The Blacksheep Online | The Black Sheep Interviews: The Barefoot Truth

The Black Sheep Interviews: The Barefoot Truth

March 2, 2010 - 3:00 pm | Posted by: Brendan

The Barefoot Truth is an independent rock/folk band that is based out of Connecticut. The band just released a new album, Threads, and they'll be playing at the Canopy Club on March 11. In the meantime we had a chance to talk to lap guitarist Jay Driscoll. Jay was way cool, so buy some tickets and support these guys.

The Black Sheep: How'd you guys get together?

Jay Driscoll: Back in the summer of 2003 Will [the lead singer] and I met and we started playing music off the bat. Then we went to different colleges but kept in touch. The next summer we started playing some gigs and did a demo, people liked that so we pushed forward and did a whole album in 2005. Over the years we had some more friends join the band until we got to the five-piece group that we have now.

TBS: You have a new album out, Threads. What can someone who is unfamiliar with your work expect to hear on the album?

JD: I think they can expect to hear a melting pot of different influences. Some of us are influenced by jazz, some by rock, some by hip-hop and some acoustic singer-songwriter stuff. The concept behind Threads is the idea that this universal thread kind of connects everyone, and we come together to solve our own problems.

TBS: How does the creative process work?

JD: It usually starts musically with an idea that one, two or three of us may have. It starts as a progression of a few chords that convey an idea or a feeling. We get the whole music down. Will writes all the lyrics right now, but bounces ideas off of us. He's a really talented lyricist that can put in these thoughts.

TBS: Is it a fair statement to say that you have a message behind your music?

JD: Yeah, I'm glad you picked up on that. I think it's cool when someone enjoys a song, then when they look at a little closer, they see that there's some more depth to it. There's more to a song you already liked.

TBS: So how do you have a message behind your music without coming off as preachy?

JD: We don't spend much of our time at concerts preaching our beliefs, and none of our lyrics are "do this," "live your life like this..." You know? Don't tell people how to live, or how not to live.

TBS: You play lap guitar. What drew you to that, as opposed to a regular guitar?

JD: I still love acoustic guitar, but three years ago an uncle of mine who is a farmer and who is into country music showed me this country lap style on a Dobro guitar, and I was just horrible at it. After that I noticed slide guitar in a lot of music I like, like Ben Harper of John Butler Trio. A lot of them use a Weissenborn guitar, and I got one for myself too. That's what I play.

TBS: So for a music amateur, how is a slide guitar different from a regular guitar?

JD: A lap steel guitar has the ability to slide between notes, but a regular guitar has only so many notes to hit. It's two completely different styles. The lap steel guitar sounds more like a singer's voice, it's more emotional.

TBS: Are you excited about your upcoming tour?

JD: Yeah. For us, we've never really toured outside of the northeast. We've gone as far west as Ohio by ourselves, but when we were touring with Pete Francis from Dispatch we went out to Colorado. This is our first time kind of connecting all the dots, so we have no idea what to expect.

TBS: As a small up-and-coming band, what is your stance on file sharing?

JD: You know, any time a person gets our music for free they're that much more likely to come out and see us live or buy a CD or tell friends, so as an independent band we're supportive of people sharing files. I think, though, that it's important for people to understand that musicians make a living off of people buying their product.

TBS: Tell me about the best prank you've ever pulled.

JD: Oh, we've done some good ones. The best one, though, one of my friends was going to the bathroom [pooping]. He sat down on the toilet and pooped and then I freaked out telling him that the toilet doesn't flush and it will overflow. Without getting too graphic, we had him put on some rubber gloves and take everything out of the toilet before flushing it.