natural place to communicate from.

The immediate relationship created with the audience is one of intimacy, my favorite kind of relationship ha ha!

To hear current material from the new show please log onto  Myspace

To join my FB fan page and stay in the loop on upcoming shows please click "like"
on this page: Micah Barnes Fan Page

To follow my adventures on twitter follow me at  Twitter

Cheers
Y'all!
Micah Barnes
http://www.micahbarnes.com

                         

New York Stories Part 1

Last summer (2011) I joined my partner in NYC who was working on Broadway at The Palace Theatre, a very interesting adventure in itself. We were staying up in Harlem on Lennox Avenue in an apt complex on the very site of the old Savoy Ballroom where so many luminaries of the big band era had performed for the wild jitterbug dancers, (Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Count Basie among them).
   The Savoy apartment complex was also a stone's through from the location of the legendary Cotton Club where the likes of Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Ethel Waters and Lena Horne, (still a chorus girl), entertained mixed black and white audiences alike in the 30's and 40's.
   Not far away down on 125th street was the famous Apollo Theatre, still an in important home to touring African American artists and yes thats where James Brown was interned. (Talk about yer Black President!)
    Harlem has such a rich musical history and it certainly seemed as if the ghosts and vibrations of the past were with me as I wrote sketches of the songs that  will become my next disc.  I used to ride the subway down to rent little piano studio's off of Time Square. The little rooms gave me a private space in the middle of the madness of manhattan to sketch new material and it seemed that the melodies and lyrics were deeply influenced by the atmosphere of my environment. The smart and sophisticated blues and jazz of the 30's and 40's New York.

To hear an early demo for the disc please log onto The Official Micah Barnes Website and hear my version of the Jazz standard "Body and Soul"....Hope you like it folks!

PS! The Face Book Fan Page is still the place to stay in the loop on developments with the new disc.. sneak preview Winnipeg at West End Cultural Centre Sept 8th and Toronto at Hughes Room Dec 11th! to join click "like" here http://www.facebook.com/micahbarnesmusic

The Boathouse Songs

Summer time is the perfect time for songwriting.     Although lots of workshops happen out of town in the summer months  I can generally open up my schedule to create the larger space needed for creative exploration. When my management and I started talking about a new disc I felt it best to clear the deck during the summer months while I have access to the family cottage up north.

       Mornings it's nice and quiet before anybody rises and so by about 8 am I take my morning coffee down to the dock and sit at the desk my mom (writer Lilly Barnes) and I share.   Thats already late in the day of the lake which remains dead calm and smooth after dawn, things tend to get more dramatic as the day moves on. The desk in the boathouse looks out on the changing weather and whether meditating, writing lyrics or playing with chords and melodies on my portable cassio it's the perfect creative place to be.
 A  meditation at the top of the session helps clear the mind of the little drama's and prepare to dig into the process. I write longhand in a book transferring to the computer once a song is being shaped and rewritten....
By noon the cottage stirs with life and my brother (Jazz drummer/composer Daniel Barnes) comes down for his morning swim and I move myself off to other activities to get the blood going again before continue to work lyrics throughout the day up in the cottage.

Much of the last disc "Domesticated" (including the saucy title track) were originally sketched in the boathouse before I travelled to Montreal to put the finishing touches on the songs.
This summer I have a new batch going, most of which were started in NYC last summer. ..(More about those songs and that experience as the blog continues).

To have a preview of the "Domesticated" tunes check out  http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/domesticated-ep/id406730900

Enjoy Your August People! (See you in Sept Winnipeg!) 

http://www.wecc.ca/site09/performers/Micah_Barnes.html