Brad Barr’s latest album The Winter Mission is an unpredictable sonic journey

During the start of the pandemic, as many musicians were forced to isolate, cut their losses and put their careers on hold, Brad Barr (of the folk/delta blues band the Barr Brothers) found himself in a position many craved: he had a project. Not just any project, but a commissioned project for New York’s off-Broadway All For One Theater. 

The theatre’s founder, Michael Wolk, was a fan of Barr’s first solo instrumental album from 2008, The Fall Apartment, and wanted a similar body of work he could use on and off stage. At first, Barr treated the project pretty casually, as any other hired gig, and sent a few musical examples to Wolk. Soon he discovered this was going to be unlike any other commission he had ever worked on. 

“So I send him some music and ask, ‘Is this what you’re thinking’? I guess I was looking for some sort of approval and path to take it,” says Barr as he makes an espresso in his Montreal home. “And he tells me, ‘Let me be clear, there is no approval. This is for you to explore and for you to feel free.’”

The response kind of stopped Barr in his tracks and puzzled him. 

“I realized this guy was a real fan and just wanted to inspire me to write new music. He also told me I would retain all the rights to the music, so I decided to make an album,” Barr says. 

This commission eventually turned into Barr’s second solo instrumental album, The Winter Mission, a truly personal and insular journey for him over the course of two years. He started from scratch, shut out a lot of musical inspirations he used in the past, and knew from jump street that he wanted no overdubbing and the album to feel like one player, playing in a single room.

“For literally thousands of years, that’s how we experienced music,” he says. “It was one person with an instrument in a room. I started to think that it’s really important to acknowledge that, that kind of lost art. I think it’s important for musicians to get to know themselves that way, too.”

For the actual composing and The Winter Mission playing sessions, Barr took a more omniscient, bird-in-the-sky approach.

“I wanted to answer the question ‘What do I want to hear myself play?’ If I was watching myself in concert, what should it sound like?”

The result is a hypnotic, raw and unpredictable sonic journey, separate from anything Barr has ever done. There’s moments of stillness, and an unprocessed intimacy in the strumming and melodies from his guitar. There are also moments of stark alien distortion, mixed in with soft tremolo-y guitar. And throughout all of it, an underlying theme is present. The number 216. Many of the songs on The Winter Mission, “Untouchable Number,” “Cleveland, Ohio,” “Ancient Calendars,” “Magic Square,” “Prayer Beads,” are all references to the numerical, cultural and mystical significance of 216. But the song that speaks of Barr’s origins with 216 is the second track on The Winter Mission, “Your Dad’s Awake.” 

“So it was me and seven friends of mine just really beaming on acid in my friend’s basement. So we’re having an acid trip and someone says ‘Your dad’s awake. It’s 2:16 and you dad’s awake,” Barr says. 

Little did he know that 216 would follow him and seep into other parts of his life.  

“It’s sort of been a part of a shared mythology with a certain group of friends of mine when we were teenagers and just sort of carried through my life,” Barr says. “When I went to look for something personal to unify the music, that number sort of had this mystical property to it and seemed like a way to tie it all together.” ■

This article originally appeared in the February 2022 issue of Cult MTL. 

For more on Brad Barr and The Winter Mission, please click here.

---

For more Montreal music coverage, please visit the Music section.