Artist Bio: Del Barber - Easy Keeper (2019)

It took becoming a farmer for Del Barber to unearth his true calling as a songwriter. After over a decade of touring and releasing four albums on celebrated labels like Six Shooter and True North, the JUNO nominated Americana songwriter bought an old farm in western Manitoba and left Winnipeg. ”I thought I would end up a farmer who writes songs,” he says. “Instead I’m just a songwriter. It is the most freeing feeling I've had as an adult.” Easy Keeper, Barber’s first album made after leaving life in the city (out September 20 on Acronym Records), is a satisfyingly well-crafted exemplar of Americana storytelling, comprised of characters replete with life-giving flaws and humble load-bearing virtues, shuffling and pondering their way through what American Songwriter called, “small town longing and big town regret.”

Del Barber grew up in St. Norbert, Manitoba, the liminal space between rural and urban in the years just before, as he says, “Winnipeg had completely swallowed up the little French town.” This tension is what Barber began writing songs about more than a decade ago. “It’s still the current that runs through every song I pen,” he says. It was his mother’s work as a drug addiction counselor and his youth spent around people struggling through their second chances that helped Barber see songwriting as an exercise of empathy. “The rehab center taught me to listen,” he says. “I’ve always been inspired by small stories, modest moments that can suddenly be beautiful or hopeful if you're looking through the right lens. For me, songwriting is a way to reflect the world through other people’s stories and an attempt at understanding by making the mundane holy,” says Barber. As such, Easy Keeper builds on a collection of stories and characters Barber has been uncovering for years. 

Co-produced by Del Barber and JUNO-winner Grant Siemens (Tom Russell, Corb Lund), Easy Keeper pulls together a weighty cast of players that lends to the album’s prairie country sound. Featuring Geoff Hilhorst (The Deep Dark Woods, Leeroy Stagger) on piano & keys, Jeremy Risu (Red Moon Road) on accordion, Bill Western on pedal steel, Ivan Burke on drums, and vocals from Manitoba songwriters Haley Carr and Andrina Turenne (Chic Gamine) and helmed by Barber and longtime collaborators Siemens and Bernie Thiessen on guitars and bass, the album weaves its way seamlessly through cool, bluesy stories of domestic love and small town living (“Dancing In The Living Room,” “Everyday Life,” “No Easy Way Out”), catchy, swampy odes to human presence (“Patient Man,” “Lucky Prairie Stars”), and balladic short stories about people playing long games with their hand in life (“Louise,” “Juanita,” “Ronnie & Rose,” “Blood On The Sand”). 

Inspired by the virtues of rural Manitoba, Del Barber realized his aspiration to become an “easy keeper,” a reference to the title given to a farm animal that gives more than it takes. “It’s one who is selfless, the opposite of high-maintenance, which I realized I wasn't enough of. Moreover it is exactly how I wanted others to describe me,” he says. “Ultimately I think to become an Easy Keeper is to be someone who is quick to listen. I feel lucky as hell that I have been given a notion of who I am, where I’m from, and what I want to say. I’m 35 years old and now I feel like I finally know exactly what my job is. I’m just a songwriter.”