Jamie Barnes

Most of Jamie Barnes' laid-back indie folk is highly personal work that incorporates religious imagery, love notes, and internal struggles. With a strong aptitude for learning instruments by ear, he includes a wide variety of small household instruments like toy piano, xylophone, flute, tabla, and glockenspiel in his bedroom recordings, but generally builds his songs around his soothing voice and a lone acoustic guitar. Barnes picked up his first guitar at age 11, and began sharpening his skills in family jam sessions with his father, who had played in a band that opened for <a href="spotify:artist:22WZ7M8sxp5THdruNY3gXt">the Doors</a> and <a href="spotify:artist:3oDbviiivRWhXwIE8hxkVV">the Beach Boys</a>, and his big brother. At 15, Barnes began playing around Louisville, KY, with a few bands. Around the time he was 18, after being inspired by the imagery of Songs of Leonard Cohen and other emotionally provocative artists like <a href="spotify:artist:0wz0jO9anccPzH04N7FLBH">Low</a>, <a href="spotify:artist:7x83XhcMbOTl1UdYsPTuZM">Tom Waits</a>, and <a href="spotify:artist:2H5elA2mJKrHmqkN9GSfkz">Gillian Welch</a>, Barnes created a demo with the hopes of making music that was akin to a comforting dream. He shopped his homemade CD around to a handful of labels and then went off to play some shows with After the Panic. When he returned, he received a response from Brian John Mitchell at Silber.

Mitchell signed the fledgling artist, despite the fact that Barnes had a considerably different sound than most of the label's droning noise-rock bands, which include <a href="spotify:artist:7o6EVh3jljbcWfNmH3FO3a">Origami Arktika</a>, Clang Quartet, and <a href="spotify:artist:7qkcwZyvTLt3ftowP8ExTX">Remora</a>. In 2003, before Barnes was 20, Silber released his lo-fi debut album, The Fallen Acrobat, which he had recorded in his bedroom over the course of a year. In 2006, Barnes followed his debut with the more complex and rewarding Honey from the Ribcage. This release displayed a more orchestrated and personal approach to songwriting, with underlying tones of questioned spirituality and distress. "Second Guess My Own" illustrates how he lost several years from his life due to a memory loss, and "Red Prescription" is about his battle with the prescription drugs that caused that memory loss. Here, his lyrics often act as a diary tracking his fears and life-altering events, simultaneously drawing parallels to the biblical story of Samson. After this record, Barnes relocated to the Pink Bullet label; The Recalibrated Heart, a fuller album that continued to follow his spiritual journey into the intimate realms of self-produced bedroom recording, arrived in 2007. ~ Jason Lymangrover, Rovi