Shout out Patrick Milgram, who contributed mightily to Finals Issue No. 01 (cover story about Steve Hiett) and turned in this great interview with Barry Walker, Jr., below. Thanks Patrick! –Finals Management

Barry Walker Jr’s pedal steel has been a consistent thread throughout my quarantine listening, with subtle atmospheric accents, blistering psychedelic tangents, and all sounds in between capable of meeting the emotional rollercoaster of this past year. So I was excited to be able to catch up with Barry recently to discuss his music, the pedal steel guitar, and his life as a geologist and father.

He hasn’t released any music yet in 2021, but his 2020 credits include North Americans’ Roped In, Jeffrey Silverstein’s You Become The Mountain, Mouth Painter’s Arkturus Suite, as well as his own solo release Shoulda Zenith. They’re all great. Check ‘em out!

--

Pat: How much has your work as a geologist impacted your music?

Barry: I can't separate out the work I've done as a geologist from the other parts of my head, you know? So I would imagine that it plays a big role in that creative part of me. When working as a geologist it involves field work which typically, for me at least, is a lot of being alone out in the middle of nowhere for long periods of time… like four weeks or more in a place that's usually pretty stark, epic, dangerous or very cool. Lots of stuff to take in –– big spaces with very few other people. Also, when I work I don't wear headphones –– so when I’m out there, in the middle of nowhere with no headphones and no music, that’s when I start developing melodies to myself, humming or singing to myself.

I also carry a field book and –– while I have a very, very rudimentary understanding of music theory (at least in terms of the written note, the written page) –– I make little sketches of a treble staff and melodies. I've done that for a long time in my field books.

I also feel very lucky to have a job where I can make a living and don't have to depend on the music or the gig to make money. So not only do I have these long timescale processes to think about in terms of plate tectonics and volcanism and the field work meditative experiences –– this, that, and the other, but I also have something that I can wholly invest myself in and that enriches this other part of my musical creativity.

Pat: How does it feel to be out in the field alone? Steel guitar has an association with sadness –– the cryin' steel –– is that a sentiment you share while you’re doing fieldwork?

Barry: I've always loved singing –– I still do sing in Mouth Painter, another project that I have, and I sing on the Shoulda Zenith record. But I think that when we're talking about melodic playing, it's always coming from me singing. When I'm walking around, crunching around in the gravel, it always comes as me humming a tune to myself… you know, sometimes I'm humming a Gary Stewart song to myself but if I'm going to hum something over and over again when I'm out in the field I'm going to try to have it be something that I'm making up.

But back to the original question about my mindset – it’s always coming from this idea of singing and harmony. It’s beautiful singers like the Stanley Brothers, the Bee Gees, the Louvin Brothers, Doug Sahm, Otis Redding, Merle Haggard, Gene Clark that I'm very inspired by. And I love to sing. The mixture of being out in the field and my natural inclination to hum a tune, is this perfect combination for me to get into that creative space.

And I do look forward to going out in the field. It used to be sort of a hassle...well it's always a hassle, but nowadays I love it. I get to detach from the internet, completely detach. You can't look something up every three minutes; you just start to wonder about things and your mind gets, you know...we all remember it but we can't get back there, because our fingers don't allow us to.

Pat: On the topic of disconnecting and reflecting on these bigger things, tectonic shifts, volcanoes, etc., there's also the theme of outer space in your work –– is that related to your work as a geologist or something you’ve been thinking about more often these days during the pandemic?

Barry: I don't know that I've been thinking of it more during the pandemic. In terms of the geologic time spectrum, I've been interested in that ever since I was a little kid…the cosmic thing. I look up at the sky a lot. During the pandemic, I have been watching the stars. Mars has been sort of in the middle of the sky the whole summer, it's rising earlier and earlier everyday –– you can look up at 10 o'clock at night and Mars will be right straight up overhead.

I'm generally interested in that kind of stuff but I'm a neophyte and don't know much about space. I've been around a lot of people in grad school that were interested in space science, and I'm always looking to soak up information from people.

And, you know, I love Sun Ra! I've loved Sun Ra for a long time. I always thought that was cool: he was, he is, from outer space!

Pat: What else are you listening to these days in locked down living?

Barry: I've been listening to a lot of country music and a lot of jazz. I'll break that down a little bit –– I'm a big Merle Haggard fan, as is my wife Valerie, and the mid-eighties is where I've been at with Merle for the past several years because the albums are incredible. The songwriting is great. The production is good. I used to think it was too cheesy, but now, you know, the phases and stages of our lives, now I love it. The guitar playing is excellent. So a lot of Merle Haggard, a lot of early Willie Nelson. I used to want to hear mid-seventies Willie, like Texas Willie, but now I want to hear that earlier Nashville Willie. His voice is a singularity. I've also been listening to a lot of Don Cherry albums because I was having a mental block with Don Cherry for a long time, and I was around a lot of people that were into weird jazz –– it was like “Ornette and Don Cherry, like, duh” –– but when I listened to a lot of the records, I don't know, I just wasn't connecting. But this past year I've fully embraced Don Cherry. Especially the mid- to late-seventies period, like Organic Music Society and Brown Rice, where it becomes this sort of world music thing that I just love.

You know what else I've been into? Have you heard this guy Wendell Harrison? It's not quite free jazz and it's not quite funk, but it's somewhere in there. I've been really into that. It's funky jazz music that you wouldn't hear on the radio because people would call in and tell them to turn it off. The free jazz people would think it's too smooth or something. You know what I'm saying? We've been listening to a lot of "bedtime music" –– that’s what we refer to it as because when the baby starts to go to sleep at eight o'clock, I'm not ready to go to sleep so we lie down and listen to music. So earlier on in the pandemic, I was playing a lot of pedal steel during that time, lullaby stuff. And I recorded this stuff which I will put out at some point. Recently we've been listening to a lot of ambient records, too. I know that was the longest answer ever…we're constantly listening to records and that's one of the things I like about going out in the field, because I don't listen there my mind takes a break.

Pat: On the topic of ambient music, I was reading an interview with Patrick McDermott about the album you both worked on, Roped In, and it seemed like he was kind of resisting that “ambient” label for the music. Do you share that perspective or is that a designation that you would use for your music?

Barry: I know that Patrick has sort of pushed back against that label and I think that's fine. I don't really think that the North Americans record is an ambient record and I don't think that I've made an ambient record but, you know, it doesn't matter to me what people call it honestly. And when I say honestly…honestly, I don't care.

I don't think it's the best term but it is a term that people now know and say, "Oh, okay, I like ambient music." Great…well, here's some “ambient-adjacent,” you know? You can say that for sure. In record stores, you start to see “cosmic” or “minimal,” things like that. Or “organic.” Record stores are great, they're always coming up with new ways to label stuff and I like seeing that. I like "cosmic minimal," I think that's cool.

In my mind "ambient" at this point, it's an umbrella term. Some of it is ambient, like that Dylan Henner record is a true ambient record. I don't know what sets that apart from something I wouldn't consider “true” ambient but might fall under the ambient umbrella. There's too much melody going on with the North Americans record, some of those are actual songs with little parts and things and some are more minimal. I don't shy away from the term, though. People get fired up about that kind of stuff and I can see how you wouldn't want to have your album called that –– I see where Pat is coming from. But at the same time, I'm not a music writer or a record store owner so I don't have to worry about this stuff. It's not my problem. You call my records ambient if you want. I like ambient music.

Pat: When I listen to your music I don’t find it to be ambient as in like background music or whatever –– it’s transportive and consuming.

Barry: Yeah, good point. With the North Americans record I really think you could either ignore or listen to it, and it would be fun. I like music like that. You can either ignore or you can listen to it.

Pat: It's interesting that you can have both of those experiences with the same album.

Barry: That's how I grew to love the Grateful Dead, it was just constantly playing where I was living and I could just ignore it until one day I was like, hmm…?

Pat: There are some definitive, Dark Star moments in your most recent album – these constructed melodic pieces that give way to more free form kind of freak out moments. It reminds me a bit of our Sun Ra conversation. Are you a big Dead fan? Are you the guy that would want to listen to Dark Star and not go take a bathroom break?

Barry: Oh yeah, I'm a long time Deadhead. I love the Grateful Dead. They're probably my favorite band. Not probably, they are. You know, it used to be sort of embarrassing and now… well, I wasn't embarrassed but people would want to be embarrassed for me.

Pat: And now it’s kind of en vogue.

Barry: Yeah now it's fine to like the Dead. Somebody, somewhere, like five or 10 years ago was like, "okay put the press release out…it's okay to like the Grateful Dead now." But I love the Dead.

Pat: Jerry Garcia’s New Riders of the Purple Sage, now that's some pedal steel. How did you end up playing pedal steel? Did he and the Dead play a part?

Barry: Oh sure, I got into banjo first and started experimenting. I wanted to play the banjo really well, which is really hard to do. You have to practice all the time. Well, that's true with anything if you're just learning it, you have to just practice all the time if you want to be good. So I practiced a lot and kind of made my own way with the banjo, but then I sort of abandoned it. But it opened up a world to me where I felt like, okay, I have the finger pick thing down and I have this melodic country music thing in my brain, and while the banjo scratched that itch for a while, it was the pedal steel that really did it. I think if you're a guitar player (which I was), thinking about the pedal steel seems like a different planet. And it is…I don't know what it was…I think I just wanted to do it and then it completely absorbed me. I moved to Seattle and I didn't know anybody. I was living pretty much alone and playing pedal steel every night.

But people like Jerry Garcia...He's top three, top #1 guitar player for me. I love his playing and his pedal steel playing when you listen to it is pretty good. So that was another thing I was like, “Well, if Jerry Garcia can learn how to play pedal steel in one month in the studio and play on records, why can't I do it if I put my mind to it? Can I play at least half as good as Jerry?”

Pat: It’s interesting because the pedal steel is kind of inextricable from country music but you use it in a different way –– learning that you started playing it in Seattle makes more sense to me now.

Barry: When I got the pedal steel I immediately started practicing and found a band to practice with, and we practiced a lot…didn't ever play a show...but practicing every day with this band was really great because it helped me get all these fundamentals. But I knew that, just like with the banjo, there was this thing I was trying to get at.

I wanted to play like John Hartford or Earl Scruggs, but when I would actually sit down and play the stuff, you'd find the tablature and play it, it's like, well, this is how that guy plays. It's really awkward for me to try to play like that. Now people do that and master Earl Scruggs and it sounds incredible, but it was kind of a mental block, I couldn't do it.

So it's similar with the pedal steel, I stand on the shoulders of giants and I worship these pedal steel players that came before me, and the country pedal steel players that are playing right now. But it takes so much time to devote to learning how to play like that, the subtleties of your technique and all, it's just so time-consuming –– I want to play music, you know? So the technique has gotten in the passenger seat in terms of my playing, which is probably because I started when I was 30 years old, if I had started when I was eight my technique would be a lot better.

Pat: As you’ve evolved your own style, do you find yourself intentionally trying to expand the boundaries of the instrument and the traditional associations with it or are you focused more on just creating and not thinking of it that way?

Barry: I don't know if I could truthfully answer that question, but I would say, no, I'm not trying to expand the boundaries of pedal steel. I'm trying to play music the way that I want to play. I don't know how to say this but, I've put out several albums and it's only the last couple where people are trying to describe this narrative behind the record. It's like, what's your sheet that you're going to send out to all the websites and stuff? And, it can't just be, "I made an album... these are tunes that I like that I made up myself." There's always this attempt to construct this narrative and say “this is groundbreaking because of X, Y, and Z.” And a lot of times it's not…99 times out of 100, it's not groundbreaking for any reason other than the fact that there are good songs on it, or it's great playing, or whatever. Sometimes you do get a truly incredible story that goes behind the album.

And I did recognize this 10 years ago, where once I had a band and was a singer and played guitar –– I thought the band was really great. Then I moved away to Seattle and thought, huh, should I start another band? No, I don't have time…well, maybe I should do something that not very many people do, and that I've always wanted to do –– play pedal steel. I was joking with my friend earlier today, he was like, "Barry, now that pedal steel is cool, you should ride this as hard as you can." I was like, "Yeah until next year when there are 40 pedal steel records out there and it's not cool anymore." It's this never ending cycle, you know? I'm not trying to expand the boundary of the instrument, I'm not trying to play pedal steel because it's cool. I truly love the pedal steel and I devoted myself to it over the past 10 years, trying to play music that I like, melodies that I like. I'm trying to sing with the instrument.

Pat: Pedal steel is often used as an accent in country music but you're talking about how you play it as more of a lead guitarist. Would you say that’s unique?

Barry: I don't know...I don't think so. The pedal steel community has people that play pedal steel and make pedal steel albums, but most of them are more traditional sounding, nice country-ish pedal steel records.* Or heading into the sort of noir rock and roll or jazz territory. But always pretty slick –– these players are good, really good. One of the things I benefit from is I'm not actually good enough to be overly concerned about my technique –– so I don't write songs that are geared towards showing off my technique. My songs are almost entirely based on a melody that I like and have hummed to myself over and over again.

I read a great thing with Willie Nelson –– I think it's in his "Tao of Willie…" great toilet book, the whole book is golf jokes –– he was saying was that he never records himself singing a melody to remember it later because, he says, if he has to remember it later it's not good enough.

Pat: Wow, I like that.

Barry: I like that too because I'm very concerned with melody and harmony. And I feel almost like a traditionalist in that sense, I want the songs to have hooks in a way. I know this might seem silly in context with my latest record, but I really do think there are certain moments in there that have hooks.

Pat: Do you have new music on the way?

Barry: We have a new Mouth Painter record that's done, probably released early summer/late spring, hopefully. It's a great record, hot record. There's not a ton of pedal steel on it but there are a lot of great songs. Of course I'm gonna say it's great but yeah, you'll want to check that out.

And then I have a lot of music that I've recorded. Basically, I'll go through a process where I record a bunch and then I won't. So I've got some stuff that I'm working on. There's plenty to come. And Patrick McDermott and I –– North Americans –– are starting to talk and bounce around ideas for a new record. And I recorded some more music with Jeffrey Silverstein, I've benefited so much from Jeffrey being my buddy and musical pal. Jeffrey is just such a nice dude and his music is so easy for me to get on board with because he's another guy that's got hooks. His music, and his guitar lines, I just love them. I think he's a great guitar player and I think he's a great writer of guitar music, and his lyrics are kind of meditative. Playing with him is really fun and he's constantly talking everybody up, he's a real community oriented guy.

Barry wishes to clarify post-interview that in addition to the abundance of quality pedal steel albums by country players, there are many excellent non-traditional pedal steel players creating new music, including B.J. Cole, Daniel Lanois, Susan Alcorn, Will Van Horn, Chuck Johnson, Luke Schneider, Heather Leigh, Sam Wenc, and I'm sure a bunch of others.

Gear:

• pedal steel: Sho~Bud Super Pro (1980)
• amps: Peavey Nashville 400, Peavey LTD 400, Fender Twin Reverb Custom 15

Heavy listening of 2020:

• Dylan Henner / "The Invention of the Human"
• Schawkie Roth / "You Are the Ocean"
• Inoyamaland / "Commissions: 1977 - 2000"
• Lori Goldston / "On a Moonlit Hill in Slovenia"
• David Naegele / "Temple in the Forest"
• Steve Hiett / "Down On The Road By The Beach"
• Khan Jamal / "Thinking of You"
• Wendell Harrison / "Organic Dream"
• Don Cherry / "Om Shanti Om"
• Codona / "3"
• Norma Tanega / "Walkin' My Cat Named Dog"
• Merle Haggard / "That's the Way Love Goes"
• Willie Nelson / "Country Willie: His Own Songs"
• Sanford Clark / "They Call Me Country"
• Bobby Lee / "Shakedown in Slabtown"
• Rose City Band / "Summerlong"