Getting to Know… String Bone | Interview 🎤

For the 128^th interview on The Musical Hype, we chat it up with Barry James Payne, the brainchild of the Canadian Americana band, String Bone.

“We actually go into the audience and physically take their socks off by brute force. They are quite amused that we do this, but then we donate them all to charity, cause you know, people need their socks.” Sigh, the responses to some of the questions asked on our Getting to Know… series on The Musical Hype just get more and more colorful.  After 127 previous interviews, you’d think you’ve heard it all, and then String Bone keeps the element of surprise alive and well on interview #128.  Based on the excerpted answer to the first question, well, you can tell that the Canadian Americana/Roots/Country collective – the brainchild of Barry James Payne – is incredibly intriguing.  We’d have it no other way.  So, without further ado, here is Getting to Know… String Bone: Interview #128!

Let’s get this started off right. For those who may not be familiar with String Bone, what would you say makes your band distinct or unique? How do you rock the audience’s socks off?

We actually go into the audience and physically take their socks off by brute force. They are quite amused that we do this, but then we donate them all to charity, cause you know, people need their socks. Let’s see, the only thing unique is that we play different songs than everyone else. Unless of course someone got hold of our set-list and ripped off our sound. But it’s a pretty stripped-down sound live – acoustic guitar, pedal steel, bass, maybe fiddle and drums if you’re lucky. Seriously though, we are a bit of a chill alt-folk/alt-country/Americana band, so rocking socks off might be done in a more subtle way with some compelling story-telling, funny stories that led to songs, maybe some good up-tempo gospel romp by Mahalia Jackson or some tearjerkers that make people tear-up. It’s always good to get emotional at a show.

Great answer – incredibly intriguing! Okay, let’s explore some juicy backstories. How did String Bone form and what were some of the goals or the visions you had as a band early on?

Well, as a solo artist, I’m not fond of playing solo, so I hire different musicians for different recordings, gigs and tours. It just keeps it simpler that way with regard to decision making and keeps the music always fresh and challenging. The vision was to write songs from the heart, from my life’s experiences using my breadth of musical influences and get the best players I could to perform them in the studio and live. So unfortunately, no juicy stories here. Pretty boring I know.

Let’s talk more about goals. Have your goals or your perspectives changed since first starting out? What do your aspirations or goals look like now?

Things change every week it seems with the new online eco-system. There is so much to keep on top of now, it’s kinda crazy, but necessary. This past year, I went from being an almost strictly organic live playing musician to doing everything online. My Spotify profile has grown exponentially since the beginning of the year when I had less than 5,000 streams to now getting close to 100,000 in 10 months. I’m very happy about this growth, but it still pays shit. Haha! But what can you do?

We are artists, so we just keep creating and finding ways to reach our audience. We all know they are out there, it’s just about connecting up with them. We also know not everybody is going to like what we do and that’s okay. When I started to focus on online platforms as a medium for my music, I also discovered so many incredible, unknown artists and we’ve all connected with each other and are sharing info and supporting each other – from the US, Germany, Spain, Italy, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia. It’s absolutely amazing and very encouraging. We are all the same all over the world. Different cultures, and we just have different ways of dressing and preparing food and a different language.

Aside from that, everything else is the same. We are all just people trying to get through life. We all want to find love. We all want to find happiness, a roof over our heads and comfort in our friends and family. And we all want to hear a good song. Many times a day! Haha! So everywhere people are drawn to making music and it’s just so refreshing to be talking to people all over the world who are striving for the same things. To write a good song with meaning that has lasting connection to people everywhere. So, the online world is a huge shift for us older musicians and frankly sometimes I feel like a fish out of water, but I do have a ton of young fans out there who contact me every single day and that has changed my life. From Germany to Brazil, to Turkey, to India, Finland, Spain, just all over the world.

Musically, I’ve tried to keep most of what I do in an Americana style, but I’ve recently met and have been collaborating with a young electronic producer by the name of Nathan McKay. To me he is like the Frank Zappa of Electronica in Canada. He’s just so zany with his creations. And I love him for that. I’ve roped him in a little bit but when we wrote our first song, it was a 6 and half minute folk-dance epic. It’s called “Two Stars Collide.” Later we decided to strip it back to a 4-minute folk-pop song taking out all of the beats and samples and use the acoustic instruments I played on it, piano and guitar. It’s the first song I’ve written on piano in about 20 plus years. But we just felt it had this really great up-tempo bounce to it. So that’s coming out soon.

Everybody is influenced by somebody else. Who would you consider some of your biggest musical influences and how are they influential?

I have been influenced by so many different styles of music over the years, from bluegrass to punk and back again. I mean it’s hard to pinpoint, but some of my biggest influences are probably from my earlier days listening to songwriters the likes of Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Townes Van Zant and Willie P Bennett who all had a great way with words. Their lyrics are just so good. I’ve listened to all the classic rock bands of the past 50 years from the Stones to the Sex Pistols and the Clash to Nirvana. My latest inspirations and the focus of my style over the past 14 years since this project started has been artists like Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, Blue Rodeo, Callexico and to some degree The Civil Wars and Hozier. I love all of their approaches to songwriting.

Ah, the fun stuff. What’s your craziest tour story or the wackiest thing that’s happened during a performance? Feel free to be creative.

I was playing a festival outside of London and one of the workshops I was scheduled to play was with Rik Emmett. Now if you’re from Canada, you would know that he is the leader and guitarist of one of the most popular 70s Prog-rock bands to come out of Canada called Triumph. And he is such a wicked guitar player. He also has this trio called Trifecta with Latin/Jazz guitarists Pavlo and Oscar Lopez who are both virtuosos. I mean all three of them are. So, Trifecta was the headliner that night and the afternoon workshop was with Rik Emmett, the singer in Rant Maggie Rant, Glen Dias, and myself.

Well, Glen wasn’t aware of the workshop and had made other plans that day and so canceled last minute. As I approached the workshop stage, up walks Rik with his two Trifecta bandmates. I thought they were coming to watch the workshop, but Rik had organized for them to join the two of us on stage. Well, didn’t we have a blast for an hour and a half playing songs. I would play a song and then they would play a song and we went back and forth like that for 90 minutes. While I had the best seat in the house when they were playing, I had the best guitarists in Canada riffing on my songs when I was playing. They all took turns doing killer solos and we just had a blast laughing and jamming. It has to be the most memorable impromptu “public” jam and song circle I’ve ever played. And the photos prove it!! Haha!

Up until this point in your career, what would you describe as your favorite song you’ve recorded or performed live? What makes that song special?

There are two and they both involve one of my best musical friends in this world, Ginger St. James. Ginger and I go back to 2008. She is an artist first and foremost, but she had been booking this club in Burlington, just outside of Toronto and booked me in for a Saturday night. We hadn’t met until that night and I only knew her and her music from what I could find online. During soundcheck, I asked her if she’d like to sing Radiohead’s “Black Star” with me. She agreed and during the show, we were just wailing, and the musical connection was like nothing I had ever experienced. We just pushed each other on throughout the song and it was very tender and emotional and it was a really special moment. We have sung it together several times whenever we are playing in the same vicinity and have the opportunity. We vowed to record it and that happened almost 10 years later, and it is on my Love & Highways album.

The other song is called “Where Do You Go,” which tops my Spotify playlist right now with about 20,000 streams. I brought this idea of a song to a session with Ginger and we completed it together and worked out the harmonies and unfortunately, when I was recording this song for my record Ginger was on tour out West. But, fortunately for me, Sarah Jane Scouten was in the area at the time and I begged her to come and do the harmonies and she just nails it. The song is getting a lot of love around the world right now during these crazy times, what with recent civil wars, the refugee crisis and currently the pandemic that we’ve been experiencing lately. It’s a song about displacement. Having nowhere to go. It has struck a chord in many people and I think that is a good thing. Anytime a song makes people feel grateful for what they have and to rethink how they feel about others, I think I’ve done my job.

Is there anything else awesome, cool, or left of center the world should know about you? Secret talents or surprising tidbits?

Oh, I don’t know. I hitchhiked across Canada solo at the age of 17. That was fun and weird. Some good stories there. Then did it again two years later with my girlfriend. Back and forth about a half dozen times. Canada is such an amazingly vast country with so many different landscapes and the most beautiful scenery I think anywhere on the planet. I’ve visited at least 100 or more cities and towns across Canada.

Closing things out, what are you currently working on, promoting that you can share with us or want us to know about? We love secrets, but there’s no pressure.

As mentioned earlier, I am collaborating with a young producer by the name of Nathan McKay. We have three singles coming out in succession starting Oct.16th, the 23rd and 30th. The song is called “Two Stars Collide” and the first mix is in a folk-pop vein, indie-pop, whatever you want to call it. Singer-songwriter with an infectious piano riff. The second single is a dance-mix, same song, but this is the epic six-and-a-half-minute dance version that is Nathan’s specialty. And finally, I got my bandmates to grunge it up with electric guitars, drums and pedal steel and so we’ll have a very gritty alt-country version. We will then have two more songs added and that will make up an EP of 5 songs between now and Feb/March 2021.

Also, being recorded simultaneously is a project with a producer out of Las Vegas, an old friend I’ve known for eons. We are recording a bunch of covers that first inspired me to pursue music as a career. A lot of older songs, real classics that not a lot of people will be aware of especially younger audiences. But they are really good songs that tell a great story or have great sentiment. It’ll definitely be a chill easy listening folkier vibe.

Thank you so much for sharing taking the time to answer these questions, and best of luck moving forward.

Thank you so much for having me.

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Photo Credits: String Bone, Brent Faulkner, The Musical Hype, Rob Swyrd Photography; made by https://www.flaticon.com/authors/freepik (Freepik)