Teen-Beat. Currituck Co.

Currituck Co. is Kevin Barker and friends. He plays in the indie band Aden, as well as helping out with a cavalcade of other musical acts including Antony and the Johnsons, The Essex Green, Hercules and Love Affair, The Ladybug Transistor, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver.

RELATED ARTISTS

ADEN

ANTONY AND THE JOHNSONS

JOANNA NEWSOM

VASHTI BUNYAN

VETIVER

UNREST Teen-Beat 26th Anniversary performances

Kevin
Photo by [unknown]
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KEVIN BARKER
You and Me
vinyl L.P. jacket front

ALSO A MEMBER

Otto Hauser

GUEST PLAYERS

Terrence J. Black,

Eddie Carlson,

Jeremy Challender,

Joe Dolce,

Matt Everett,

Mark Greenberg,

Fern Knight,

Bree Van Reyk,

Margie Wienk,

Christopher M. Sienko,

Ruth E. Welte

FILM

WHERE IS MY FRIEND?

Performed live at the Unamplified BBQ in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, on May 8, 2005.

INTERVIEW

Kevin interviewed on the television programme Bomb Sessions, 2010.

BIOGRAPHY

Unpacking My Library is the first country rock album in 30 years. That is, if the point of country rock isn't for rockers to put on funny accents and pretend to be drunk and bittersweet, but to try and make something new out of those beautiful alien worlds locked away in dead white people's records. Currituck County don't sing one word about booze, but their songs are lit by the shining notes of steel-stringed guitars and the lightning rhythms of banjos so fast they drone. And as gentle and funny as it is, Unpacking My Library is dark, sometimes almost black, with a sense of lost time and impossible things. But the very loneliest moments of a song like "Henry" are detonated with insane pop hooks and a mesmerizing Bluegrass riff--as indulgently sweet as a hard cry, without any stains.

Currituck County's mentors--John Fahey, Bert Jansch, The Byrds --were collectors who worked alchemy with traditional music. For them, tradition wasn't sterile or cute. It was a seductive force, something at once homespun and exotic that could take you to a universe richer and deeper than ours, or just get you hopelessly lost. It's no accident that Fahey--the mad record collector who used his thousands of lost 78's to invent his own guitar style--wrote an autobiography called How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life. Yet in Currituck County's hands this sad, faraway music feels close-up and welcoming.

Kevin Barker's vocals have a conversational intimacy you could compare to Elliot Smith or Townes Van Zandt; on songs like "Concrete" and "Nightmares" he's alternatingly ghostly and sweet. The spare, deadpan voice contrasts starkly with the sumptuousness of his music, playful arrangements flawlessly produced and backed up by Mark Greenberg (the Coctails, Archer Prewitt). But what makes Unpacking My Library completely distinctive is the guitar. It's played by Kevin Barker, who contributes Television-esque melodies to Jeff Gramm's dry, thoughtful songwriting in Aden. Here it's something entirely new: British folk hooks out of Bridget St. John or Nick Drake; fluid, hypnotic fingerpicking so delicate you'd be afraid it would blow away, til you hear the deliberate slownesses, jarring overlaps and bright chimes. Currituck County aren't bogged down by their influences--they turn a deep sense of what's come before them into something private and surreal that's also accessible and beautiful.

(Biography for Teen-Beat 336)

ANOTHER BIOGRAPHY

Currituck Co. is one Mr. Kevin W. Barker of New York City. An ex-resident of Washington DC, he's been kicking around that good city's underground rock scene for a good half-decade or more, and indeed has a couple of discs on the estimable Teen-Beat label to show for it (a 2002 Currituck Co. CD and one from his "rock band" Aden). But I digress...

Currituck Co., however, is a different kettle of fish to any kind of standard "rock" fare or the type of upwardly-mobile pop usually associated with Teen-Beat. Currituck Co. is just Kevin, his guitar and a smattering of assorted instruments. With a record collection that undoubtedly contains a few titles on the Topic, Folkways and Takoma labels, Mr. Barker creates an awesome world of sound that thankfully avoids the pitfalls of being cute, overbearing, whitebread or simply the Sounds Of A Man With A Cool Record Collection. The music of Currituck Co. is subtle, haunting, intricate and deeply melodic.

With a transatlantic sound that brings together both UK and American folk influences, Currituck Co.'s Ghost Man On First CD is a unique blend of sonics that occasionally brings to mind an imaginary meeting of Bert Jansch and Robbie Basho, the mixture of covers and originals is a mesmerising stew. There's the traditional banjo/vocal two-step of "I Truly Understand," Jansch's "Silly Woman" and Nina Simone's "Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Hair" (reworked as the folk-raga piece "A Raga Called Nina") as well as Barker originals like "Requiem for John Fahey", the astounding "A Raga Called Pat Cohn", which blends acoustic guitar with tablas and Silvertone air organ to hallucinatory effect, and the fearsome "March of the People Who Do Not Know You", an electric guitar freakout bound (and likely aimed) to upset folk-purist dullards everywhere.

With a busy show schedule alongside such kindred spirits from the East Coast Out-Folk scene as Devandra Bernhardt, Animal Collective, Tower Recordings and Fursaxa, previous material on respected labels like Troubleman Unlimited and Teen Beat and raves from the undie press, Lexicon Devil is proud, pleased and excited to announce the release of Currituck Co.'s Ghost Man on First CD to anyone who'll listen.

- Dave Lang, Lexicon Devil

DISCOGRAPHY

SINGLES

Currituck County
Punaluu

ALBUMS

Long Playing Record Album
Unpacking My Library
Ghost Man on First
Sleepwalks in the Garden of the Deadroom
Ghost Man on Second

COMPILATIONS

Words Worn Down to Nothing
Golden Apples of the Sun
2001 Teenbeat Sampler
Troubleman Mix-Tape
2002 Teenbeat Sampler
Invited to Dinner
Hand/Eye
2003 Teenbeat Sampler
Protect Our Handshake
2004 Teenbeat Sampler
Comes With A Smile Vol.9
Teen-Beat 20th Commemorative
The Wire Tapper 13
Teen-Beat Subscribers' CD, 2003
Independent Innovative Creative
I Am the Resurrection: A Tribute to John Fahey

ALSO

Teen-Beat's 17th Anniversary
Teen-Beat's 18th Anniversary
Teen-Beat's 19th Anniversary
UNREST: Teen-Beat 26th Anniversary

Aden
Kevin Barker

SONGS

A Raga Called Nina
A Raga Called Pat Cohn
Antichrist
The Ark
The Collision
Concrete
Dedication: Fred Neil
Did I See You
Disembark
Don't the C Look Wide & Deep
Don't the Road Look Rough & Rocky
8 P.M. on a Friday
Embark
Evening Raga
Father's Day
Hang Your Coat
Henry
I Truly Understand
I Went Outside Today
In Turn Returns
Intertwining Flowers
Intertwining Hands
Introduction
Let It Rain
Lie Beside Me
Little Drummer Boy
The Mandolin Man and His Secret
The March of the People Who Do Not Know You
Medley: John Hurt Shiva Shankarah
My Home
Nightmares Are the Sounds
Now You're Leaving
Old Song
One Too Many Comforts
Outroduction
Paid for Grace
Paris
Prelude
Punaluu
Requiem for John Fahey
Run Away From the Sun
Sailing
Silly Woman
Sleepwalking I
Sleepwalking II
Space Cruisin'
Space Cruisin' Boogie (Remix)
Staynor Family Breakdown
Texas
The Tropics of Cancer
Variations on 'Colours'
Where Is My Friend?
Wisdom of the Weeks
Your Sway

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