Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Samuel Barker. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Samuel, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

As cliche as it sounds, the latest Brightwire album is the most meaningful project I’ve completed at this point. I think as an artist, it is important to always feel your latest work is your most meaningful, but in this case, it goes beyond just the artistic expression.

Up until our last album’s release party, Brightwire has always been an acoustic duo or trio live. For the release of the last album, we recruited some of our friends to perform the album as it was recorded. Rebecca Stoll from our sister band, Grifters & Shills, stepped in to play bass and Joel Mora, who runs the Old Quarter and has played for numerous bands in the Houston area, stepped in to play drums. It was supposed to be a one-off deal, but then we did another full band show about 6 months later and it just kept going from there.

Now, nearly two years later, we are releasing a new album entitled Choosing Sides of Our Own Demise, which sees the full band lineup recording together for the first time. The creation of the album was so meaningful because this lineup we put together for a one time performance turned into an actual band that gelled enough to make a really solid album.

Additionally, our friends Mel Torres and Jewelz Melody from Shame on Me performed harmony vocals on the album’s opening track, John Stoll from Grifters & Shills mixed and mastered the album and our good friend/artist Daniel Torres created some breathtaking artwork. It was a labor of love that included folks we consider family.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

From my teenage years, I’ve always played music, which led to writing songs since no one else in the bands really wanted to do it. I started out in punk rock bands, then really got into the Alt. Country movement when I was in college via records my brother and our roommate would pick up. I’ve played in a lot of different bands here in the Houston area, which, fortunately, led to making lots of friends throughout the community.

I’ve been a partner in a record label, I’ve recorded albums for bands, I’ve done session work, I’ve played as a side musician and done about everything you can do on the business end of being a musician. I enjoy the work and having a task to complete. It can be exhausting and filled with self-doubt one moment and suddenly the most rewarding and life-affirming thing the next.

I’m proud of the fact that I’ve been able to keep playing and performing in various bands since the late-90s. The thing I would say I’m most proud of is having had bands that were not mine play songs I’ve written. Hearing someone else take one of your songs and reinterpret it in their own way is really something special.

I’m also pleased to have kept a musically open mind over the years. While Brightwire is an Alt. Country/Folk Rock/Cowpunk band, I also play guitar in a doom metal side project called Plowtooth, which has members of Brightwire and Grifters & Shills in it. It’s fun and rewarding to really stretch out musically.

Did I mention our podcast yet? Well, we started a podcast called Music in the Minor League a little over 3 years ago. We talk to independent bands and performers about their journeys as “minor league” musicians. We just started our 4th season!

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

I think a lot of people look at musicians and believe their driving force is to become famous. While I believe that is true for some folks, I’ve learned in my time that most people are just looking to create something that connects with other human beings. For most of us, music was what made us feel less alone as a child and/or understood in ways our peers and families couldn’t. This leads to a quest to create works that connect to other people and hopefully provides the same comfort to them that others’ music provided to you.

I used to think it was somewhat unique to really love creating art for the sake of creating art rather than searching for fame, but as our community of musical peers has grown, I’ve learned that more times than not, folks just want to create, perform and connect. We still live in a capitalist system so financial returns are necessary to support touring, recording and pressing albums, but the artistic drive is there regardless of the payout.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

In 2008, I had a band I’d spent a couple of years with break up, the indie record label I had been running with a friend was fizzling out and then I went through 3 consecutive weekends of insanity that started with seeing a wonderful Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers show. It was all downhill after the stage lights dimmed.

On the drive home from the show, I got a call from my mom letting me know that my grandmother had died. She was the family matriarch, which made it a blow to the family. A hurricane in the gulf (Gustav) made the funeral rushed and folks evacuating from Louisiana made I-10 virtually impossible to travel. It turned into a harrowing ordeal, that really turned out to be the easiest hurdle to jump in the end.

The following weekend, my house burned down…exactly one week before Hurricane Ike hit. I lost a great deal of my musical equipment, my home studio equipment was all burned or water-logged and all the equipment I could save was sent to my family’s storage shed on Bolivar Peninsula. The following weekend, anything I had saved was under 10 feet of water and lost to the ocean once Ike landed.

I was down to a single acoustic guitar, a smoke damaged bass guitar and a difficult decision to face: whether to give up or rebuild. I was approaching 30 and figured my time as a rocker had passed, but luckily, a fellow musician hit me up a couple of months later and asked if I knew a bass player that would be interested in joining his band. I grabbed that smoke damaged bass and went for it. That was the first step on a direct path to where I am today with Brightwire. I really was a coin-flip away from just giving up on being a musician, but that one message on MySpace from Huke Green changed the course of my creative life. It’s pretty wild to think about how easily none of this could have happened.

Sometimes being too determined or too dumb to give up can really lead to some life-changing experiences.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.brightwiremusic.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightwiremusic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightwiremusic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brightwiremusic
• Other: https://www.mimlpod.com

Image Credits
All photos by Ian Barker, John Stoll or Self.