"I lost my job today and that's worth celebrating" -Tim Barry

April 23, 2012

April 17, 2012: New Brookland Tavern

On a hobbled picnic bench in a parking lot next to an abandoned motorcycle co-op garage in West Columbia, SC singer-songwriter Tim Barry makes a grass whistle with some weeds and squawks on the childhood instrument. "Mic check," he says. Tim tries again but his laughter prevents a successful tune and the grass barely vibrates enough to hear.

 

It's the first night of a tour that will last until September and take the Richmond, Virginia native and former Avail frontman across the entire United States, parts of Canada and to an entirely different hemisphere to some place he calls 'Australia.'

 

 

Inspired by his grass instrument we talk about being kids. "In my neighborhood they used to call me 'Nature Boy" because I spent all my time in the woods shooting squirrels and setting up camps and making fires and photographing wildlife. I was kind of a hippie kid," Barry says.

 

 

Until this point, Barry had been driving the same Dodge 15 passenger 3500 van for quite some time and with 240,000 miles it, Barry readied for his extensive tour. “I might as well put new tires on this motherfucker. Three days later the radiator exploded and I didn’t realize the severity and drove about two more miles and it fried a bunch of the electrical outfitting and melted the serpentine belt - or almost - or it’s the hoses that melted on the serpentine belt, but I’m not sure,” says Barry.

 

So for now, Barry has rented a van and for someone who has never had a credit card that became a difficult process.

 

 

“I’ve been touring for so long that I should expect that my life will be a complete disaster. With all the preparing I do it never seems to work out," says Barry, “It makes my life interesting as shit though.”

 

 

 

Tim Barry on Pizza: I love pizza. I prefer white pizza with sausage and green peppers and onions.

If Tim Barry created a cartoon involving animals and a sport it would be: A box turtle who is a linebacker for the Washington Redskins.

 

 

Tim Barry on his new song “Driver Pull:”

“It’s a freight train inspired song.  It’s about the conflicts of submitting to something  that’s bigger than you. I see freight trains as a massive force. Almost how a surfer sees a wave or how a skydiver is interested in the power of gravity.”

 

Alexander the Great once boasted that he had ridden a unicorn into battle.

 

 

 

 

More South Carolina photo stories at Sodacitizen.com

 

Columbia SC Photojournalist - Sean Rayford - Photo Archive

 

 

 

 

 

 

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