Tim Barry and Josh Small
Saturday October 16 at The Camel
There's a man from North Carolina on stage at The Camel with Tim Barry and Josh Small. He's not singing or playing an instrument. He wasn't on the bill. What he is doing is proposing to his girlfriend. She says yes and everyone cheers. The multicolor refraction of stage lights gleam faintly off the raised glasses that sprout up from the crowd.
For all the hallowed dominions of memory and regional identity presided over by Tim Barry's music, nothing serves as quite so potent a demonstration of the vast and passionate influence the stuff has had--on his fans, our city, and the Southern folk/punk movement as a whole--as this simple, unexpected experience. It's not a stretch to assert the distinctly Richmond quality of Barry's songwriting: the guy names all of his albums after parts of this town. His Local Hero status is indisputable. It makes sense, then, that the people here would cultivate a deep connection to his music; there's just something about all of us in these songs. That said, this wasn't a Richmonder proposing on stage. I'd like to think that this is an indication of the universality of the Richmond spirit, but I don't want to downplay the significance of Tim Barry's capacity to capture that spirit.
Richmond is a punk town that got a little older and started listening to the mountains. A place of unfulfilled, left-leaning, partially subdued counterculturists still clutching the dream of revolution like the beer cans that take their place. And that's pretty much who Barry is, too, though I suspect he's been listening to the mountains all along. It may be logical to conclude that there is some sad resignation endemic to this condition, an overriding sense of hopelessness in drunken odes to the failed trials of creating a more just world. What I really hear in it, though, is the undying, immutable voice of justice; the melodies of its eventual triumph over the forces of tyranny and dispassionate living. Tim Barry is a monument to the creative potential of humanity, the artistic potential of our city, and the dormant if easily roused radical within.
His show was a chorus of camaraderie, a community of musical reflection--part drunken bar scene, part family reunion. It's not in Barry's nature to over-saturate his hometown with performances, and as such, you're not likely to see him on a bill for a while. He'll be back, though; he always comes back. And when he does, it will be worth the wait.
