Martin Barre

river-city-magazine

So I’m going to attempt to end this jerk of a year with five wrap-up posts in five days. Fingers crossed this works. I tend to overwrite these things until they become albatross-y, so I’ll try to keep things snappy, starting with a quick list of links to music writing I did in 2016. Add in weekly contributions to the Off Your Radar newsletter and an August appearance on Sound Gaze and I can definitively say that this is the most blabbing about music I’ve done in a year.

Many thanks — seriously, too many to mention here — to the people I interviewed and the people who made what I wrote sound better and look prettier. Y’all know who you are, and I hope you also know how awesome and appreciated you are. Lots of fun stuff in the works for 2017. Until then…

Featured Off Your Radar weeks:

#3 — Golden Rules for Golden People by Pretty & Nice
#29 — Magazine by Jump, Little Children
#38 — I Love You, Go Easy by Devon Sproule

For Boomer Magazine:

Jun/Jul — Five Days, One Community at FloydFest 16

For Richmond Navigator online

October 18 — Back to Steel, Back to Richmond: Martin Barre coming to The Tin Pan

For River City Magazine

Jan/Feb — Backstage with Clair Morgan
Mar/Apr — Bluegrass and Beyond: The Hot Seats and Virginia’s Old-Time Tradition
May/Jun — A Toast to Outdoor Music: Friday Cheers and Richmond’s Open-air Venues
Jul/Aug — Paying Tribute: Kelli Strawbridge and Richmond’s Salute to James Brown
Sept/Oct — A Lasting Impact: Perpetual Groove and the Green Music Scene
Nov/Dec — Richmond’s Perpetual Motion Machine: Looking Back with Carbon Leaf

For RVA Magazine

Winter — Studio Sampler: Finding a Recording Home in Richmond

For West End’s Best

Mar/Apr — On the Crooked Road Connecting Country Music History in Southwest Virginia
Nov/Dec — The West End: Alive with the Sounds of Music

martin-barre-resized

On Friday night, I was spinning Aqualung on my turntable. On Saturday morning, I was speaking over the phone with Martin Barre, Jethro Tull’s legendary guitarist. (He’s performing at The Tin Pan on Saturday night.) It was a great, truly candid conversation, and I compiled the best bits for a Richmond Navigator interview that went online yesterday. I hope you’ll take a took and grab a ticket for Saturday, if you haven’t already.

If you’re curious about his solo work, here’s a track that provides a nice bridge between his past and present — a rearrangement of the Jethro Tull song “Slow Marching Band” that Barre included on his 2016 Back to Steel album.

Martin Barre — “Slow Marching Band” [Spotify/iTunes]