BJ Barham releases music as American Aquarium. We go deep on the power of sticking to it, mining the depths as inspiration, sobriety, and keeping everything in-house.
BJ Barham releases music as American Aquarium. We go deep on the power of sticking to it, mining the depths as inspiration, sobriety, and keeping everything in-house.
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All music written, performed, and produced by Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:00] Aaron: Hi, and welcome to the other 22 Hours podcast. I'm your host, Aaron Shafer-Haiss.
[00:00:11] Michaela: And I'm your host, Michaela Anne, and since this show is in its infancy, I assume you're a new listener. So thank you for checking us out.
[00:00:19] Aaron: We like to think of this podcast as the anti album cycle show. So it's not like your typical show where guests come on and talk about their latest album or their tour.
We called it the other 22 Hours because we wanted to focus on the hours that we as musicians are not on stage, and explore different tools and routines that our guests use to keep balance and inspiration in their lives during the less than the shiny times.
[00:00:39] Michaela: Aaron and I have 25 years of touring experience between the two of us. I've spent the better part of the last decade putting out records both on my own as well as with labels, touring the world, and building an independent career.
[00:00:51] Aaron: I started making records in high school friends, spent years touring with a lot of different bands, and then now I produce records and write music for TV and commercials. Essentially, we are lifers. We've learned there's no one right way to build a career around your passion.
[00:01:05] Michaela: And in an industry where so much can feel out of our control, and up to luck, being in the right place at the right time, who you know, we wanted to focus on what is within our control.
[00:01:15] Aaron: So we decided to invite our friends on to have conversations about all the other times, that are outside of the public eye and ask 'em the question, what do you do to create sustainability in your life so you can sustain your creativity.
Our guest on today's show is BJ Barum from American Aquarium. He's a songwriter from Raleigh, North Carolina that has independently put out 16 records over the last 16 years.
[00:01:35] Michaela: Yeah, and we had a really in-depth conversation with him today. His music and his conversation touches on a lot of really vulnerable, heavy personal stuff ranging from loss ,to miscarriage, to political divides and families and in our country.
[00:01:53] Aaron: We spent a long time this morning touching on brutal self honesty, shifting priorities, and really just identifying and knowing what works for you both outwardly in your career and you as a person inwardly.
[00:02:05] Michaela: BJ is someone who is not afraid to go anywhere.
[00:02:10] Aaron: So without any hesitation, enjoy our conversation with BJ Barham.
[00:02:13] BJ Barham: So Joe's probably one of my best friends in this business, and we kind of call each other when we have these crazy ideas. We bounce stuff off of each other. And during the pandemic he went super hard on the live streams, like ridiculous cameras, like amazing microphones.
And I went super hard on the merchandise side of things. And so like, we both built these parts of our business up. And then when it came time for me to play catch up with the live stream and him to play catch up with the merch, we were both like, okay, what worked and what didn't work.
[00:02:47] Michaela: Yeah.
[00:02:48] BJ Barham: He sent me a giant list of, for less than a thousand dollars, this is the gear you. Blah, blah, blah. And so like, there's a very visible notice in how good a quality me and Hayes Carl's stuff started getting, because Joe just sent us all that. And I sent Hayes and Joe all of the merch stuff. And uh, yeah, the pandemic taught us where everybody's holes were in your business plan.
And so, was fun to kind of have like a little group that was trying to find ways to patch those holes.
[00:03:18] Michaela: I open quite a few shows for Joe over the years and he just sent me a link of like this, to do self-service merch,
[00:03:26] BJ Barham: Yeah, I taught him everything he knows about it.
[00:03:29] Michaela: He's passing it onto me and he's like, Michaela, you've gotta get this. Like,
[00:03:32] BJ Barham: Buy you a thermal printer. Download ship station.
[00:03:35] Michaela: Okay. That's the next step.
[00:03:36] BJ Barham: Like, cuz we're a hundred percent in-house the American Aquarium. I refused, early on, I refused to give anybody 20% of anything for just packing up envelopes, which seemed really smart at the time until it came to a point where we were selling a lot of records, like pre-orders.
[00:03:55] Michaela: Mm.
[00:03:55] BJ Barham: Like for Lamentations, we pre-sold 12,000 copies of Lamentations. So me and my wife sat around for like five straight days and packed up 12,000 vinyl mailers.
[00:04:07] Michaela: Oh
[00:04:07] BJ Barham: When you do that, you're like, man, now I see why people pay other people 20%. And then you do that math, you're like, I would never pay anybody that much money to do this.
So now every time we put a record out, me and my wife , like, we've got a science down now. so it's It takes us about three days to get 10,000 records out the door.
[00:04:23] Michaela: Wow.
[00:04:24] Aaron: Wow. That's
[00:04:25] BJ Barham: But it's three days of like really intense hard work. And my daughter is, is over there coloring on the boxes.
So like some people get like really elaborate drawings on their boxes.
[00:04:35] Michaela: Yeah.
[00:04:35] Aaron: One of a kind design.
[00:04:36] BJ Barham: Yeah. yeah. But it's little things like that taught us you know, you look at the amount of work you have to put in and you have to ask your question, is this amount of money worth that amount of work? And if the answer's yes, keep doing it yourself. If it's not, find somebody else to do it.
[00:04:51] Aaron: Right? How much is your time worth? How much do you value your hours? Can you use those hours for something else,
[00:04:56] BJ Barham: Exactly.
[00:04:56] Aaron: that's more valuable?
[00:04:57] Michaela: Also, I think there's this idea, especially for people early on , it's a sign of making it or doing well the more people you have to do shit for you that you don't have to do it yourself.
That's always a goal that's talked about of like, I don't wanna have to do anything else besides create my music. And I think people like you and, and Joe and I don't know, Ron Pope is another one that's really like, no, there's a huge power especially in today's music world, of doing as much as you can in house.
Aside from the fact that you keep more money, I think it really nurtures relationship with fans. And at the end of the day, I think that's a truth that is hard to realize, that sustaining a lifelong career is really about your relationship with your fans, and not with the industry.
not with the agents and the gatekeepers, but it's really about the one-on-one connection with the people who buy your
music and listen to your music.
[00:05:53] BJ Barham: I've been running my merch since day one. And every single merch item that goes out the door, I have a stack of index cards on my desk, and I just write, thank you for listening BJ, and sign it. And I put it in every single order. And that was really easy to do when there's 10 orders coming in a month.
And it was like this personal touch that people really appreciated because it's the same reason we go out of our way to pay more money for a mom and pop place than going to Target and buying the same thing that's less quality but cheaper. It's because there's that personal touch. Cuz the reason I buy custom jeans and pay way too much money for 'em, it's cuz if anything goes wrong with, I can take him to Victor at Raleigh Denim and he stitches them up for me right there and says, thank you for your patronage.
We had it all over the country in the forties, in the fifties, in the sixties. Everybody had their role to play in town. You were the cobbler, you're the hat maker, you were the tailor, you were the guy that did produce. And we got away from that. And I wanted to go back to letting each and every single person know that when you bought something from me, whether it was a CD or a shirt or a combination of the two, that there was a real human being on the other side of that, that was not only thankful for you supporting the art that I create, but also a person doing that work and making sure that it got to you in a timely manner, making sure it was packaged properly, making sure that not only do I care about writing good songs that help you get through the day, I also care about making sure that you know how much I value going out above and beyond just coming to a show or buying a record.
And I kept doing it, you know, cuz we watched 10 people a month turn into a hundred, then it turned into a thousand, then it turned into, it's its own separate business now. Like literally the merchandising side is its own LLC in our company. And I still to this day, right, handwritten notes in every single order.
Because then you're not just a company selling somebody something. You're a friend that bought something from a friend. Like I see it, it shows me on my little Ship Station. It's like, this is a a 19 time repeat customer. This is a 25 time repeat customer.
We have a 97% repeat customer rate on our online store.
[00:07:55] Aaron: that's
[00:07:56] BJ Barham: That's insane.
[00:07:57] Aaron: That's insane for any industry.
[00:07:58] BJ Barham: And it goes back to, does somebody really need 27 American Aquarium t-shirts? No, you don't. You
[00:08:04] Michaela: Yeah.
[00:08:04] BJ Barham: But
[00:08:05] Aaron: I don't own 27 t-shirts period. Of, of any kind.
[00:08:09] BJ Barham: Yeah. It's but it's one of those things where those people look at it, they don't look at it like owning a t-shirt, they look at it like, how can I help my favorite artist this month? Or this.
[00:08:18] Michaela: Yep.
[00:08:19] BJ Barham: and it's usually by buying a shirt or buying a, oh, they've got a new color variant of that vinyl that I already owned four color variants. Fantastic. I'll happily buy the fifth pressing of this.
And it's about fostering that. And like, we've been really lucky and we're, and we're living proof that as long as you take care of your fan base, they take care of you. And I understand there's, I've got plenty of artist friends who are like, if I spent that much time worrying about sending merch out and worrying about doing this, then I wouldn't have time to be an artist.
I've put out 16 records in 16 years. I promise you there's time in the day to write your records, record your records, play 300 shows a year, and still take care of your fan base. Like it's how much work you're willing to put into it. That's the kicker for me, is people are like, I can't. And it's like, you don't want to, you're not willing to.
It's funny because the people that I tend to associate with in this business are the people that are doing it independently. You don't need a million fans. You need about a thousand fans that really give a fuck. If you have a thousand people that will buy every record you ever put out, you're gold.
[00:09:26] Michaela: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:27] BJ Barham: have this misconstruction when we get into the music business that if we're not on CMT, or we're not on the radio, or we didn't have a top 10 hit, then we haven't made it. My question is, did you pay your bills this month? If you did, you're a professional musician. You might not be the most successful professional musician, but at the end of the day, if you don't have to work another job, and your songs, your creation, your production, your art, paid the bills this month, kept the lights on, kept food in your tummy. You're a pro in my book.
[00:09:56] Aaron: Absolutely. to foster a strong, committed fan base of any size. If you have a thousand committed fans that spend a hundred dollars on you a year, you have a six figure business, you're making six figures. That's it. I mean, if you break it down like that, that's a small barrier to cross.
You know, you don't need to be Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber or anything like that.
[00:10:15] BJ Barham: Almost every artist I know has a thousand Instagram followers. Instead of growing your Instagram follower to 10,000, focus on that thousand you got. How can I make sure they're invested? How do I keep them engaged? How do I engage with them enough to make them want to believe every record that comes out is worth buying?
You're creating this family, this community of people that, if we don't have anything in common, we have one thing in common. We all love songs and in this case, we all love the songs that I write. And some artists aren't willing to do it. But like, at shows, I'm at the merch table every night.
And again, it started at a necessity. When you only have 10 people in the room, you've gotta sell a CD to all 10 of those people to try to get to the next place. But then it turns into a hundred people and then it turns into a thousand people. And I still stand there, some nights I'm there two, three hours signing and taking pictures.
But it goes such a long way because you're fostering these friendships. Like I recognize the people that are repeat customers. I know their name, I know they're family. I ask 'em how they're doing. And they're not fans at that point, they're just friends that happen to support the art that I make. And my goal is to have a thousand of those 10,000 of those 50,000 friends that support my art. That's the goal.
And I get it, some people can't do that. Some people are so socially introverted, that going out to a merch table in front of 50 people scares the shit out of them. But for me, I came at it straight from, I remember the days of sleeping on floors and having to create those friendships immediately. And be like, listen, can we stay on your floor?
Like, can you buy a cd? Can you cook us breakfast tomorrow morning? You know, that And there's some people that like never came from that school of roughing it,
[00:11:54] Michaela: Or they did and couldn't wait to get out of it.
[00:11:56] BJ Barham: Yeah.
Don't get me wrong. Like as you climb the ladder, as someone who literally started at the very bottom of the ladder and took every rung as they've come, I haven't had like a fast pass anywhere.
I've got some friends who first record signed to a major label on tour with a big band. You're in a bus first tour. I don't know how people do that because that fall is so, monstrous. When you have to go to a bu when you go from like bus, major label, I'm in the machine. I've got a tour support budget, I've got a band paid for to, "oh shit. this E three 50, like it's gonna break down soon.
[00:12:32] Aaron: How many gallons are in this gas tank? This pump won't
[00:12:35] BJ Barham: Exactly. So it's fun cuz like, we're very fortunate as a band. We're at a point where like, we've been in a bus since 2017, and a lot of my band has never been in the van. And so I have to be like the old Sage who tells them like, guys, you don't remember what tour books are, you don't remember what MapQuest is.
Like try, you think, you think a tour bus bed's uncomfortable? Try to find a flat spot of a van seat. but it's, I appreciate everything that we have now because of the dues that were paid. And not just dues that were paid for six months or a year. I'd say the first, we started oh six, we moved a bus, 11 years we were in a van and a trailer. And three of those years, we played over 300 shows in one year.
[00:13:16] Michaela: Oh my yeah. That's a lot.
[00:13:18] BJ Barham: I'm 38. This is my 17th year in the business. I've played over 3,600 shows in 17 years. And I'd say, maybe a couple hundred of them were like, now, like, comfortable. Everybody gets paid. there's a tour manager. Like I, the same way with tour management.
Like I've only had a tour manager for two years. The other 15, I was the tour manager. I was the guy who booked the shows. I was the manager. I did everything. For me making, it was like, holy shit. we have a booking agent now. Like I don't have to send out like thousands of booking emails a year.
There's a guy that does. Oh, and for me, I was sending out like MySpace messages to venues and be like, Hey, emo hardcore venue. Would you like to book an Alt country show? You know, that like trying to talk people into booking us.
And so like what I had to do was like, I created websites. I was Bradley at Small Time Booking. I was Bradley at Small Time Publicity and I was Bradley at Small Time Management. And so these clubs would get emails from me. Like if I was booking a show, I was Bradley at Small Time Booking. And they could go to the website and it was like a real website, and they'd never clicked roster cuz if they had it, it was only one band on the roster.
And then I would send messages to every single weekly in town and I was Bradley at Small Time Publicity. And I was like, I'm representing this band. They're on, I cannot have these like press releases that I would send them. And it was just all shit I made in like Word documents.
[00:14:45] Michaela: Yep. Oh yeah. Oh, we did this. We did like a whole, I did the same thing booking agency,
because I was, when we were living in New York, you know, I was a side man, I was playing with a bunch of artists and nobody had an agent and nobody was getting responses to their emails. So I started a booking agency called Big Venture Artists, and the only real name on the whole website, I put my name the president full on Aaron Shafer-Haiss president.
But I signed Michaela, I signed, you know, there was like signed, there was like eight artists and everybody had their own booking agent. Michaela's agent was Matt Shaddock, completely made up name, but it was matt@bigventureartists.com
[00:15:19] BJ Barham: got sent to one spot. Fantastic.
[00:15:21] Aaron: All of a sudden people started responding.
[00:15:22] BJ Barham: It's, it's, it's legitimacy. They see a booking agent and they immediately say, someone is willing to vouch for them.
[00:15:29] Michaela: Right.
[00:15:29] BJ Barham: and, and that's all it took. Cuz I would get to clubs, cuz I go by BJ, but Bradley's what the B stands for. And it was well over a decade before any promoter put the two together.
So now when we go back to these clubs, you know, like Steve and Off Broadway is just like, I've been booking you for 15 years and I never knew that the guy singing the songs was the guy... I was like, how do you think I knew all the deal points at settlement? Like no lead singer is that tuned in to what the deal points are.
I was like, cuz, cuz up. Like again, up until two years ago, not only was I doing a lot of the booking, I was doing the settlement at shows. I was the first face the crew saw. So I was shaking hands, loading in merch, setting up merch. So it blew people's mind when showtime comes and I step out from behind the merch table, you know, comb my hair and walk on stage and play the songs.
They were like, what is this? That was the singer the whole time. Like we just thought he was a really outgoing merch guy.
[00:16:25] Michaela: I think people Well one, so like the whole point of this podcast for us is to kind of like dispel the farce that a lot of us still, so many people can be like, wow, why is it so hard for me only, and why does it seem like it's so much easier for everybody else?
But at the same time, I think even fans would be interested to hear some of this stuff cuz I'm still shocked at some people really not knowing what we all go through to play music. Even recently I was talking to someone that, something about rejection came up and they were shocked to know that I faced rejection.
I was like, are you kidding? , I'm a musician. I face rejection on a daily basis. people telling me, no, people ignoring me, not getting tours, not getting festivals There is no way to do this and not be rejected or excluded constantly.
[00:17:13] BJ Barham: It doesn't help with social media either. Social media is this gasoline on the fire. And don't get me wrong, for anybody listening out there that's just starting, social media is a greatest hits. Nobody posts the rejection letters. They only post the good stuff.
So you're constantly inundated on a daily basis with tour announcements, and new records, and just got signed, and can't believe we had this opportunity. Nobody's posting holy shit, like we put out another record and nobody gave a shit about it.
[00:17:40] Aaron: Yeah. Yep. We showed up in another town and nobody told anybody that we were coming,
[00:17:44] Michaela: But we post a picture that was like angled in a way that it looked like there were
[00:17:48] BJ Barham: Yeah, it's like for every sold out hometown show we got, there's a Des Moines show on Tuesday that didn't do nearly as good as the hometown show. But you better believe that I'm promoting the whole fucking tour with that hometown show picture.
But it's really hard for me cuz like a lot of young kids ask, so like, where was your break? And I was like, we never got the break. A lot of young bands they get to put on tours, they get to support bigger tours and that's kind of how a lot of bands go about building their fan bases. They'll go in with an established artist, they'll be the opener, and they get the opportunity to play in front of a thousand kids every night.
We never got that. We've done one support tour our entire career and that was in 2015. 2015. We supported Justin Towns Earl for a tour for a month. But other than that, like I waited for like two or three years and we first started cuz I thought like, oh, we put a record out, we're touring, somebody will take us on the road. And then nobody took us on the road. So we had to make a very quick decision, like do we wait for somebody else to give us the opportunity, or do we just go and play every menu venue from the East coast to the west coast?
[00:18:49] Michaela: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:18:50] BJ Barham: The hard decision is that. Going and playing in front of five people every night and not getting paid, malnourished, having zero places to sleep, not being able to afford a hotel room.
If one thing breaks on the van, the tour's screwed. Like nobody has money. Maxing out credit cards. That's the hard road. But it was the only, choice we had as a band. And so I don't know how I did it, but I talked five other guys into believing in it enough.
I think I had one band for almost eight years and the whole time they were in the band, we were just like struggling. And every day we'd wake up and say, okay, we got an eight hour drive to the next town. We'd look in the kitty, you know, the little safe we'd keep up front, and we'd be like, okay, we got 60 bucks. Everybody gets five bucks for lunch. We should have enough gas. Hopefully there's people there tonight. Hopefully there's merch. Hopefully the club decides to pay us. And we did that for a good decade before, you know.
The hard part's turning five people into 10 people. 10 people into 20 people, 20 people into 40. It's easy to turn a hundred fans into 200, 200 into 400, 400 to 800. Once you get to that point, it's, the career gets a lot easier. but those building block years, those foundational years, I'd say 90% of the bands that start off. It's like, go back to law school, man, like law school's way easier than sleeping on floors for a decade.
Because if you can't deal with one rejection letter, try dealing with it 300 nights a year,
[00:20:12] Michaela: Yeah, Exactly. And, and still standing in your face in public, still standing on
stage and playing a good show for the two people that are
[00:20:21] BJ Barham: Because you need those two, you have to have those two people, cuz next time you need them to turn into four.
[00:20:25] Michaela: And you might wanna cry, but you have to fucking put a smile on your face and play a good show.
[00:20:30] BJ Barham: Or develop substance abuse problems, Which is, which is what this guy, that was my coping. My coping mechanism was like, okay cool, if nobody here gives a shit, I'm getting fucked up and talking shit to every one of you. And turns out that's not a good, healthy way to deal with issues.
[00:20:46] Aaron: Yeah. That doesn't, equate to gasoline in the tank.
[00:20:49] BJ Barham: no, no.
[00:20:50] Michaela: And also just like being lucky to have the right people around you from the start. I've been really lucky. Aaron and I have been together for 15 years. We went to music school together, and we started out, he was touring, long before like as a teenager. But then when I started touring, my boyfriend was helping me, and he was with me.
And we had friends that came, and I think about this because the first tour I booked, I self booked down the east coast. We lived in New York City, we had no money. I was booking bars and we did a four piece. And our friend Phil, who now is in the band Midland, and he's so deserving. He has like the cushiest, greatest, you know, he doesn't carry his gear, he gets to golf all the time. He flies, he is on a bus.
But that tour, we did two weeks of just the shittiest stuff. And at the end of two weeks I said, I have a hundred bucks for you. And Philip didn't make me feel bad. He wasn't like, this sucks. He looked at me and granted, he was 10 years older than me, he knew what he was getting into. And he looked at me and he said, "you should be really proud of yourself. and I still remember that because I was like, okay, there's, multiple attitudes that we can have.
We can feel like shit, and believe me, I spend time feeling like shit about myself in any given moment, or we can be like, damn, we should be really proud of ourselves for what mm-hmm. we're doing and what we're building through this and surviving.
[00:22:09] BJ Barham: Exactly. I think it's you made a great point there. It's, I think being an artist, on any level, there is at least a minute of your day where you're like, I'm a failure. imposter syndrome starts creeping its head in and be like, you see somebody else's post. and the human in you is, why do they get that?
Their songs aren't as good as mine. Their band's not as good as mine. They didn't put in the work that I have. They haven't been around as long as I have. And then you have to remind yourself that we're all on these different journeys, and then all of us are gonna start the race at one spot and finish it in another spot.
And then you have to have that moment where you're like, shit. And every day I have this moment, at least once a day, where it's, I haven't had to work a straight job in 17 years.
I've been able
to make shit up on my couch, sing it into a microphone, and people pay me to do that. And then do it live just every night. And that brings me back to center. I think a, a certain part of artist is learning how to walk around on that dark side of our brain, the negative side. That's where I think a lot of really great ideas come from and a lot of great solutions to ideas come from. Is being able to kind of lower yourself into that fucking really dark space that most people are afraid to even go to.
I e every southern white male that's afraid to cry in public. And being able to lower yourself down in there long enough not to let it overtake you, but to like mine it for what it is, which is inspiration. Some of the best songs I've ever written were, spending just an extra minute hanging in that abyss of negativity. And then crawling back out where the light is and being like, okay guys, I saw some shit down there. Let's put it into a song.
And I think that's what being an artist is, is, and, and the longer you do it, the better you get at it, the more comfortable you feel, lowering yourself into belay away, just falling into that stuff and trusting it, knowing that it's not gonna overwhelm you and overtake you.
But knowing that, that's where the good stuff lives. And I, I tell people, they're like, man, I get really down about being a musician. I get really down, like, this tour didn't make any money, or This tour was not as good as our last tour. And I have to remind them that, you know, that's part of our gig.
the uncertainty is what sucks about our gig, and the uncertainty is I think what also keeps us in our gig. Because just for every tour we leave on, like it could fail, but it could do really well. Like we all, we could profit, we could meet that right person that our team is missing, that immediately changes our trajectory.
I think every band that has gotten on the other side of the hump, will tell you that there's always that turning point of, I want to quit, I should quit. And right before you quit, this door opens to like a shortcut. You're like, holy shit. Like that's been there the whole time. And then you take it and you're like, well, nevermind we're not gonna quit anymore. Cuz now our cell phone bills are paid, or we all have compare rent on time or whatever. Whatever little check box you need to check. And it's just about keeping your head down and keeping your feet moving knowing that it can't be bad forever. Like I, I'm a true believer that if you are willing to get up every day and dedicate yourself to anything, it doesn't have to be music, this is a life lesson. If you're willing to dedicate anything, your time, your energy, to something you are passionate about, something you love, not only will you get better at it every day, eventually the table has to turn. Like a cabinet maker. When you start making cabinets, nobody's gonna show you their first fucking set of cabinets.
You can buy my first set of cabinets for 99 cent on iTunes, but nobody's gonna show you their first cabinets. But if you keep doing it every day, you keep up and you try to hone that craft and make cabinets, eventually there's gonna be one person that buys your cabinets, and that's gonna be your turning point.
You're holy shit. I just sold a set of cabinets. And then somebody's gonna see their cabinets be like, where'd you get the cabinets? Like this guy. And then you're two, already two years better than you were when you built their cabinets. So you floor somebody else, you charge more for your cabinets, and then you're in demand cabinet maker.
And then you look up and fucking 17 years later, you're making cabinets. You're making a living. Other people are working for you, making cabinets. You have to remind yourself that every day there's that chance to get better at it. Even if you don't make any more money today, even if you don't get a big tour, even if nobody else follows you on Instagram, you've got a chance to dedicate an hour, two hours, five hours to your craft.
And be better tonight when you put your head on that pillow than you were this morning when you woke up. And that's massive.
[00:26:34] Aaron: I think it's exactly that. A, it's understanding that every cabinet maker's putting their best cabinet on Instagram, and not getting discouraged that when your cabinet, is a trapezoid versus a square, that's not a failure.
That's a learning experience. , And to not get discouraged that your cabinet doesn't look like the cabinet that's on Instagram, that you can buy at the showroom downtown.
You know, it's to view those failures as gifts and learning experiences that then the next cabinet you're gonna make is gonna be better.
You find digging in and doing that work, in the failures is when you find that secret door, that shortcut that you were talking about. Cuz like, it sucks to fail over and over and over again. So you're not gonna be so attuned to these shortcuts if you're constantly making great cabinets, from the start.
You don't know what the work is. You don't know what the actual heavy lifting is.
[00:27:17] BJ Barham: When somebody tells me what their favorite song is, like songwriters of mine, I wish I could go back and show 'em the work notes of how that song started. Like how shitty of a line something was or how cliche something was. You're molding this thing. And I, I wish I could show people.
It's like every song doesn't start off as like the perfect song that you get to hear on the record. it starts off as a line, as a melody, as a guitar progression. You slowly build it, and then you look at it and you're like, fuck, that's not square. that needs to be square. Like, nobody's gonna buy a cabinet if it's not square.
And you go back and you make sure, and until finally you get either beautiful set of cabinets or a set of cabinets that fades into obscurity over a decade. But I feel like a lot of kids these days get discouraged because it doesn't happen as fast as VH1 Behind the Music tells us it happens.
[00:28:04] Michaela: yeah.
[00:28:05] BJ Barham: And we still see it, we still see teenage kids get plucked out of the internet and the next day they're the most famous songwriter in the country, singing 'em about their feelings. And I'm not saying they don't deserve that because they do deserve that.
Like at some point somebody saw value in what they were doing, and that's massive. But for most of us, you get hit with that truth very quickly once you start this business. Not everybody was meant to ride the roller coaster to the top in one year. I always have to remind the band that, I always have to remind everybody that it's like, was this year better than last year?
Yes. Let's try to make next year better in this year. And we're still trending in the right direction. You know, everybody's trying to get to the top. I'm trying to get there as slow as humanly fucking possible, because once you get to the top, there's only one direction to go. And then you start playing chili cook-offs for the rest of your fucking life, and you have to play crawfish boils in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
And, you know, that's, I'm trying to just stay on this ride as long as I can. So like, if my ride looks like this instead of this, I've learned to find so much joy in this. For people who aren't watching this video. I'm just, I'm showing a very small, small growth instead of exponential growth.
[00:29:16] Michaela: I think it's important to know that this small incline, that there's divots
throughout it.
That this year might be better than last year, but that doesn't mean that the entire year is just steadily uphill. There's so much up and down behind the scenes.
You know, the pandemic hit and we would hear from people being like, you know, as much as this sucks, I'm actually like really grateful for the break and the calm and nobody else is doing anything. So I'm not trying to keep up. I don't have fomo.
And then it came back and everybody's back in it. And I feel like now the hushed conversations that we're having with friends is like on their Instagram, they're having their biggest year yet. And they're on TV and they're selling out shows and it's huge. And then we talk to 'em and they're like, but I'm not making any money, and I'm so fucking tired, and I have no personal life.
And I'm like, there's this big disconnect between what everyone's showing what's really going on. And so what we're curious about as musicians who are in this for life, and also now have a child, we're like, how do we not only help ourselves and find a way to continue this throughout, but we're so interested in how to have healthy, balanced lives, and be successful on our terms of what we consider success, and how to help others in this.
So like how to share honestly, what are the tools that we've sought out and built. So like, we just met all this summer, at the park, right?
[00:30:42] BJ Barham: Yeah, yeah. With Whit Whit Wright.
[00:30:43] Michaela: Yep. Yeah, and so then I've been following you on Instagram and social media since then, and I've been just really intrigued by the stuff you talk about.
And then this last week of doing a deep dive, like researching you basically, you are like a preacher, like you you, and I right away was like, oh my God, you and Aaron have so many things like sobriety and running and all these things you guys talk about.
But how long did it take you to kind of develop that stuff? Were you just kind of innately this type of person? Obviously not completely because you do you share that you had substance abuse issues and like, what does it look like on a daily basis to keep in your integrity and in these mindsets? And what does like a, bad day look like, and what do you do to help shift that to stay in your centered place?
[00:31:29] BJ Barham: I think a lot of what I have is innate. I was always extremely outgoing. I was always extremely extroverted. In my older age, I've become introverted. My wife is very much an introvert, but she was a, she ran a bar, so she had to have this forced extrovert that she could turn on, and then she would just go back into her hole and enjoy herself, and then she would come back out and have to be.
So she has taught me very much to enjoy flipping that switch and, wearing crocs and sweatshirts and not shaving and the state of hermit life that you see me now. But I went to school for history and political science with a focus in law. I'm the son of a Southern Baptist deacon.
I've always had conviction. I've always known what I thought was right and wrong, and as I've gone through life, I've learned where I was wrong and where I was right. And my convictions now at 38 are pretty solid. I know what I believe in. I know what I stand for. I know what I'm not gonna tolerate in my life. I know who to cut out, who to let in. And I think that's important.
I think part of being a young kid is wanting everyone to like you. I think part of being a new person in this business is wanting everyone to like you. And are you willing to give up this one little thing for one more person to like you?
And some people say yes, and then one more person's gonna come along and they just want that one little thing about you to change and you say yes. And then you look up 10 years later and you've completely sacrificed everything you started with. I knew that was not gonna be me. I knew I was not gonna sacrifice anything to get somebody's approval.
Or have someone take something from me for their approval. That's why we never signed a record deal. That's why we never signed anything.
So then I get to 2014. So at that point, I'm eight years into my career. I realize that I have a crippling substance abuse problem. I have ruined every relationship up until that point. So I got sober August 31st of 14. I got sober. It was not enough because the band that I had at the time had seen too much of not sober me. I had ruined relationships to the point where no amount of apology, no amount of trying to get better, no amount of turning a page was gonna erase the things I said when I was drunk, or the things I did when I was drunk, or how little and small and insignificant I made people feel when I got drunk and started running my mouth.
And so, a big turning point for me was 2017 when I had an entire band quit. My band of eight years. The guys I had convinced to travel the world with me and not get paid for it. We finally are creeping up to this threshold of actually making real livings playing music. And not even that was worth sticking around with me as a person.
That was when I knew I had to change a lot of things. When offering someone security, financial security, and it's still not enough to make them stick around and play music with me. That's when you have to take a long hard look and say, man, I've got a lot of, internal housekeeping.
So luckily my wife was a saint, my wife forever, I'll always argue that she saw something in me that I never saw in myself, and she always every day tried to pull that guy out.
And I stubbornly resisted for a long time. Me and my wife have been together since 2011, so, I pushed back a lot. But in 2017, that's where I realized that just being sober was not enough. I needed to change who I was as a person. And so, luckily through her and a very small group of friends I realized what a lot of my problems were.
I was a bad boss. I was a bad friend, I was a bad partner, I was a bad husband. I was a bad everything. And so I went through and I found out what I was doing wrong, and I tried to put more focus on how people felt. This action, yes, it might make me happy for the minute or two minutes or an hour a day, how is it gonna make anybody else that I care about feel? And if it started hurting them, I completely eradicated it from my life.
And so now there's a reason I have had the same band for five years and they're happy. We still hang out. Like we love each other. And it's because I don't treat them like employees.
I treat them like human beings. I pay them a, a living wage. I treat them with respect. So that was a hard part for me to learn was just that the problem lied in here. The problem wasn't the industry or anything else.
And then covid happens. Covid, I hate to say this cuz it decimated so many businesses and so many lives, it was a blessing for me and my family because I was able to push pause, which is something I have trouble doing. I am somebody. If you give me 24 hours a day to work, I will work 26 of those hours. I am constantly pushing myself.
[00:35:49] Aaron: I noticed cuz we sent you an email to book you on this show, and you're like, cool, I'll be in Nashville in three days. I'll come right from the airport.
[00:35:55] BJ Barham: well, it's like I, I flew into Nashville for three days to write eight songs. I'm the guy who like, if I'm gonna be somewhere, I'm gonna be working. My time is valuable. And I still have this mindset, I've gotten better at it since the pandemic, no, no matter where I am in my career, I'm afraid that if I take my foot off the gas for a second, I go back to the starting point.
[00:36:14] Michaela: Mm.
[00:36:15] BJ Barham: to learn that I can coast for a little bit and not lose anything. It's not about people lapping me or people going faster, I'm not gonna lose anything by taking my foot off the gas and, and enjoying the race so far.
So the pandemic forced me to take my foot off the gas. It said, listen, you know, those 200 or 250 shows you're used to playing every year, those don't exist anymore. you literally cannot do this anymore.
And when the pandemic started, my daughter was one. And so I got to really jump into being a full-time dad. Like my wife doesn't work. My wife hasn't worked since my daughter was born So I got to be a co-parent in the truest sense of co-parent. Before I was a co-parent, but it was more of when I'm home, I'm a hundred percent there. When I'm on the road, I'll do what I can. But for two years I got to be the person that woke her up, the person that got to color every morning, the person that watched everything on Disney Plus. The person that cooked breakfast, the person that cooked lunch, the person that cooked dinner.
And then when the world opened back up that was still what I wanted. I still want to be dad every day. And so I called the boys and told 'em very clearly, we're never playing more than a hundred shows a year again. Like I refuse to give this up. And I'm very fortunate cuz my daughter and my wife get to come on the road with me a lot.
Our bus is set up to where the whole back lounge is kind of like a king suite. And so we all stay back there, we sleep back there, we have our own bathroom back there, and then the boys are in the, the bunk area and then there's a lounge of the bathroom up front. And so we kind of get to have family time when I'm on the road. And then when we park every morning at seven or eight o'clock and they're still sleeping, we can get off the bus and go to the aquarium, go to the zoo, go to the children's museum and spend all day doing super cool stuff.
So it was about not looking at my life as two different things. Road guy and dad guy. It was finding ways to make sure that that line was never blurred again. Like, why can't I be dad guy on the road? I'm at a position where I can, why am I not doing this?
And so, the pandemic was huge. It shifted my priorities. And I think it did it with a lot of people. I, I like to think that before the pandemic that if my daughter had a dance recital that I wouldn't play a show no matter how big of a show it was. I like to think that pre pandemic me would be like, no, I've already committed to my daughter. As much as I would love to open up the Enormo Dome for my favorite band, my daughter, comes first. But I don't think, I think I would've chose the career. I think I would've made an excuse in my head to justify missing something that I thought was lesser than my thing.
But post pandemic, there's not a fucking chance I'm missing that dance recital. Like you could offer me the world for it and I'm not missing it. Like I book my entire tours now around birthdays, holidays, school plays recitals. You know, that's the most important thing for me because I look at it, being a good dad is the only thing I haven't fucked up yet. I have fucked up every relationship I've ever had. I've fucked up every friendship. I was a bad husband. I was a bad partner. I was a bad friend. I was a bad boss. I was a bad kid. I was a bad son. I was a bad everything. But the one thing I've never fucked up is being a bad dad. my kid thinks I'm a superhero. My kid thinks that I can literally move mountains.
Anything she wants, I can make it happen. Anything you want to see, Dad can take you there. I never want her to look at me and be like, he chose something over me. And that's the one thing I still have a very tangible grasp on. And I told my wife, I'm like, you know, I'll spend the rest of my life making stuff up to you and my friends and my parents.
Like I never have to make anything up to her. That's the priority. And so being a super dad is kind of where I'm at now. Like yeah, I play shows, and she thinks it's cool as shit what I do. Like they had career day at her school and everybody else is like, my dad's an accountant, my dad's firefighter. And she was like, my dad's a rock and roller. And I've never been more proud of my kid. She's like, my dad's a rock and roller. And she's like, what do you mean? It's like him and his rock friends traveled around the world and play music for people. She doesn't call her my band, she calls her my rock friends. I think that's the greatest thing.
And like for a long time she didn't know what musician was. So for the longest time when people ask her, what does your dad do? She told them, and this is the greatest thing that has ever, if I ever have a LinkedIn page, this is what I do for a living.
She said, my dad travels the world and makes people happy. And I was like, I was like, cool. I was like, you don't have to call me a musician. You could just tell people that. That sounds way cooler than anything I could ever say.
And so priorities shifted to that. And so any day where I'm stressed out or orders are piling up or a tour's not getting booked fast enough, or we're having snags, I FaceTime her, and I focus on that and I say, what can I control today?
And I can control being somebody that makes her laugh. Somebody that tells her a funny joke or reads her a story at night and it sends me back to center.
[00:41:05] Aaron: One thing that's, resonated in my head while you've been talking is your ability to question your own self-identity. Take inventory of it and be like, is this serving me? Is this right? And it's something that I see with a lot of artists, where there is identity existence. Where it's like, "I'm an artist. I need to drink 18 tequilas, and smoke four doobies to be able to create. That's what keeps me creative or, I need to work all the time, otherwise I'm not creative.
So in this massive change that you've gone through with yourself over, let's just call it the last like five years, has that affected your creative process?
Has it changed it? Has it made it better? Has it made it worse?
[00:41:40] BJ Barham: It's, it's made me limit my creative process. But it's highly focused time. So instead of being the drunk guy that sat on his couch waiting for the muse to strike, and I'd spend eight hours just getting fucked up and trying to write, I write for about two hours every morning. I wake up, I have a cup of coffee, I sit at my desk and I write.
Sometimes it's fruitful, sometimes it's not. But at the end of that two hours, I get up, I walk away from it. And I have found that my life is far more fruitful cuz instead of spending the whole day trying to catch that muse, I know that that two hours I have every morning, sitting down doing my morning pages is, you have two hours to dedicate to this man.
There's no checking Instagram, there's no creating distraction. There's no checking my email. That can all wait till after the two hours. I have two hours to try to open that floodgate and see if I can reach in and grab anything. And some mornings I'll have three song idea. , like I'll have three songs that I've either started or have lines for or a melody or chorus or a voice memo.
And at the end of that two hours, if I'm not riding that lightning, like hardcore, like writing lines, I put it on pause. I leave the door open during this process, cause I want my daughter to be able to see it. I don't want her to think it's a magic trick dad does. I want her to see the time that goes in to creating these things.
But my wife knows that if the door shut, dad's in his sweet spot. Dad's hitting dingers and when that door opens back up, I'm done. But it might be 20 minutes over my allotted two hours. But like, if I'm zoning, like. I'm at a point in this craft where I know if it's fruitful. It used to be I had no idea when the muse was gonna open up and let me have something. But now it's almost like I'm a meteorologist. Like I see the muse coming. I see the signs, so I just start setting buckets out.
And it used to be I'm trying to catch rain in my hands. I'm trying to pull my shirt up. Now if I see it coming, there's buckets out, there's a voice recorder right here. I've already got a blank page up on the screen. I'm like, come on, I know this feeling. And then something hits and you immediately are capturing it.
Which I think makes that two hours just as fruitful as the old six hours, having no idea when I was gonna be able to pluck something out of the ether. You know, I'm not a spiritual person anymore. I'm not a religious person anymore, but I'm very, the closest I get to spiritual is when it comes to songwriting.
And that's the closest I've ever felt to divinity. That's the closest I've ever felt of there is something bigger than me here that is letting me have a gift that I get to call my own in this realm, but it is not mine. Writing songs is that way for me. I feel like when you're in it, there's this thing that opens up that lets me reach into somewhere that I'm not supposed to be. Somewhere that is holy. And I get to pull stuff out and sing it to people as my own. And occasionally, I can pull one or two things out and sometimes the floodgates open and that damn thing stays open for a whole morning and I get to just sit up there and shop. But at the end of the day, it's like songs aren't us.
Like nobody's sitting there writing songs. They were gifts from something that's bigger than us. And I, and I hate to get super fucking heady about it, but when I talk about songwriting, it's the closest to like a spiritual experience I've ever.
And I grew up in the church. I watch people get bit with a spirit immediately. And like the closest I've ever felt to that is when you're writing a song, and not even finishing a song, but when you're in that middle, it's like every pitch is a strike. You know that you're not fucking up. You're like, oh, I need a word to rhyme with this. And the next thing that comes, you're like, holy shit, that's incredible.
And then you look at it at the end of the day and you're like, . There's no way that my dumb redneck ass, I couldn't have, I, I'm not responsible for that. You write these songs that people come up to you and you're like, it changed my life. I got sober because of you. My husband got sober because of you. Our family was saved because of a song you write. I was like, that shit ain't on me. I was like, I don't have that kind of power. I was just lucky to be the conduit for it. I was the person that kind of grabbed that energy, grabbed a pen, and I was the middle man. That's all I am.
I'm the middle man, between this really big thing. I don't wanna get too, like I'm not a prophet or anything. But it's one of those things where I feel like the longer we do this in our craft, the better we get at knowing it's coming, knowing how to handle that electricity and how to put it on the page.
And so I find that by limiting my creative time, focusing that creative time till you only have this time of the day, the rest of your day is gonna be spent being a dad, being a husband, being a provider, being the guy that mows the grass. You got two hours today, man. Every day you got those two hours.
I've learned that I don't squander any of that time during those two hours instead of having just open days where I'm just like, if it comes, it comes. And some people are like, does it feel like work? And I'm like, it should kind of sometimes, like I come into an office, a separate room that I have dedicated for this. I sit down, I punch my time clock. It's just, I got a really cool fucking job. At the end of the day it's, it's my job to create, it's my job to make art. But it's a cool fucking job. But in my opinion, at this age, at this point in my life, it has to be a job. It has to be something that I can go in, put the time in and walk away from to go to the bigger job, to go to the other job, which is being present, which is being somebody that's not constantly checking his phone or writing down stuff. It's somebody who can go in there and just put on my princess tiara and sit down for some tea with a bunch of squish mellows and fucking enjoy it, you know?
[00:47:07] Michaela: Yep. Yeah. So I have a question in that. so many of your songs are dealing with really heavy topics, whether it's deeply personal stuff of the loss of your mother or a friend, or kind of more political landscape, the state of our country. You're doing a lot of emotional heavy lifting in your writing.
Do you ever have times where you are avoidant of that? I have ulterior motives in asking this because the last few years of our life is kind of the heaviest time I've ever dealt with in my life of becoming parents, giving birth for the first time. And when I was pregnant my mom suffered a massive stroke and two years later she's still not recovered from it. It's dramatically changed her life.
And I've felt like I know the songs that I need to write are really emotionally heavy, and I'm not ready to do that work because I'm still kind of in survival mode. So I've been avoiding the creative work for so long, and I was listening to your song so much this last week and just like, oh my God,
Like, is that easy for you to go in there or do you ever feel like, I can't do this right now, or, you know, need to do other, like care for yourself to be able to do that or like recover from that work?
[00:48:23] BJ Barham: So pre sobriety, all of my writing was about the version of me that I thought people cared about. Which was the rock and roller, the drinker, chasing skirts and, you know, living up the rock life, you know. I was writing songs about being in bars every night and one night stands and drugs and dieing before I'm 40.
With sobriety, I realized that I was writing as a character. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of songs that came before sobriety that I'm very proud of, that I still play every night because it was a time and place and it was still me. But after sobriety, the clarity that comes with sobriety, being able to look in the mirror and see a horrible person and then confront that horrible person, that's what sobriety did for me.
It used to be I would look in the mirror and see things about myself on the inside that I hated, and then I would drink. I would use. I would go sleep with somebody to make myself feel better for a second. To pretend that I didn't see that horrible thing in the mirror.
But with sobriety, I was able to look in the mirror and say, instead of writing about what people want to hear, I'm gonna write about exactly what I see. I don't care how ugly it is, I don't care how fucked up it is. I don't care if it kills everybody's preconceived notion about who I am as a person. I wanna write honest. and I wanna write something that makes me feel uncomfortable. I wanna write something that almost feels like I shouldn't be sharing it.
I like to tiptoe that line of like too much information. I like to tiptoe that line of like, I want you to listen this song, and I want you to feel uncomfortable. But not like a bad way. I want you to feel uncomfortable like, holy shit. Like, should we be hearing this? Was this supposed to be on the record? Like, like I wanted it to feel like a diary entry. So I started writing about the stuff that really fucked with me. The stuff that I was afraid to write about. The stuff that, you know, nobody wants to write about how weak you are and that's why you needed to get sober.
That's why you were drinking so much is cuz you hated yourself as a person and you were a weak human being, and you didn't have control over your desires and your actions. that's not rock and roll man. Keith Richards doesn't write about that, bro.
[00:50:28] Michaela: Mm.
[00:50:28] BJ Barham: I found this peace that comes with it. There's this freedom that comes with being brutally honest with yourself. And there's, something that people latch onto when they see somebody else be that brutally honest with themself. They see pieces of themself in that brutal honesty. You have put words to something they have looked in the mirror and seen and not know how to conquer it, not know how to put words to it, not know how to overcome it.
And all of a sudden not only has somebody put words to it, it, it lets them know that they're not the only person feeling insecure. They're not the only person that lost somebody they cared about and don't know how to talk about it. They're not the only person that has been riding this addiction for 15, 20, 30, 40 years.
Somebody else wrote it, fixed it, and now they're talking about it. If that guy can do it, so can I. So once I started seeing a direct correlation between how honest I was willing to be and how much more it affected somebody, than a song about getting drunk or a one night stand, having people come up to me instead of being like, "Hey, man, let me buy you a shot. That song about getting fucked up was great."
Somebody walking up and being like, I need to hug you, and this happens on a nightly basis. Somebody comes up and hugs you and says, because of you, my husband got sober and it saved our family. Like,
ugh, if you need any more encouragement to look yourself in the face and keep fighting those demons then people coming up to you and telling you that you, a stranger, 1500, 2000 miles away from them, in three minutes changed the trajectory of their family, you're in it for the wrong reasons.
So once I started getting that, I knew they were good songs, and then I'd play 'em for the band, and then the band would be like, whoa. , that made me feel something. I'm like, I did my job. You felt something, whether it was uncomfortable or acceptance or just not being fucking alone for three minutes.
Once I started seeing that, that confidence built, and it built to the point where when 2020 happened, and a lot of my world started falling apart, my mother died, my grandmother died, miscarriages, three fentanyl overdoses from three friends of mine. I wasn't afraid to write about that stuff. I wasn't pushing it to the back of my closet.
I was like, you know what? I don't know if I'm ready for this, but head on, let's fucking take it. And writing these really honest songs, and you're not looking for somebody to feel sorry for you, you're not looking for somebody to pat you on the back and say, it's okay.
You're looking for somebody to say I'm there. Like, I, I'm going through that too man. Like, I lost my mom here. I lost my mom 10 years ago, and it still feels this way. I, you know, my mom's sick and it scares the shit outta me that this song's gonna be way too real in six months.
And going back to that idea of building community, there is no better way to build community than through our trauma.
There's a reason that alcoholics anonamous meet with other alcoholics. There's a, a reason that drug addicts meet with other drug addicts. There's a reason that if you lost your kid in a war, they have meetings for parents that have lost kids in action. Talking about these fucked up things that all of us have to go through, bond us more than any anything else. You wanna talk about sense of community, start writing songs about shit that affects us all throughout our life.
I still got 20 year old kids who come up to me like, man, I still like your early stuff about getting fucked up, man. I was like, come up to me in 10 years. Have a kid.
[00:53:53] Michaela: Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
[00:53:54] BJ Barham: till one of your parents die. I was like, then this record will be waiting for you. This record might resonate with you more cause I remember at 20, I couldn't have heard a song about my mom at 20 25, 30. I couldn't have written a song about losing somebody at that point. It just, these things happened at a time in my career where I possess the tools to do so.
I highly encourage you, whenever you're ready to do so, I highly encourage you writing about that stuff because there is a piece that comes with being able to put into words those massive feelings. the closest I've ever felt to it was like going to therapy and talking to somebody about it and leaving with like this burden, off your shoulders.
Putting it into words is one thing. But then once you put that into words and you put it out into the world, there's this like really freeing thing about it. And, and I always tell my family, like at family reunions, and I told my wife when I met her, I was like, anything that ever happens in our relationship is fair game for writing.
Any emotion that I've ever experienced, like is fair game. I was like, even if it's a tiny squabble that gets resolved at night, if it sparks a fucking song, I'm sorry, but there's gonna be a fight about who left the milk out for the rest of our life. And, that's what we're getting into. And so like my family has to know that, like when my mom died, I don't know if my dad was ready to confront that as a person, but then when he had to listen to my record, he was immediately forced to confront a lot of that stuff, especially when I'm writing songs from his perspective.
Like I wrote a song on this record about like how my dad has to wake up every morning to an empty space that wasn't empty for 40 plus years. Because my dad told me, he's like, "There's moments I wake up and I still talk to her, and she's not there and I know she's not there, but I still have these kind."
He's like, am I crazy? I'm like, no, I'm putting that in a song, dad. And then you write this song and it doesn't sound crazy. It shows us that that kind of love after nearly a half a century doesn't get cut off as soon as the mortal version of that person's gone. Like you're still gonna wake up and go through those motions of, how'd you sleep? You want any eggs? That kind of stuff. Like, that's beautiful to me. That's not crazy or that's not a negative thing. that's beautiful to me and I wanna write about that kind of stuff, and I wanna write about that kind of stuff That makes people feel stuff.
And some people enjoy that, some people don't. Like when I started getting political, cuz before sobriety, I wasn't willing to talk about that. Cuz there was a part of me that was like, if I get political, then I'm gonna alienate half of my fan base. and I don't wanna do that. I don't have to do that.
But then when I had a daughter, that was when I started writing about poli, what people call political stuff. The world around us, the environment we're surrounded by. And people ask why I started getting so political and I told them I had a daughter. And I never want my daughter to ever come up to me and say, dad, when this thing happened, you had a platform. Why didn't you say anything? Why did you just keep singing about other stuff? Why didn't you talk about this massive thing that happened in history?
I never want my daughter to look at me like a coward and think that I chose a couple hundred extra Instagram followers over being honest. I never wanted her to look at me that I chose double attendance at a show in conservative red states, over speaking out against what I saw happening. And I learned that making that decision, a lot of people walked away from our band. A lot of our fans quotation marks for those not watching, there was two people that took their place at the table. Two people that have been looking for a redneck voice that talks about stuff that they can't talk about with their family.
You know, the, the southern progressives. All of a sudden there's a guy that sounds like them talking about the stuff that matters to them. And it's funny cuz I only have probably three songs that even get remotely political, but those three songs were enough to run a shit ton of rednecks off.
We call that the trash taken itself out. And it's one of those things where I wasn't willing to be quiet about stuff, just so those people could pay 20 bucks, 30 bucks every time I come to town. And we learned a very valuable lesson. There's a direct correlation between the people that yell, shut up and sing, and the same people that get too drunk and start fights at shows, or get too drunk and yell at you on stage thinking, "I paid $20 I can do whatever I want to in here."
There's a direct correlation between the people that get on Twitter and say, "you're not allowed to have your opinion singer songwriter. I want you to be honest about every other bad thing in your life, but I don't need you to be honest about the thing I disagree with you on."
There's a direct correlation between those and the people that show up and ruin it for everybody else. Who would've thought?
So by being open and honest, we have cultivated this really accepting crowd of left and right thinking people, because it's adults that understand I may not agree with everything and this guy says, but God damn it, I love how he says it. I love how he puts it.
[00:58:38] Michaela: Yeah. And also we can have respectful discourse.
[00:58:42] BJ Barham: Yeah, there's a difference between an argument and a discussion. An argument is just a discussion without respect. Discussions have respect for the other person you're talking to. There's a reason I can go home and talk to my father about politics who is diametrically opposed to everything I believe in.
And I can still hug it out and say, I love you dad. I don't understand why the fuck you still think that? Why you keep voting against your own self-interest every fucking year for the last 40 years, but I love you. And we can walk away and still
talk.
[00:59:08] Michaela: Yep.
[00:59:09] BJ Barham: People have arguments and there's no respect in arguments because everybody's on the, the internet and they can say whatever they want to and there's no direct repercussions.
There's this thing on the internet where I have to deal with people like on Twitter and Instagram, who, they say things on the internet that they would never once say to your face at the merch table. I encourage people, I'm like, my schedule is posted three to four months in advance.
If you've got something you would like to say to me please come to a show. If you don't feel like giving money to me to come to a show to say it to my face, I'll happily put you on the guest list. I'll leave you tickets at will call. Come talk to me face to face, because one, you're not gonna say that to somebody's face.
And probably we're gonna talk about the things we have in common. We're gonna find this really great middle ground of holy shit, we agree with each other on like 90% of the things. Like you like the same football team I like. We both like Dale Earnhardt. You like fried chicken from that place too? Holy shit.
There's these certain things we disagree on and it's divided our country to a point where people feel like they can't listen to music of someone that disagrees with 'em. And so I try to break that down. And don't get me wrong, there's people on Twitter you're not gonna change their mind. And those are the people that are fun to just humiliate on a massive scale.
But I've found me and my crowd have gotten closer, talking about these things. Because I've got people who come up and say, man, I don't agree with like 99% of the things you think about politically, but like that song about your mom, like, save My Life or that song about sobriety Save my life or that song.
Cuz like we're all going through something. Every human being is going through some shit. Whether or not they talk about it or not, whether or not they post it on the Facebook, we're all going through something or we're all looking for ways to make it easier. And I feel like writing songs is a way to connect with people and give them an easier way of dealing with the problems.
And so our fan base has gotten exponentially better once I started getting uncomfortably honest with, with them
[01:00:55] Michaela: Yeah. And you're leading the the tone. At your shows and then also like among the people who are following you on your platform, on your feed, whatever there is, you're in a leadership role.
[01:01:05] BJ Barham: Yeah. I think it's important because you look up and, I think there's a little over like 200,000 kids collectively on our social media network. There's a power that comes to that. There's also a responsibility that comes with that. Of being able to just write down something and it immediately gets just shot to 200,000 people.
That's a, you get to very clearly state what you're willing to put up with and what you're not willing to put up with. And you're able to show people the exit door if they're not willing to respect that decision.
And that's been the greatest thing for us. Just the crowd that shows up at the shows is a hundred times better. Like, we don't have fights. We don't have people getting too drunk and getting kicked outta shows. But, we are a loud rock and roll party. Our show is, very much about like, cut loose, have fun, it's Friday. Like, have a good time.
But we're gonna feel some things too. We're gonna talk about some shit that makes us all very uncomfortable. Cuz every night I talk about sobriety, I talk about suicide, I talk about depression. But also talk about, you know, the really fun anthems. And so our shows have become this really great like, grown up therapy session.
And I'm kind of into that. If people come up to me, it's like, man, you made me feel something I didn't wanna feel tonight. I was like, I did my job and you got your money's worth cuz a therapist cost way more than $25 at the door.
You know, and it's, it, it's fun because it, reminds you that you're on the right track in you're writing. Next time you sit down and you tiptoe that line of holy shit. Am I sharing too much? You're reminded of, okay, every time you've been here before you've navigated it properly. Just step a little bit closer to the edge and see if it feels comfortable.
My wife is the first person that hears every song and she is brutally honest with me. Like my wife does not like my music. I met my wife at a show. She was on a date with another guy, and she was like the loud drunk girl talking, and it's like I had to stop the show and I was like, ma'am, you're fucking this up for everybody. I was like, I will give you, I was like, I'll give you 20 bucks outta my pocket. Like I will literally pay you to leave right now.
And after the show, like she came up and apologized and we started talking and then like two days later she was in Atlanta to come see another show. But she's not like a fan. So like she feels very comfortable letting me know when something sounds nichey, or sounds cliche, or sounds bad, or isn't suitable for my voice, or feels a little too much like, that's more of us than I'm willing to share with everybody else. If you could please find a different way to say that.
But the only song I've ever asked her permission to write was Chicamacomico, which is a song about a miscarriage we had six years ago. That was the only song where I came to her before I even started writing and said, I'm about to try to put into words something. I'm not gonna write from your point of view, cuz I'll never understand what you went through physically, but I'm gonna write about it from like a guy's point of view what I went through emotionally, is that okay with you? And she said, I just want to hear it. So the first line I played for was "I swear I'm gonna lose my mind if I have to hear about God's plan one more goddamn time." And she was like, as long as everything else is like that, then yes.
I played her the song and she's like, that's fucking good.
I don't hear that a lot from my wife. So I was like, this, this, I was like, this is gonna wreck people in a really good way. And so it was the name of the record. It was the opener for the record. It was a song that I probably got a hundred messages the first day I posted it on Instagram. Strangers sharing some of the most intimate details of the worst day of their life.
[01:04:30] Michaela: Yep.
[01:04:30] BJ Barham: like, there's finally a song that encapsulates this. There's a finally a song that I can play for somebody and let them know what I went through. And when you start getting those kind of messages, you feel like you have tapped into your superpower. Like, holy shit, I can talk about really fucked up things in a way that make people feel a little less fucked up. And I'm not going back and writing a song about going to the bar ever again. Like,
[01:04:53] Michaela: Yeah. think of really vulnerable songwriting. I sometimes struggle with, as a performer, the ego centricity of stuff. Of seeking attention and making everything about you, and am I sharing because I wanna be talking about myself all the time?
And I've been thinking, no, actually, the more vulnerable you are and the more you share through your work, it's an invitation for others to feel allowed to share. And in the last couple of years of our lives, as I've, when I play shows now, I share about what's been going on in my personal life the last few years and, my mom. And, all of the trauma and tragedy that we've had.
And the stories that I get in return, and the emotions that I receive in return, anytime I get uncomfortable and think, am I like trauma dumping on stage? Is this not appropriate? Every time I'm like, oh no, this actually isn't about me. I'm not dumping my feelings on people. I'm giving an invitation and telling people it's okay to be vulnerable. And every time I come back to it, is the point of life is to connect with other human beings and to share our experiences.
[01:05:57] BJ Barham: I think everybody that starts writing songs, there is a touch of ego involved. Because songwriters have to walk this really weird tightrope of ego and vulnerability. Like you have to be vulnerable enough and introverted enough to be able to confront these feelings, but you also have to have an ego that tells you, like your voice matters.
Like your version of this story matters enough to say it out loud, or to put it on a record. So there, there's always this ego, but I've found that most of my favorite writers, all the songs started off, here's a song about a personal experience of mine. And then you run out of those after like two or three records.
Nobody has lived that cool of a fucking life to where you need 45 songs about yourself. And then you get to the point where you have to start writing about stories you've heard, or this observation you made. And, and I love that about like the voice apps and the note. It is like if I'm sitting at a diner eating and like dropping in on somebody else's conversation, they might say something that completely takes me down a rabbit hole.
Probably the last four or five records, other people's experiences have informed my songwriting so much. But those first two or three records were very much like, here's something stupid idea when I was 18, and here's 19, here's 20, 21. But then you get to the point where you've told all the cool stories and cool fabrications of half-truths.
And then you have to start like really becoming a writer. Record three or four is where we all become like real writers. narrative has to come into play at some point. Fictional narrative has to come into play at some point.
And I think once you learn that that is a power, not something that holds you back, like having to make Up a story that's not 100% true is not a detriment, that is a power because it allows you to go in any direction you need it to.
I feel like the best writers learn how to mix ego and vulnerability, because you still have to be proud enough of the songs to be like, I'm gonna sing this the rest of my life it's that good. But also vulnerable enough to be like, I've gotta go to a pretty fucked up place to get this song.
[01:07:58] Aaron: And learning how to balance those two. Keep those two in check. Cuz too much of one or too much of the other you're not gonna be able to get anything.
[01:08:04] BJ Barham: Yeah. s in a song have taken me out of it. Like, I did this and I did that. It's like, ah, fuck. I get it, man, you're the guy. uh, but like, there's also the ego's not there, but there's also not enough depth to. They've completely not went deep enough, and it just comes off as like, ugh.
I get it. Like, you're sad, but like, how sad are you? Or you're happy, like, how happy are you? Like, I need you to dig deeper into that. Because if you're not vulnerable enough, it's just gonna come across as milk toast. You know? It's, it's just, Okay. Like, I've heard this song a lot. Like, it just sounds like a Lumineers record. Yeah.
You know what I mean? Like, like, like I'm not, not knocking the Lumineers, but it's like, some of the stuff is just like throwing a dart and trying to hit the biggest demographic,
[01:08:45] Michaela: Right.
[01:08:46] BJ Barham: I mean? It's like, it's, it's been diluted down to something that is, It's tap water. Everybody's gonna taste it and be like, ah, it's, it's water. it's, it serves its purpose. But like, I like to write stuff for a very small group of people that, really, truly fucking love songs and love taking that deep dive.
I think there's enough room at the table for everybody. There's enough room at the table for, you know, our pop folk bands and hand clapping hay bands and the people that write really dark, fucking twisted shit.
[01:09:14] Aaron: A
[01:09:14] BJ Barham: Yeah,
[01:09:15] Aaron: Well, we know your daughter's coming home, so, we'll start to wrap this up. We appreciate you spending the morning with us.
[01:09:19] BJ Barham: For sure. Thanks for, having a platform to talk about this kind of stuff.
[01:09:23] Aaron: Absolutely. There's so much talk about community on this podcast. So, if. Has never heard of American Aquarium or never heard of you and likes what they hear, where do you like to send people to connect.
[01:09:32] BJ Barham: Wherever you find music americanaquarium.com is our website. So I, I always tell people to stream it. Go find Spotify, Pandora, apple Music, whatever you use. To listen listen it, and then if anything moves, you buy it. I always encourage people to buy it directly from me.
Please don't buy it from any third party cuz they're just, you're not gonna get a handwritten note from the guy that wrote all the fucking songs. I can get it there to the same amount of time as Jeff Bezos can.
If you don't want to buy directly from me, go to your independent local record store. All of our stuff is distributed so you can pick it up and if they don't have it, they can order it and you can be supporting another really great small business.
We're on all of the social media that somebody my age should be on. I'm not on TikTok. I'm not on TikTok. I don't have what's the other one where you could send pictures to each other and they erase?
[01:10:18] Michaela: Oh Snap Chat? Is that still a thing?
[01:10:19] BJ Barham: Not on. I don't know. Nobody wants to see a near 40 year old dude like me trying to do dance trends. So you know, I don't have the jaw line for country music, so nobody needs to see my fucking face that much.
I'm still trying to figure out reels on Instagram. I, I refuse to play the game. But then like, you realize that like, holy shit, that got like 30,000 more people seeing it than me making like an actual thought out emotional post.
[01:10:42] Michaela: I know. Yeah.
[01:10:43] Aaron: It's one of those things where the game doesn't care if you play it or not. The game is gonna go on.
[01:10:46] BJ Barham: It's, it's icky, you know, we all have friends that play the game and every day is a new reel or a new trend or a new thing and, you know, I'm just gonna keep posting just my tour dates and, here's a new shirt to sell and here's a cute thing that my fucking kid did.
I've always went after that. the natural pretty organic way to, to share with your friends. until TikTok proves more valuable to me . I think Instagram's the most like cutting edge thing i, I think I'm doing. And Twitter's where Twitter's where I have the most fun because it's like a cesspool, but I feel like if you're even remotely intellectual and you can formulate some really big thoughts into 140 characters, you can kind of be a king of Twitter
[01:11:27] Michaela: Mm-hmm.
[01:11:28] BJ Barham: so there's a lot of people that are just like, man, fuck you. And I'm like, oh, I've got a really neat way to say that that takes up all the characters. And I still had room for three lightning emojis at the end of it. So, uh, you know, twitter's a Twitter's where I have the most fun. I think so anybody who wants to find me on the internet could find me.
Yeah, support local. That's the biggest encouragement. Stream the shit out of all your major label friends but if your friends are on a small label or they own their own label always try to buy physical copies of the product.
[01:11:56] Michaela: Yep. I always say buy the product to build your collection and then stream at a ton.
[01:12:01] Aaron: Streaming is super convenient. You can listen to anything, anywhere, anytime.
[01:12:04] Michaela: And your numbers. Unfortunately, in the game, your numbers matter to certain people for things.
[01:12:11] BJ Barham: We offer all of our CDs for $5 on our website. um, Vinyl is still 25, $30 a piece, depending on if it's a single or a double record or if it's colored or whatever. But CDs are five bucks a piece because I don't want anybody to have an excuse not to own a physical medium of the record.
So, Even if you're a streamer and you don't have room for vinyl, buy a $5 cd, give it to a friend, and rest easy knowing that you bought a physical copy of something from the artist and stream the shit out of it. I tell people, I'm like, if you buy a vinyl or if you buy the digital download or buy a cd, that's the rest of your life guilt-free.
You get to stream it knowing that you bought a physical copy from the artist and that he will never wish any kind of karmic retribution on you. So, people are like, I don't wanna buy a cd. I'm not gonna listen to him. I'm like, it's five bucks. I'm like, you could spend $5 on a record that changed your life, even if it's just a tangible reminder of the record you love and you use it as a coaster, or it sits in your glove box for the rest of your life.
Know that you bought a physical copy of the record. I think that's extremely important.
[01:13:13] Michaela: Yeah. thank you so much for being so open and honest.
[01:13:17] BJ Barham: Heck yeah. Thank you guys. I feel like we could talk for another hour. Thank you guys. Thanks for letting me be one of the inaugural guest.