Photo courtesy of Shore Fire Media.
He kept his band afloat even after every member quit. He fashioned a breakthrough album with the help of a star who wasn’t then a star. He honors Southern heritage in his songs, but isn’t afraid to comment on the cracks within it.
Those are just some of the career contrasts BJ Barham has absorbed during his 18-year career as chieftain of American Aquarium. But here is perhaps the most curious quality. After 17 albums and endless touring, the lifelong North Caroliner and song stylist still can’t come up with a label for his music.
At heart, Barham writes story songs – compositions with vivid imagery full of time, place, family and remembrance. Some are like picture postcards from the past. Others are eulogies. And, yes, a few shake a fist at life in, as well as out, of the Carolinas.
In that regard, Barham’s music is folk. But the accent and settings surrounding them lean more to vintage country. Then when the rest of the six-member American Aquarium add their say, the music explodes merrily in any number of electric directions.
“If you asked me today what genre we are, I couldn’t give you a definitive answer,” Barham said recently by phone from his Raleigh home. “I hear elements of folk music, country music, rock ‘n’ roll and whatever the alt-country tag is which I think leans more toward the punk rock spirit played through a country music filter. But I’d to think we can do all of that.
“We live in a time where everybody likes to be able to pigeonhole something. They like to be able to listen to a record and say, ‘That’s 100% country music’ or ‘That’s 100% this other thing.’ I don’t think anybody has ever been able to say that about our band, even song-to-song on a record. You can’t call it one genre of music. It’s just an amalgamation of all the influences that we’ve had over the years.”
Barham formed American Aquarium in 2006 while a student at NC State University. When the desire to write and perform quickly outdistanced the usual college band regimen of playing clubs and weekend parties, Barham and company hit the road. They toured incessantly with a popularity that grew only in modest increments. Then, as the band’s future seemed hopelessly stagnant, Barham reached out to a friend and fellow songwriter from Muscle Shoals, Ala. to produce a 2012 album called “Burn. Flicker Die.” His name was Jason Isbell.
“When people hear that we worked with Jason Isbell, they think we worked with an international folk icon and Grammy award winner. But this was the guy who was then fresh out of getting kicked out of Drive-By Truckers and was starting a solo career. You’ve got to think ‘Burn. Flicker. Die.’ came out in August of 2012. ‘Southeastern’ (Isbell’s breakthrough record) didn’t come out until the following year. I joke that we were the last band that really had a chance to make a record with Jason Isbell, because after that, well… You can’t just call him up today and say, ‘Hey, can we come to Muscle Shoals and make a record with you?’”
“We had toured up to that point for seven straight years and nobody really cared about what we were doing. ‘Burn. Flicker. Die.’ was our turning point. It was the equivalent, somewhat, of flicking the light switch.”
The scope of an already hectic touring regimen then widened with recording eating up most of the band’s time off the road. Add in corrosion brought on by the usual rock ‘n’ roll vices and a breaking point was reached. It hit in 2017 when all of Barham’s recruits in American Aquarium, a band already ripe with personnel changes, jumped ship.
“It was the infamous February 2017 clearing. They all quit the same day. My manager quit the same day, too. Everybody was just like, ‘We’ve done this long enough. We’re tired. You’re a bit of an (expleitive). We’re leaving.’
“I’ve had 36 members in this band. Five of them are with me now, which means 31 people have quit. When 31 people quit your band, you have to take an extremely hard look in the mirror and realize that you might be the problem, that you’re the one who ran these people off. It wasn’t the work or the songs or the environment. It was you.
“A lot of that atonement came with sobriety. In August of this year, I will celebrate 10 years of sobriety. And sobriety brought along the ability to look in the mirror and not cower at the ugly things you see, the broken things you see. A lot of times when you’re addict, when you’re a user, when you’re a drunk, you look in the mirror and you see those bad things and then you just use your drink to cover up having to deal with those problems. That’s what I did for a very long time. That’s why a lot of those hemorrhages and cracks in our band’s foundation really came out in 2017. But what happened also taught me how to be a better boss, how to be a better person, how to be a better friend. That speaks to itself because I’ve had the same band now for six years. It took all of those missteps for me to finally get on the right path.”
In the years since American Aquarium solidified (guitarist Shane Boeker, pedal steel guitarist Neil Jones, keyboardist Rhett Huffman, bassist Alden Hedges and drummer Ryan Van Fleet complete the lineup), recordings and tours have reached vastly wider audiences. An objectivity has also become increasingly emboldened in Barham’s songwriting, much of it dealing with his Southern heritage. It is perhaps best summed up on “A Better South,” a song from American Aquarium’s 2020 album “Lamentations” that both honors that heritage while seeking to move beyond its failings.
“You can have an immense amount of love and respect for the region you call home, but you can also call out the bad things only because it comes from a place of love. I’m only saying this because I want it to be better. I was to raise my kid here. Once I realized there was a much larger audience that felt the exact same way, it was a lot easier to write that song. I think that’s what everybody wants.
“Once you have a kid, you realize, ‘I want my kid to be able to have all of the good parts of a Southern upbringing, especially the culture, the music, the food. There is a lot I would not change about the South. But I also want my daughter to grow up and have the freedom she deserves to have in the South.”
American Aquarium performs at 8 p.m. Jan. 19 at Manchester Music Hall, 899 Manchester St. Tickets are $15-$50 through ticketweb.com.
The Musical Box 