Barika finds voice on new album, 'When the Time Comes'
Barika has found its voice.
Actually, the band led by Burlington musician Craig Myers has found several voices to flesh out its West African-driven instrumental groove music. He has long wanted to add vocals to his band’s sound, and Barika’s new album, “When the Time Comes,” features guest performances by local singers Kat Wright and Craig Mitchell and French-African musician Daby Toure.
“When the Time Comes” comes at a time of transition for Myers, a founding member of the psychedelic dance group Rubblebucket who tours in the solo band of Phish bassist and fellow Vermonter Mike Gordon. Myers turned 40 on Jan. 13, the night he and Barika performed what Myers calls one of the band’s best shows, at Positive Pie in Montpelier. He paid tribute on stage that night to his father, Philip Myers, who was in hospice in Florida. His father died the next day.
Losing his father, hitting a new decade and releasing an album that takes his band in a new direction could have been too much for Myers. Instead, he takes it in the same easy but deep stride he strives for with his band’s music.
“I don’t have ‘Oh my God’ moments,” said Myers, who celebrates Barika’s new album with a show next week at Nectar’s. “I just have ‘Of course’ moments.
“There’s no convenient time for this to happen.”
‘Swirling energy’
Myers began Barika in 2008 while performing with Gordon and touring heavily with Rubblebucket. “It was pretty overwhelming,” said Myers, a percussionist with Gordon and Rubblebucket who with Barika plays a West African stringed instrument known as the ngoni. (“Barika” is a term of praise that he heard frequently while studying the ngoni in Mali.)
Playing with Gordon and Rubblebucket took so much time that Myers could only focus on Barika one weekend a month or so, not enough time to gain momentum. He left Rubblebucket in 2012 and now concentrates on Barika, with occasional forays on the road with Gordon.
“I just kind of needed to rediscover what we’re doing and how we want to move,” he said, noting that Barika has endured several lineup changes as band members leave for other musical projects. The current lineup features Giovanni Rovetto on bass, Colin Lenox on guitar, trumpet player Christopher Hawthorn and the only member with Myers from the start, drummer Caleb Bronz.
“I consider him a partner in Barika, and a great friend,” Myers said of Bronz, who also plays with Toure, Celtic rockers Prydein and local Latin-jazz master Ray Vega. Myers said he’s fiery and creative and Bronz is “the voice of reason” who reins in his ideas.
Bronz said his roles with Barika include working with Myers as a “facilitator in terms of logistics and enthusiasm” but also in designing drum parts for the music and fitting the divergent sounds into one rhythmic bed.
“This is Craig’s brainchild, this is Craig’s mind. Part of the reason I’ve stayed involved all this time and put this energy into the group is I really respect Craig as an artist,” Bronz said. “He just has particular ideas on how this music should be presented, how the arrangements should be put together so the music is dynamic and impactful without becoming stagnant.”
Writing with feeling
Myers and Bronz worked on “When the Time Comes” over the past year and a half. Myers knew he wanted vocalists for Barika’s third album.
“All these songs were written before I had any idea about vocals,” he said. “I started letting the music tell me who I wanted for each track.”
He turned to Kat Wright, the soulful Burlington singer, giving her an overarching theme for what he saw in one instrumental track – what is humanity, and what does it mean to show up for somebody? He asked her to come up with lyrics; the result, “There For You,” has Wright’s big voice soaring over a mellow Afro-jazz foundation as she sings of the ups and downs of love (“I pray for us but I can’t erase/All the things that we did say in frustrated space”).
Myers took similar approaches with Mitchell, the Burlington DJ who sings with a Prince tribute band, and Matt O’Brian, formerly of Rochester, New York, roots-reggae band Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad and now with Thunder Body. Toure, signed to the Charlotte-based world-music label Cumbancha, is featured on a couple of tracks, including “Banni,” which with its laid-back, horn-fueled rhythmic jazz resembles the work of Vermont musician Michael Chorney in his Sun Ra tribute group Magic City. (Chorney, on saxophone, is among many musical guests on “When the Time Comes.”)
“When the Time Comes” features a cover photo of throngs of Syrians displaced by that nation’s civil war, embellished with clouds and brilliant light and radiating sound waves. The image reflects the “complex time right now” that Myers said energizes the album.
“The album artwork in terms of imagery just really hits it on the head,” according to Bronz. “I kind of feel like there’s a swirling energy.”
Myers wants listeners to find their own meaning in “When the Time Comes,” but he was focusing on healing, celebration and reflection when he created the songs. “Musically the songwriting is very deep and emotional,” he said, “but it’s also uplifting at the same time.”
Myers has dealt with his own deep emotion in the past month, with the death of his father the day after his birthday. “We played one of our best shows. It turned into an amazing celebration,” he said of that Positive Pie gig, where he had a photo of his father on stage next to a candle as Barika performed.
“He never got to see a gig, but he was on stage that night,” Myers said of Philip Myers, who enjoyed Barika’s recorded music. “I’m not turning away from emotion right now. If the tears gotta flow, the tears gotta flow.”
Myers learned from his time on the road with Gordon and Rubblebucket that a band needs managers and agents to handle the business side of things. He hired both for Barika, which lets him focus on the music while the band gets ready for its first real album-support tour in its nine-year history.
Myers doesn’t want to talk about what he hopes the new album will do for Barika’s future. “In a way,” he said, “I guess the question is, ‘What do I want it to do for other people?’”
Contact Brent Hallenbeck at 660-1844 or bhallenbeck@freepressmedia.com. Follow Brent on Twitter atwww.twitter.com/BrentHallenbeck .
If you go
WHAT: Barika album-release party for “When the Time Comes,” with The Fritz
WHEN: 9 p.m. Feb. 17
WHERE: Nectar’s, Burlington
TICKETS: $5. 658-4771, www.liveatnectars.com