WORDS / KODY FORD

Barrett Baber sat in a pizza place in McCain mall surrounded by the buzz of shopping and commerce, accompanied by a group of Fayetteville High School students, the debate team that he coaches, who were on a trip to a competition in Cabot.  Barrett had been anticipating the big reveal since this all began a few weeks before.  He checked his email, refreshed his browser, but came up with nothing new.  And then he refreshed it one last time.  That’s when it all changed for him.

Barrett Baber—singer/songwriter, father, husband, educator—was going to play a party for the Grammys.

“It was really special that I was with [my students] when I found out,” Barrett said. “They really got behind me and helped make it happen.”

What happened goes like this…

For years, Barrett paid his dues by playing dive bars, frat parties, wherever he could get a gig.  He released five albums and garnered a fan base scattered across the United States with a heavy focus here in Arkansas.  Then one day, his high school friend and current fan Monica Reynolds sent him a message on Facebook suggesting he enter a contest to play a party at the Grammys sponsored by CBS and Microsoft Surface.  She even offered to submit a video for him and he obliged.  A little time passed and then CBS began reaching out to him.  He crawled his way out of obscurity into the top 40 contestants.  Then the fan voting began and that’s when things began to take off.

“After a few days I realized that we could maybe win this if we got after it and people got behind it,” Barrett said. “Once I got in second place people realized they could win this thing for a guy from Arkansas.”

Monica entered Barrett’s video for “Drop Dead Redhead,” a song from his most recent release Battlefield Us. It differs from the album version since it was an acoustic promo filmed at Haxpon Road Studios in Bentonville to promote the record. The fans were allowed to vote up to 49 times for an artist each day. What began with Barrett’s students and friends quickly spread throughout northwest Arkansas and beyond via social media. After finding out that he had won, Barrett went out on Dickson Street and had strangers stopping him and saying that they had voted for him everyday.

“It’s really humbling to know that people give a crap about you,” he joked. “As long as you’re a native from Arkansas they’ll get behind you. That’s really special about the place we live and the people that live here.”

Barrett and his band, Aaron Schauer (keyboards), Greg Guillot (bass) and Migel Gamboa (drums) (all of whom play in the popular group Boom Kinetic), will perform at the pre-Grammy party at Club Nokia, next to the Staples Center in Los Angeles. They will play a 40-minute set of original tunes before headliners The Neighbourhood.

I spoke with Barrett shortly after he arrived at his hotel room at the Westin Bonaventure in downtown Los Angeles. “I’m pretty sure it’s the same hotel from True Lies where Schwarzenegger rides a horse into the elevator,” he said over the phone.  It’s crazy to be here walking around this amazing hotel, seeing the big city and skyscrapers and thinking, ‘Wow we’re here to be musicians, not just tourists.’ It’s an amazing moment to be driving through streets of L.A. as a working musician.”

The band had a limo waiting on them when the arrived at LAX on Sunday afternoon. On Monday they will shoot promos at TV City for CBS and Microsoft Surface. Then they’ll begin rehearsals. Barrett’s wife Sarah will join him before the big show on Thursday. He hopes they get to hang around and catch the Grammys on Sunday, but he’s not sure yet.

He said, “This feels special and big and important. It’s cool for a band like us and an artist like me who’s played a lot of dives and grinding gigs all over Arkansas that now we get to play this event.  I think it’s a good thing I played VFWs in Arkadelphia because that’s a reminder that I got this far. But this is not the end game, just an amazing stop on the way. My hope is that we get to do this a lot and play for people at big venues because I believe in the music we are making.”

Before the interview concluded, Barrett wanted to send a message to everyone back home.

“Thank you to the people of Arkansas, and NWA in particular,” he said. “This really is a humbling moment to realize that thousands of people are taking time out of their day to vote for you and help you with your dream. That’s something to really be in awe of and I am.”

VISIT: BarrettBaber.com

Photo courtesy of Barrett Baber

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