Episode 08: Matt Barr
There's no way in the human world to compile a collection of words that will do justice to who Matt "Bus" Barr is, and -- even though I'm gonna try -- one could only attempt to grasp what a phenomenal person he is after knowing him for almost 30 years.
He is, nevertheless, a son, brother, a father to three, and perhaps above all an artist.
Bus has had a really fascinating musical journey and turned a lot of people on to a lot of things they probably never would've heard of otherwise. He's been on Grateful Dead tour at age 16, in a band at age 25, had an entire gallery display of his own original work, lived with a pot-bellied pig, dealt with Type I Diabetes since age 10, been a teacher and a principal, made both a children's-music album and book, and, well...we're not even scratching the surface of his life list with those mentions.
In true-to-self fashion, he did not -- as the kids'er saying these days -- understand the assignment put forth to him for this episode of Badass Records, and that's totally okay; it didn't derail things in the slightest, and in fact made them even more interesting than they were already going to be.
I love this guy with all of my heart, and couldn't be more grateful that -- at one point in his youth -- he was certain he would not live past the age of 40. I couldn't be happier that he's still around, and as a tribute to his fantastical, still-ongoing life, please give our conversation a view or a listen.
copyright disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the audio featured in the intro/outro clips. They are samples from Mr. Scruff's "Jazz Potato," from his 2005 record, Mrs. Cruff, c/o Ninja Tune, and Frank Zappa's "A Little Green Rosetta," off of the 1979 masterpiece, three-act album, Joe's Garage, c/o the Zappa Family Trust, respectively.