Kevin Barnes Wakes Up

BY WILL ISERN

Kevin Barnes is not a conventional front man. But then his band, of Montreal, is not a conventional band.

Barnes is both the face and the creative force behind the Athens, Georgia-based psychedelic rock outfit, of which he has been the only continuous member since 1996. Over the years of Montreal has put out more than 20 albums and EPs and toured the world several times over.

Through his music Barnes has explored love, loss, anxiety, depression, sexuality, religion and more, all set to the soundtrack of a psychedelic dance party. Barnes’ latest album White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood was inspired by the writings of James Baldwin and the extended dance mixes of the 1980s.

The band returns to Pensacola to play at Vinyl Music Hall on April 25. Barnes talked to Downtown Crowd ahead of the show about working on his new album, staying sane in the era of divisive politics and setting down his smartphone to live in the moment.

Hi Kevin, I appreciate you taking some time to talk to us.

My pleasure.

So you’re going to be here on the 25th. I know I’ve seen you here at least three times already, so it seems like your tours frequently come through Pensacola. Is that something you have a hand in?

We like to play Florida at least once a year. I used to live in Florida so I know it fairly well. Pensacola is like one of the cooler spots in the state, and it’s such a huge state so it’s cool to be able to break up the drives and play as many shows as possible. Basically whenever we find a city that’s friendly to us we remember it and try to hit it as often as possible.

Well we love having you. I know the last album was over two years ago now, have you been pretty much touring that whole time or what’s been up?

No, I’ve been working on a new album and I’ve been working on a couple other projects.

I was reading on your website that you worked mostly solo on the last album. Has that still been your approach with this next one?

So far, yeah. I’ve worked at home and just did everything myself. So kind of a similar approach to the last record.

I watched a video on YouTube where you were in the studio and talked through the creation of some of the songs on your last album. With all the studio magic that can be done, do you find the endless possibilities daunting or liberating?

It’s definitely a challenge because you have to be careful not to use the same palette over and over again because you’ll get kind of similar results. For me, since I’m working by myself, I try to bring in some new instruments. Like I just got a Korg Prologue synthesizer which I’ve been using a lot on the new record. So little things like that, like adding new drum samples.

Well one of things I want to ask you is about your live sets. You’ve got something like 15 albums now, so how do you decide on a set list with that much material to pull from?

Basically I just go through the catalog and see what songs jump out at me as songs that I would have fun playing on that tour and just kind of work that way and just say, OK we’re going to need 18 to 22 songs and just sort of scroll through them all and say that one might be fun and that one might be fun. It’s kind of a mix between songs that I would have fun playing and songs that I think an audience would enjoy hearing.

Do you get tired of playing the hits?

No, I just feel happy to have songs that people are familiar with, because it could be much worse.

Another thing about your live shows is that they’re very theatrical. I wonder how that’s evolved over the years and why that’s important for you?

It’s funny you ask that because I was thinking about that today. I was thinking why we do it or why I ever thought it was a thing to incorporate. I don’t really know the answer. I think coming up in the Elephant 6 scene in Athens there was a theatrical element to most bands and it was just kind of in way influenced by like Peter Gabriel, David Bowie, kind of like old showmen, not just the punk rock thing of getting on stage in your street clothes, but making a bit more of an effort. That was basically the impetus of it for us was wanting to put on a show that was kind of extravagant and glamorous and exciting for people to look at visually, and then hopefully the music does its part.

Your shows here have been a lot of fun.

Thank you.

Going back to the last record, I was reading some of the stuff you wrote about it and your inspiration from (James) Baldwin’s writings about the idea of American whiteness as an identity that was propagated to turn the lower class against itself, and just some of the kind of political stuff that I guess you became interested in. I’m just curious how you became interested in that kind of stuff and why you wanted to explore those ideas on the last record.

I guess it just hit me that I was sort of living in a bubble of white privilege and I didn’t want to be that person so I started to educate myself and tried to unmask the lies that I was told as a child – and not even in a malicious way, I don’t think my parents were trying to keep me delusional or anything – I think it’s just sort of an organic thing that happens in white America if you’re not forced to actually absorb anything else, you just live in this protective bubble.

It’s pretty easy to cruise through life as a white guy.

Yeah, totally. So basically I just kind of became woke in a sense and wanted to educate myself and understand what Black Lives Matter was all about and just understand how other people live and become a better person.

And sort of along those lines you supported Stacey Abrams in her run for the governor’s office and stepped into politics a little bit. What prompted you to get involved in that way, and with the way that race turned out with her not winning what was your reaction then?

It’s hard to stay positive when you see something like that, especially since it seems pretty obvious the Republicans were cheating.

There were some shenanigans going on, for sure.

Yeah, so you really just have to have some balance there in your mind and not get too upset. It’s obvious to me also that the country is sort of getting hijacked by conservatives and Republicans in general, but I don’t want to have this sense of us verse them either because I know it’s just part of the one percent’s strategy to divide and conquer and make us feel like there’s two sides and we have to choose a side when in reality it’s us verse them, it’s really class warfare more than anything else.

Well how are you feeling about 2020?

Are you looking forward to it or are you dreading it? I feel sort of ambivalent about it, because it’s obviously not a ton of fun to think about. You know, with Trump, he’s like a cancer. I spent the first couple years of his presidency seething with anger and eventually I reached this point where I was like, I don’t need to invest all this daily energy on this person that is just a total dipshit. I’m slowly kind of coming around now where I’m kind of realizing, like, obviously politics are important but it doesn’t have to be my obsession. I can definitely do my part and be on the side of inclusiveness and positivity and love.

Yeah, why doesn’t that side win?

Well, it’s been hanging around. (laughs)

Well let me try to ask you a bit more about the music. One of the things that’s always stuck out to me about your songs is the lyrics. They’re very complex and you reference a lot of literature and film. When you’re writing a new song do you think of the lyrics first or do you write the lyrics to fit the music?

Typically I write them separately. I have note pads filled with lyrics and a note pad filled chord progressions and things like that. So usually if I have the music I’ll go through and look at some lyrics that might work for it, or even just a line or two that could inspire something more. It’s always kind of different how it works.

And with the last album – and really for a long time – you’ve explored ideas of gender fluidity, especially with the live shows and the cross-dressing. I think some of those ideas have become more mainstream over the years. Has that been encouraging to you?

Yeah, absolutely. That’s one of the coolest things about this time period is how it’s become super mainstream to ques- tion gender roles and question sexuality and allowing it to be something more fluid. Of all the things that are bad, I think that’s one of the really positive things that happening right now.

For sure. I was also thinking about how the band sort of came up alongside social media. The timelines overlap. How has that influenced you?

I go off and on. Sometimes I’ll be really into sharing music and my personal life through social media. I’ve actually gone through a period of the last four or five months where I’ve unplugged.

I followed you on Instagram today.

Oh, cool. I used to be deep into Instagram for many years and it kind of became an obsession for me and it was like really distracting. It started warping my sense of reality, so I decide to unplug from Facebook and from Instagram.

I pulled the plug on my Facebook this year, just because of what it became. It was draining.

Totally. I think that’s the one bizarre function about the internet is it makes people feel like they need to comment on what’s going on and have an opinion on everything. Like they need to be personally involved with everything anybody experiences or says or does or feels. It’s not natural to do that.

So do you put your phone away when you’re writing?

Yeah, I’ve kind of just made rules for myself where I can’t surf the web on my phone and can’t do anything other than basically communicate with friends and family. It’s basically just for text and phone calls and I try not to use it for entertainment.

It can definitely be a big time suck, I know that.

I feel like in a weird way it warps your perception of time. Years can go by so fast. But since I’ve unplugged from some of those apps, strangely it feel like time is moving at a normal pace.

Maybe I need to try that.

Well, it makes sense. You’re never alone with your thoughts. If you have the phone and there’s a quiet moment or you’re standing in line at the post office or whatever it is, you’re always distracting yourself. You’re never in the present moment because you’re always plugged into the hivemind.•