"Out among the tall grass you have to be very quiet and still before a song will reveal itself. You've got your trombone. Binoculars hang around your neck... and you're waiting for birds to disrobe."
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Welcome to my modest entertainment!
Thief and Rescue is my first solo album. It's full of songs that are self-propelled and built to last.
Listen to half of it on the music player in the lower left corner of your screen.
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The record is now available online and in austin stores. It was recorded in Austin with producer Brian Beattie. Brian has worked with Okkervil River, Bill Callahan, Daniel Johnston and Shearwater.
Our intention from the start was to grow an organic pulsing sigh of a record that exists somewhere outside of time. Born at the intersection of private loss and the public destruction visited on the city of New Orleans, the album is ultimately a celebration of music, of it’s essential spiritual cadence. At times it sounds like it wafted up on a swollen storm cloud. The songs poured from a wounded heart into a hot iron skillet where the fire was turned down to simmer with generous chunks of rock meat and lazy funeral horns… slow curing lamentations that vibrate with sweet distortion.
Thief and Rescue is a labor of love paid for with bartered paintings and construction labor. It was built with generous contributions from old friends. Longtime fan from The Barbers days, Will Sheff of Okkervil River duets with me on “Darla.” The album closes with an open invitation, a seven minute climb into joyful music making, “Let’s get lost in a song about nothing, sung by no one. Do you hear? ’cause there‘s nowhere that I‘d rather be…”
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Track listing: The Mosquito / Don’t Want Much / Broken Cup / The Monkey and The Ass / Darla / 1000 Miles / Way Back (Shoo-be-doo) / Gloryland Bus Driver / Something’s Moving / All Night Long / Let’s Get Lost
Press for the record:
“a grand reverb soaked celebration of music and life.” - JFelton, Record Dept.
"The imagery throughout is stunning..." - John Michael Cassetta, Side One: Track One
"It's a brooding album that questions the validity of music during troubled times, then comes to the conclusion that even when a good song is all you have, it can be enough … one of the best Austin albums of 2009.” - M. Corcoran, Austin American-Statesman
“…an excellent solo album … poetic and stormy and quite personal.” - A. Schroeder, AustinChronicle.com
“Thief and Rescue sounds like a lost Lou Reed album recorded in Austin between Rock and Roll Heart and Street Hassle ... a courageous document.” - B. Brownlee, There Stands The Glass
"The most delightful surprise of 2009. Affecting, intensely personal songs enhanced by sparse arrangements and brittle, memorable imagery." - D. Brown, KUT Radio
feature stories and interviews:
Everyday Magic - Audra Schroeder, the Austin Chronicle
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click here to buy Thief and Rescue
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recent photos...
Jon Dee Graham & friend at the Continental Gallery,
by Claudia Parker
Continental Gallery, by Claudia Parker
w/ Scrappy Jud Newcomb at the Whip In, by Claudia Parker
Lee & Scrappy, by Claudia Parker
w/Brian Beattie & Bruce Golden, by James Patterson
Release show at the Continental Club, by Lori Najvar
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copyright 2009 Lee Barber
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