FFWD Weekly
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Music - Cover by Martin Kemp Imagine being on a crowded city bus when a street performer boards, dressed in purple spandex and a green Robin Hood hat. As he proceeds to juggle live chickens while singing "Ace of Spades," the bus passengers start to squirm, but some just can’t look away. There’s an uncomfortable fascination that draws the captive audience to the performer. It is kind of the same deal with The Bad Livers, but without the purple spandex, hat or live chickens (as far as I know). They do, however, juggle genres. With their newest release – appropriately titled Blood and Mood – the Bad Livers continue to screw around with bluegrass music, while adding a full-on contingent of electronica, complete with samples, filters and a cacophony of sounds. Does this non-traditional approach to music freak people out? According to Livers frontman Danny Barnes, yup, it sure as hell does. "The only thing we get out of doing this, actually, is that it does that," he observes. "We’ve never really made any dough to speak of, so that’s about all we get out of it – the satisfaction of freaking people out." Dealing with squeamish audiences is really nothing new for the duo of Barnes and bassist Mark Rubin. "It’s always been this way," Barnes admits. "Way before there was an ‘alt. country’ and an ‘unplugged,’ and all this shit, we were travelling around opening up for the Butthole Surfers with banjos and fiddles and stuff. And when we play, it tends to cleave the audience right down the middle – half of them are really excited, and half of them are totally repulsed. Which I kind of think is the definition of art." During a lengthy (and often surreal) conversation, Barnes speculates on why the band’s efforts to meld electronica and bluegrass (electrograss? bluetronica?) on Blood and Mood have been largely ignored by mainstream audiences. According to him, there is lots of great music being made on the borders of society, but the audience and industry support needed to nurture this music is often lacking. "There’s a lot of exploration being done by strange artists with all sorts of weird guys in little rooms doing cool electronica music and stuff." The problem, he figures, "is the failure of the music industry and audiences to be intellectually involved (in what musicians are doing), and to realize that we need art in our lives." So The Bad Livers face the ultimate musical catch-22: they thrive on innovation, but innovation doesn’t always pay the bills. It would be a lot easier, says Barnes, if they just stuck to one type of music. It just wouldn’t be as fun. "If you have a blues band, then you could dress in that style, you could be on a blues label and play in blues clubs and festivals, and you’d have a blues manager, and everything would be laid out," he wryly observes. "We sort of have a more open view of music, to our economic detriment. But the thing I can honestly say is that I get off on all our records, and they have turned out better than I could of ever hoped. That’s what keeps me going artistically." And if you’re Danny Barnes, that and freaking people out is probably all that counts.

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