Timber and Steel

Image Courtesy of Ado Barker

Ado Barker is a name that has become synonymous with The National Folk Festival over the years thanks in no small part to his fiddle skills with Trad stars Trouble in the Kitchen. Last year Barker launched his solo album Between Up and Down which he is performing at this year’s National along with fellow Trouble bandmate Ben Stephenson on guitar and bouzouki. We managed to catch Ado Barker as he was preparing to head to Canberra this weekend to chat about the festival, his spiritual home in the Session Bar and what’s happening with Trouble in the Kitchen.

Evan Hughes: You’re performing at the National Folk Festival this weekend. Are you excited about this year’s National?
Ado Barker: Actually in a way I’m more excited than I have been for a while. In the last two years I finally bit the bullet and got a proper job so I’m not coming off a full summer of weekend after weekend heading into this National. It’s a bit of a novelty.
EH: So you’ll be nice and relaxed and ready to hit the festival as a performer and a punter.
AB: That’s it. I’m well and truly up for it.
EH: I think I first saw you with Trouble in the Kitchen in 1999 at the National Folk Festival. You’ve been at the National almost every year since so you must feel a special connection to the festival.
AB: It’s definitely true. It’s our home festival first of all because as far as Trouble went we were all from Canberra – it was the weekend on our doorstop. And in a more spiritual way as well it’s just always had that feeling, that connection to the grassroots which a lot of the [other] festivals have lost to some extent. You head up there Thursday night, you’re back in the Session Bar and it’s like you never left. It’s the same as it was last year and the the year before and ten years before that. It’s the best meeting point for all the people around the traps for people who play our kind of music. The only one I’ve missed since I was 15 was one year when I was overseas so I’ve spent a fair bit of my life in that session bar [laughs].
EH: Obviously you’ve always got your official gigs but I would say the Session Bar is your spiritual home. I think I’ve seen you there more than I’ve seen you on stage.
AB: Yeah, it’s like the community centre. It’s just pure chaos. You can’t describe it. I’ve had mates that have come up and heard about it for years – some just take one taste and love it and some are horrified by it and never come back [laughs]. The crew of us that go year in year out, it’s just in our bones. You’ve just got to have a special pair of ears to carve out a corner in there and play but somehow it just works.
EH: And what makes the Session Bar and the National in general so good is that any average musician can find themselves playing alongside someone like yourself in the same place. There’s no real division between the punters and the musicians.
AB: It’s such a special aspect of the festival. For myself, I sort of had a few tunes I’d learned out of a book the first time I went to the National as a youngster and that full immersion that you can get in the bar was huge for me. That feeling that you can find yourself caught up in the wave. The lines are blurred between who’s on stage and who isn’t which is the way it should be.
EH: Last year you launched your solo album Between Up and Down – well I say solo album but really it was a duo between yourself and bouzouki player Ruairi McGorman.
AB: It’s a funny convention with the trad scene – you say “solo” but they’re never solo albums. Last year Ruairi had booked some version of a Contiki tour in New Zealand and he got the dates wrong so he actually arrived in Canberra in time for the festival.
EH: So you actually launched the album at the festival last year.
AB: Yeah I did. I did a Melbourne launch and a Sydney launch just before it and then there was a guerilla launch [at the National]. The album wasn’t done in time for the application but I was lucky enough to get on and do the launch in the wine bar last year. I guess it’s one of the other reasons I’m so excited about the festival this year as it’s the first National I’ve done in this kind of format with just the fiddle out front. I’m playing this year with Beno [Stephenson], who obviously I’ve played a lot of music with over the years, but not in that kind of form – as a duo with Beno accompanying.
EH: What made you want to get away from the band sound and try and the solo thing with just yourself and an accompanist?
AB: It’s really about freedom. Part of the reason Trouble had such an appeal is that it always had a sense of chaos about it – but part of the reason we could throw it out there and make the edges seem chaotic was because it had such a solid, highly arranged core. Doing the solo stuff it really is just tearing it back to just spontaneity. I think in that sense it’s closer to the music that I feel best expresses myself. There’s no accident that the album happened when it did and that’s really because Ruairi was an accompanist who could really just release the freedom of the tunes which is a really rare thing. I suppose when I’m performing like this it’s just a slightly different kind of zone – I’ve got an idea of what we’re going to do when I get up but it’s not really set. Playing with Beno he’ll definitely have to ride the changes because it’ll all change under his feel. Audiences really respond to that as well because they can tell when something is just a little bit on the edge.
EH: Are you going to be singing during your set or is it just going to be instrumental?
AB: Yeah – there’s a long standing and unrealised project to really push into the songs more but I just haven’t found my head for it yet. There’s a couple of songs recorded on the album and over the years Beno and I have found our way around a few songs through the band so we might draw on a couple of those older ones as well.
EH: So there’ll be a bit of Trouble material in your show?
AB: There might be the odd song from the Trouble repertoire. The solo album has a lot of classic fiddle tunes on it which crosses into the Trouble repertoire because we had such a grounding in the tradition in the band.
EH: And what’s happening with Trouble in the Kitchen? Are you guys still playing together? I saw you a couple of years ago at the National playing without Kate Burke…
AB: We haven’t really developed an official line on it but I think for all four of us there’s been a lot of life changes in the last two and a half years that I guess have conspired to put the band on the back burner.
EH: You’ve been playing together for so long it makes sense that you all have other projects and a lot of other stuff going on that you need to concentrate on.
AB: It’s been thirteen years pretty solid which is an amazing time together. The musical and personal bonds you form in that time are pretty profound. Other than Joe [Ferguson] maybe, who’s the most obsessed about music out of any of us, the rest of us were searching for a bit more balance as well, whether that’s in terms of day jobs or kids or all those other human needs. I don’t think Joe has the usual human needs, just music [laughs].
EH: Are we likely to see you in any other guises at the festival or is it just as the duo with Ben Stephenson?
AB: This year it’s just myself and Beno. There was another project in the works which was a tribute for a friend of ours named Tommy Carty who’s quite ill but unfortunately the album, for various reasons, hasn’t come together yet – maybe that will be for the National next year. So this year it’ll be the slots I’m doing with Beno and then clearing the decks for the Session Bar.
EH: Excellent! Well good luck with the National and thanks for chatting with us today.
AB: No worries at all! See you there.

Check out Ado Barker’s recent St Patrick’s Day playist for Timber and Steel here.