A Conversation with Scott Barkan – HuffPost 10.22.14

Galen Hawthorne: Your website says you’re an indie/folk/roots/jazz/blues/avant/rock guitarist and songwriter from New York. Help me sort out what all that means and tell me how it happened to you.

Scott Barkan: Well, I’ve always been a songwriter ever since I started playing guitar when I was 10, but as I progressed on the instrument I got more deeply into jazz and experimental guitar music, especially during and just after college. I went through a long period of only playing weird, angular, improvised, instrumental guitar music, and only somewhat recently have I come back to focusing on songwriting and getting more deeply into the acoustic guitar. These days I’m trying to make it all work together.

GH: You’re currently touring with Marian Call, but fill us in on what your musical life is like in New York. What do you play and where?

SB: When I’m not on the road with Marian, or one of the other artists I play with, I gig around NY at a wide variety of clubs & bars. These days I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my own thing but still do quite a bit of sideman gigs. Gigs where I’m playing my own music have become pretty evenly split between solo acoustic shows and electric trio shows. Both hold different challenges, I’ve really had to rework my approach to the acoustic guitar to be able to support myself and improvise when playing solo, whereas playing electric in a trio format is what I’ve always done, so that’s super comfortable for me. I love the intimacy that playing solo gigs offers, but the trio allows me to really cut loose and experiment with the improvisational aspects of the tunes. This winter I recorded and released two tandem live records, one called “solo/acoustic/live” and one called “trio/electric/live,” with the intention of highlighting the two different approaches to the music.

GH: Give us a little bit of your history with Marian. You said at the concert you’ve played with her for six years?

SB: Yeah, we’ve been at it a long time! We famously met through Craigslist when I was living in LA. She claims I was the only person who answered her call for guitarists in complete sentences, and that’s what got me the gig.

GH: Is it challenging, coming back to the material after a year apart?

SB: Actually, we’ve played together so much now that it’s pretty natural feeling. What’s interesting is seeing how things change when you come back to them after a long time off. Marian is very generous with what she allows me to get away with in my interpretations of her music. I try to keep things fresh by changing it up as much as possible within the framework of the tunes, but she also loves to improvise which is why I think we work together so well.

GH: What kind of rehearsal process did you guys have if any?

SB: Honestly, I’m reluctant to admit we hardly rehearse at all. Marian always has charts for everything, so if there is something new she’ll just hand me a chart and we’ll go for it. More often than not we will just try new tunes out for the first time at a gig with no prior rehearsal. It pretty much always works out fine.

GH: How much of the tour will you play?

SB: I’m on this run for about a month.

GH: What have you been most excited for on this tour?

SB: Well, this year we haven’t played together nearly as much as in recent years, just due to scheduling mostly, so I’m just excited to be able to fit this run in!

GH: What has been or will be a challenge on this tour?

SB: We are just getting started so so far everything has been pretty smooth!

GH: Do you have any advice for new artists?

SB: I don’t know how qualified I am to give career advice, but the best thing I can say is focus on being awesome at whatever you’re doing and getting in front of people to do it often. I see so many young artists focusing on social media and marketing and missing the fundamentals of just being great at what you’re doing first and foremost. If you can deliver the goods in a live setting, get people to stop eating and talking and turn their heads to check out what you’re doing, the rest will come.

GH: What’s in your future? Any big projects planned? Maybe a solo or trio tour? What’s the big dream for Scott Barkan?

SB: I’m about halfway through writing material for a new record, which I hope to record in the spring, and I always have tours on the horizon and gigs around NYC. You can see what’s going on at http://www.scottbarkanmusic.com. The big dream really is to just keep doing what I’m doing. I’ve got a bit of momentum now and hopefully that will just keep building!