How musician Casey Barnes has seized the moment in isolation
Many musicians are moving their album releases to avoid coronavirus confusion. Aussie country singer Casey Barnes has found it’s the perfect time to release his most important record.
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Gold Coast country singer Casey Barnes is adapting to releasing the most important album of his career in the midst of a pandemic that’s crippled the live music industry.
The national tour to promote his new album, Town Of A Million Dreams, has been rescheduled but Barnes decided not to bump the album’s release date.
“We had a lot of momentum building, I’ve just had my first No. 1 on country radio with Sparks Fly,” Barnes says. “Interestingly enough there’s an opening in the market now because so many people have moved their releases. We’re actually getting some amazing support where normally you’d be fighting to get attention from all these huge acts.”
Like most musicians Barnesy has had to get creative and move his live performances online.
“It was a kick in the guts, we should be on the road now,” Barnes says. “80 to 90-per cent of our income comes from performing live, it’s a big loss. We’ve rescheduled the tour, which is one positive, hopefully by September/October smaller venues will have live music again. It feels like the smaller venues will be the first to come back, the festival and bigger venues will be later which is a bummer.
“So I’ve tried to get creative online, doing twice weekly live stream events. They started small and they’ve grown, people are looking forward to them, we’ve upped the quality of the production behind them.
“One of our friends on the Gold Coast owns an event company called Dream Weavers and he’s got this huge warehouse of equipment he’d usually use on events that can’t happen. So he’s let me use this incredible space with an LED screen and huge cameras so we’re churning those live streams out and giving people a break from reality for an hour. It’s not quite the same as playing in person, but you get to connect and interact with people, see how they’re getting on.”
For Barnes, this fifth album arrives as everything in his career aligns. Again made with Melbourne production team MSquared (including Michael Paynter) he’s now managed by industry icon Michael Chugg. Morgan Evans has opened doors for Australian country acts not only internationally, but on local commercial radio.
“They wouldn’t be playing country on Top 40 radio if people weren’t enjoying it,” Barnes says. “And I think with what we’re going through now it’s like we’ve stepped into a time machine and gone back to the days of when people had time to listen to an album from cover to cover, which is good because I’ve put a lot of heart and soul into this record.”
He may have just released a new album, but Barnes is already writing new material.
“When you take away the commercial aspect, we can’t play live, we’re not earning any money, you remember why you picked up a guitar as a kid. You’re getting creative, you’re writing new songs. It’ll be interesting to see the music that comes out of this period from all kinds of genres.
“And once we can play live again, no artist will ever take playing live in front of people for granted again. We’re missing it so much. You can imagine those first shows back, they will be full of magic moments.”
Town Of A Million Dreams is out now
