This week, people with mental health challenges or substance use disorder often end up in jail. But crisis response teams offer another way. Also, one year after the Mountain Valley Pipeline went into service, people who live directly in the pipeline’s path have received compensation. But not everyone. And, the Sacred Harp songbook gets an update for the first time since the early 1990s.
Walter DeBarr: Making Waves Across Appalachia and In-studio
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Singer-songwriter Walter DeBarr is using his unique voice and turbulent past to create and spread a heartfelt message across Appalachia. Growing up a black man in mostly-white Buchannon, WV, DeBarr had it tough among his peers. “I got beat up alot and kids would mess with me. Kids who didn’t understand.”
Now, DeBarr draws upon these experiences to write his songs. “Nearly all of the music stems from my growing up… just from being different from all the other kids I grew up with… simply for being who I was.” He had an epiphany which turned that negative energy into something positive. “I realized, man, it doesn’t matter–none of that matters. What matters is what’s in your chest, and what sort of moral compass you carry.”
Credit Matt Jackfert
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Walter DeBarr singing his song “Hurts so Good” in our studios
DeBarr chooses his lyrics by remembering how he grew up with the hopes that other people don’t feel so isolated. “We all struggle everyday with something, and I just genuinely want people to know they’re not alone.” For instance, his song, “Hurts so Good,” is about coming to terms with the necessary growing pains of getting older. “I just want to be a kid forever, but… we gotta grow up.”
Lyrics and music seem to flow through him easily. He’s written over 60 songs in just a few years without even knowing much music theory. “I don’t even know the names of all the chords,” DeBarr joked. But theory doesn’t matter when you can make beautiful songs. He’s made so many that he’s recorded and released his first EP We Fall, We Break with Greg McGowen at Rose City Recordings. It can be bought on most major platforms online.
Take a listen to our interview with DeBarr, where he performs two songs, “Hurts so Good,” and “These Hands, These Eyes”. Then check out his website walterdebarrmusic.com.
On this week's premiere broadcast of Mountain Stage, host Kathy Mattea welcomes Jeff Tweedy, The War and Treaty, Johnnyswim, and Olivia Ellen Lloyd. Recorded live at the Culture Center Theater in Charleston, WV.
WVPB recently hosted a pair of musicians from West Virginia University (WVU) to come perform live in-studio during Classical Music with Matt Jackfert. Albert Houde, associate horn professor at WVU and principal horn with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra (WVSO), and Sun Jung Lee, collaborative pianist at WVU, serenaded our Wednesday afternoon with a live performance of Reimaginings by Frank Gulino.
