Music

Aquarium vocalist sets White Water concert

American Aquarium frontman B.J. Barham flies solo Wednesday at the White Water Tavern in Little Rock.
American Aquarium frontman B.J. Barham flies solo Wednesday at the White Water Tavern in Little Rock.

A highly personal album of rootsy sketches and character studies from B.J. Barham's hometown of Reidsville, N.C., got its start in Belgium.

That's where Barham was on Nov. 13, 2015, touring with his band, American Aquarium, when terrorists attacked in nearby Paris, killing 130 people, including 89 at an Eagles of Death Metal show at the Bataclan theatre.

B.J. Barham

9 p.m. White Water Tavern, 2500 W. Seventh St., Little Rock

Admission: $15

(501) 375-8400

whitewatertavern.com

Barham was inundated with calls and texts from family and friends checking up on him, and the outpouring caused the songwriter to reflect on those close to him and where he grew up. The result was his raw 'n' rootsy solo debut from last year, Rockingham, written over two days following the attacks and featuring fictionalized characters from the small town of Reidsville in Rockingham County.

Barham will perform songs from Rockingham during a solo set at Little Rock's White Water Tavern on Wednesday as part of his Great 48 Tour, a jaunt that will find him hitting all of the continental states this spring and summer.

Little Rock is familiar stomping grounds for Barham. American Aquarium, with its bar-band Americana rock, make frequent stops in the city. Its former label, Last Chance Records, is also based here and still issues the band's vinyl records. And Barham has also stopped at his beloved White Water Tavern each of the past five summers for a solo gig.

"Little Rock is the first town in America, other than our hometown of Raleigh, N.C., that got what the band was doing," he says while preparing to celebrate his 33rd birthday at Carolina Beach, N.C., with his wife. "Our tours would be routed around Raleigh and Little Rock."

The White Water and its crowd was like an oasis for the group, which was on its last legs at one point.

"We would roll into Little Rock on fumes with no money in our pockets, dejected, and we'd play a show to 100 people that actually [cared]," Barham says. "It was like breathing new life into us. To this day, I'll play at least one show a year at the White Water Tavern as a 'thank you' to [co-owner] Matt White. I still don't think I can pay him back enough for what he did for us those first five years."

Rockingham is Barham's first solo project, and the urge to write about home when he was so far away was immediate.

After the Paris attacks, the group had a couple of days off in Holland and Barham got straight to work.

"Most people, whenever there's trouble, you go home and wait it out," he says. "In that situation I couldn't go home. I was 4,000 miles from home. The only thing I could do was mentally put myself there."

He'd always wanted to make a record about Reidsville and Rockingham County, and the songs just started to flow.

"It all hit me at once," he says. "Songs about my grandfather, my father, kids I went to high school with. Once I opened the floodgate, those songs poured out in two days." And while they were all done with a fictional twist, like a collection of short stories, the personal nature of the songs is prevalent.

The recording was almost as swift as the writing. Back home in Raleigh, where he now lives, Barham assembled a band and captured the album over six days in the studio while American Aquarium played the group's annual Road to Raleigh homecoming gigs.

"Within a week's time, I met the band and I had a finished record," he says. "It was pretty hectic. I got to play two sold-out shows in my hometown and make a record all in the same week."

The results are blue-collar folk-country tales of hard work ("American Tobacco Company"), a yearning for home ("Rockingham"), a crushing portrait of a lonely widower ("Unfortunate Kind") and being pushed over the edge ("O' Lover").

Compared to American Aquarium albums, Rockingham is "extremely hushed," Barham says. "It's light drums, bass, pedal steel guitar and acoustic guitar. I wanted the lyrics to be the focal point."

Style on 05/23/2017

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