reviews

Solo debut from a real hardcore troubadour.

Tim Barry - Rivanna Junction
Rachel Lux on 4/10/07 @ 5:54 PM

[4/5] As freak-folk confounds America and folk-punk becomes as conventional a notion as pop-punk, there's no doubt we're in the middle of some kind of folk revival. Against this trendy backdrop, the leader of Richmond, Virginia's melodic hardcore vets Avail has released an honest, unhyphenated folk album, among the best of its kind since Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker. Thematically, Tim Barry's solo debut is full of trains, trains, trains, a subject he knows first-hand-like the folk patriarchs--as an avid freight-hopper, but the songs that highlight the startling grace he's gained as a lyricist take place on foot. "Shoulda Oughta" is a spookily classic-sounding drunken stumble around a desolate town where "It's hot as two Julys and I'm cold as 10 Decembers"; while "Wait At Milano," a deeply lonely ballad, finds its only comfort in the act of putting one foot in front of the other, even though "life's too long and its cadence is all wrong." Rivanna Junction is a woolly album; sometimes, behind the lilting and shouting and fiddling and strumming, you can hear gear falling over, or someone knocking at the studio door. Then again, that could just be the sound of a generation of wannabe troubadours hanging up its boots and going back to college. (SUBURBAN HOME; suburbanhomerecords.com) Andrew Marcus

ROCKS LIKE:
Ryan Adams' Heartbreaker
Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska
Ramblin' Jack Elliott's I Stand Alone

IN-STORE SESSION WITH TIM BARRY
Are you sure you didn't steal "Shoulda Oughta" from an 80-year-old jug-band singer and then kill him so he wouldn't rat you out?
I'm an expert at ripping off people that I like, but that one, I have no idea where it came from. It was just, like, insanity in a hotel room in Wise, Virginia, by myself, drunk.

People might think that folk and punk exist in separate universes, but there are a lot of commonalities.
Oh, God, it's ridiculous. It's not even commonalities; it's what I think punk is based on. Let's talk about Bill Monroe And The Bluegrass Boys out there in Kentucky playing cut-time, three-chord bluegrass that sounds exactly like cut-time, three chord fuckin' punk that comes out right now. Let's talk about Woody Guthrie writing protest anthems in the '40s, which is exactly what Fugazi was doing in the late '90s, just in a more experimental way musically.

For the past 30 years, songs about trains haven't necessarily been written by people who ride them, but you speak from experience, right?
I don't want any hype bestowed on the fact that I actually ride trains, but I can't think of many people who hobo and actually write about it nowadays, especially this new country crap with freight trains in every other song-these motherfuckers are wearing pre-washed denim jeans that cost $200.

What do you get out of hopping trains?
Well, I get... I get frustrated. [Laughs.] I get every emotion that you can feel or fathom riding trains. There's a deep paranoia, a deep sense of freedom and an overt sense of frustration, anxiety, relaxation [and] alcohol induced euphoria. It's everything you can imagine all at once.

What's it like for you to play acoustic shows?
It's a fuckin' blast. I'm trying to put that rebel back into folk music, man. There's fights, broken bottles, all that shit. The shows are fuckin' rowdy. I really restrict where I'll play-I don't wanna play in a coffee shop. I'd rather play to a dive bar at one in the morning, or in your fuckin' basement while the party's going on.

Time for the inevitable question: Does this mean Avail are breaking up?
It's so funny, man. So many people put that in websites. I was looking at Punknews.org and [their readers are] like, "Well, it's too bad Avail broke up," and on the same page it has Avail tour dates, so I'm kind of like, "This is not making sense." The reality is that we're all in our mid-30s and we ain't touring nine months of the year anymore, but that certainly doesn't mean that we are gonna break up. -Andrew Marcus

Official Website: http://www.suburbanhomerecords.com



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