I became aware of the music of Anton Barbeau through the music of Scott Miller and the email list for fans of his music, the Loud List. That list expanded my tastes in music, and Anton was one of many wonderful musicians I discovered there. The List moved to Facebook some years ago, and Anton never stopped making music over a 30 year career.
Anton was kind enough to answer a few questions for me about his new album, Oh The Joys We Live For, and a very good album it is, too.
Andrea Weiss: While most of my readers likely know you and your music, for anyone who doesn't, can you give a bit of your musical history?
Anton Barbeau: I was born in 1967, just a month before Sgt. Pepper, and was a Beatles baby for sure. I was obsessed with music from childhood and I loved the Doors, The Beach Boys, and pop music on the radio. It was hearing Gary Numan, though, that got me started as a musician for real. I was 13 and the whole world changed in an instant. My dad bought me a synth and I started writing songs and suddenly it’s decades later and I’ve released over 30 records! I’ve been fortunate to play with many of my heroes. I had Andy and Morris from Robyn Hitchcock’s erstwhile Egyptians with me for a few years, I toured a little bit in the UK with Julian Cope, and in one week I went from filming a video in Swindon with XTC’s Colin Moulding to recording in Studio Two at Abbey Road with French band Salt. I have just enough sex, drugs, and rock and roll stories to make for a mildly interesting book.
AW: Who are your influences?
AB: By now, I have so many, right? I’ve mentioned a few already: the Beatles are gods to me, so is Julian Cope. Bowie, Eno. So many of the krautrock bands like Neu and Faust and Can and Amon Duul. Incredible String Band, Ultravox, Fleetwood Mac, ABBA, Kate Bush. Psychedelic bubblegum, experimental electronic noise. We listen to Greek radio at night, and I listen to the sounds of the house and farm every morning. Monty Python, Stewart Lee, Vic and Bob. I love the films of Tarkovsky and Jodorowsky and Svankmajer and Goddard and Cocteau… those rub off on me. Carl Jung is a huge influence. I’m in love with the music of Joni Mitchell, but I can’t claim her as an influence - she’s way too idiosyncratic and intimidating!
AW: I like your use of synthesizers on these songs. Is that a way of pushing boundaries with this album?
AB: Ha! Well, maybe my mention earlier of Gary Numan clarifies a few things. I played synth well before I played guitar. I only picked up guitar because, honestly, it was easier to carry to gigs and to shake my ass with onstage. That said, of course I’ve written billions of songs on guitar. I won a little local “Folk Singer” award in my hometown. Nobody ever quite knows which aisle of the grocery store to put me in. I’ve released several all-electronic albums, and a piano-based record. Quite recently, I was featured on a two-hour show for Artefaktor radio, with the focus on my synth pop tunes. In 2009 (?), I caught swine flu and had a fever for a month. I dreamt every night of synths! Obsessed. I probably own 15 guitars, but have nowhere near the same level of interest in guitar as an instrument. But back to the album at hand… this is a collection of all sorts of odds and ends, and it’s probably more coincidental than calculated that there’s a palpable synths vibe here.
AW: This isn't as much of a guitar-based album as Manbird and Kenny vs. Thrust were, and I like that. Does it mean that you're building on the sound of them, too?
AB: I’m glad you like the contrast, thanks! Of the records you listed, Manbird was the most intentional. It was driven by a vision and is a double-album to prove it! Kenny vs Thrust was meant to be a quick, fun “battle of the bands,” showing off the grooviness of my respective California and UK bands. Those bands are basically two guitars, bass, and drums - the classic format - so there are lots of guitars on display. Oh The Joys We Live For is made up of the fragments of four or five unfinished records, so I can’t say it’s building on anything, exactly! I’d finished it and released a version of it online before Manbird was even out. The original Oh The Joys actually had more synth tunes, including some from Antronica 4. It didn’t really hold up as well as an album, and my online-only experiment flopped. I was grateful when Big Stir said they’d release it. By that point, I’d swapped certain songs out and found I’d “made” a much lovelier record. It feels very intentional, but I can’t claim credit. Joys is a record that made itself.
AW: Would you say Robyn Hitchcock is a lyrical influence?
AB: He has certainly been a huge influence over the years, but not so much in an ongoing way. The excitement and shock of his surrealist wordplay has given way - after decades of listening to his music - to a sort of avuncular comfort at this point! I can still hear traces in a song like “One Of Her Super Powers,” but it almost feels a bit deliberate, like I’m throwing in one of Robyn’s zebras for the kids! Really, though, the whole point of having influences is to help us learn who we ourselves are. Something/someone from “out there” triggers either a feeling of exciting familiarity within ourselves, or maybe a feeling of unsettling weirdness, but the ideal is to take those feelings and use them to discover/create our own language. I don’t mean this in an arrogant way, but Manbird was the first Ant record where I could see that I’d become my own influence. I mean, by nature of my work, I’m listening to hours of myself every day and I have no time to steal the best lines from John Cale or Joan Armatrading.
AW: I like the way you create all kinds of quirky, colorful characters in your lyrics. Is it fun writing that way?
AB: Thanks! I certainly do have fun sometimes when I’m writing, but I also tweak out over whether any given song is good enough. I mentioned that Oh The Joys came together from various unfinished projects. The one I liked most and wish I’d stuck with longer was called Christian Wife. It was going to be an album about a traditional married couple, living in Small-town, USA. They play out their expected man/wife roles where he has the real job, she cooks the dinner, and they go to church on Sunday, insisting they’re true Christian. But each of them has a secret, dark life they keep from each other. It seemed such a rich vein to mine, but I only managed maybe three or four songs, and even those only barely had the characters in the same room. I do like playing with characters in general and I sometimes move between using my own voice and that of the Other.
AW: What was it like to play with Scott Miller on What If It Works?
AB: It was so enjoyable. I mean, mostly it was fun. It was always meant to be a light, loose album. The whole thing started when we performed the Stones’ “Rocks Off” together at a gig in our hometown, Sacramento. Scott’s wife, Kristine, said you guys should record that and next we knew, we had studio time booked and paid for by 125 Records. Trying to turn a single cover song into what became a full album wasn’t the easiest thing for Scott, who’d been out of the music biz for a bit. He’d become a family man and had taken on greater responsibility at his day job. Still, I think we managed to ride out the challenges as they came. Most of my memories are of us having a fine old time, whether doing backing vocals together in his house or of him urging me on as I smashed through a drum track in an unscheduled basement session. It all felt like no sweat. This was his first time using Pro Tools and he totally nailed it, as you’d expect. To that end, there was all sorts of sonic magic happening. In those days I was just starting my migration over to the UK, so we made the album in the cracks. Scott would update me with emails containing his latest efforts, and then when I’d return to California, we’d get back to work. I’d worked with Scott a number of times before this, but making a full album with him is something I cherish so very much.
AW: What would you say to someone just starting out in music?
AB: Listen to everything! Listen to things you love, as much as you can, seek out more things to love, and love listening to things you can’t stand! Meet people and play music together. Some people thrive in music on their own, but it’s worth finding out how to make noise with others. Believe in your own confidence, but let insecurity live in you in comfort, because music is made up of a combination of the known and the unknown. Be brave in the dark, but let yourself fail and flail in the light. Be protective of your work, but not too precious. And most of all, have a good time all the time (moderation in excess, mind...).