Conversations: B.J. Barham, Part 1
Talking with the American Aquarium frontman about growing up in a small N.C. town
Growing up or living in a small, industrial-based town shapes you in ways you don’t realize until you leave it behind, whether it’s by fate or by choice. Some can’t wait to get out. Others choose never to leave, opting instead to remain in the “comfort of the familiar.”
Recently, I discussed this dichotomy with songwriter B.J. Barham, the leader of the group American Aquarium and a seventh generation native of Rockingham County, N.C. Barham and I lived only a few miles from each other in the mid 1990s when he was in high school and I was managing editor of The Reidsville Review, the local newspaper.
At the time, I was leaving my native Texas behind for the first time, feeling like I never fit in my refinery-based hometown, where more than 10 percent of the gasoline used daily in the U.S. is manufactured. I had worked around the state at various newspapers but wanted something different, only to move 1,200 miles away to a small town where tobacco and textiles were king.
Our paths never crossed during the seven-plus years I lived in Reidsville, although I knew Barham’s aunt and uncle. Penny and Clay Barham were longtime administrators in the school district I worked for when I left journalism the first time. Penny was the first chair of the consolidated school system when I arrived in Reidsville.
Barham left Rockingham County to attend N.C. State University and formed American Aquarium in his dorm room in 2005. The group has had more than a dozen releases and several lineup changes during its history but has seen steady growth since 2020’s “Lamentations” came out at the start of the pandemic.
Part 2 of this interview, which will be published here and on Americana Highways, focuses on that history. But after hearing Barham’s 2016 solo album, the eight-song “Rockingham” that covered the place where we both lived, I wanted to discuss the influence of small towns on our journeys.
Here is our conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
How much of your songwriting and work ethic comes from growing up in Reidsville?
All of it. I spent every summer in a tobacco field from the time I was 5 or 6 all the way until up until I was 18 years old. I had money. I was completely independent. I bought my first car when I was 11. I didn't have to have anybody give me anything. I didn't have to have anybody give me money because I was willing to put in the work for it.
I got out of Reidsville because tobacco fields taught me that I did not want to do manual labor for the rest of my life. What it also instilled in me was working your way out of any situation. I watched my mom do it. I watched my dad do it. Both of my parents worked 40, 50, 60 hours a week. As an adult, knowing what they got paid a year, it blows my mind how we were able to have such a normal upbringing.
My story is similar. I could not wait to leave Texas City because I couldn’t think of spending my life in a petrochemical plant town, although I have friends/ acquaintances who never left and are happy there. What made you so eager to leave?
I always had bigger hopes for myself than Reidsville. I watched what happened. My dad was born in Reidsville. My grandfather was born in Reidsville. His parents were born in Reidsville. I'm a seventh-generation Rockingham County kid. It's where my family ended up off the boat, and they started farming tobacco. I was the first kid that didn't want to do that or didn't want to have a part of that.
Everybody else in my family was completely content on growing where they were planted, dropping seeds, and having them grow in the exact same place. I've got so many friends that stayed in Reidsville or moved out of Reidsville, saw what life was like, and then moved back for whatever reason. I don't knock that. I don't judge that because as I get older, I started seeing all of the good things about living in Reidsville.
Did you start your songwriting career there?
I had a band in high school. I wrote and sang songs, but I didn't play guitar. It wasn't until I got to college and the guy I was playing guitar with, who still lives in Reidsville, quit. He said I was holding us back as a band because I couldn't play an instrument. I already had a show booked in Raleigh because I went to college there and the rest of the band was still back home.
I had a choice: In two months I had to either cancel the show or teach myself how to play guitar. I taught myself. Once I learned how to play, I didn't need anybody to help me write songs. I didn't need anybody to put music to the words I'd always been writing. I started putting music to the words myself. Fast forward 20 years and here we are.
One reason I was uncomfortable in my hometown is I felt I viewed the world differently than many of the people who lived there. My politics were increasingly left of center, and I didn’t know too many people who felt the same. And yet, I’ve been gone for 30 years and that town’s imprint is still on me. Is the same true with you? I heard it in your “Rockingham” album.
For sure. I've got a few songs to address that mentality of the duality of being from Reidsville and getting out of Reidsville. I spent my entire life trying to get out, and I've spent my entire adult life writing about pining after where I'm from. It's wild to me because, up until I was 18, every action I took was trying to get a step closer to getting out of that town.
The upbringing I got could not have been from anywhere else except Reidsville. I'm proud to be from there. I don't write all positive songs about it because when you're trying to be an honest and transparent songwriter, you can’t candy-coat some of the flaws that Reidsville has.
Many of my friends who still live there like those songs because I'm giving these honest representations of where I'm from. I'm not Springsteen-ing it. I'm not trying to make Asbury Park seem like the promised land. I'm talking about Reidsville in a very real way.
It's hard to be a kid there. It's hard to get out of there. It's so easy to get caught in that circle of just doing what your dad did and living the same life your dad did. Once your dad dies, you move into his house, and you start your own family in that house. That's a hard cycle to break.
I refer to that as the comfort of the familiar.
100 percent. A lot of that is being afraid to step out because there's uncertainty in getting away from the first 18 years of your life, moving to a big city, and trying to make it on your own terms. There's a lot of failure involved. There's a lot of learning experiences involved in that.
My dad used to always tell me that there's no such thing as mistakes because if you learn from them, they're lessons. When I got out in the real world, I learned a lot of “lessons.” I always took my dad’s advice to heart; it’s followed me in my entire life. I've made countless mistakes, but I learned from all of them.
A lot of kids would rather play it safe. "My parents had a good life. My parents had a normal life. They've raised a kid fine in Reidsville. I'm going to stay here and do the same because it's safe." I'm not knocking that at all.
Did you knock it? I did at points.
For a long time, I felt like I was better than some people that didn't make it out, but now I look back and I'm like, "Man, some people just stay in the right lane and go with the speed limit the whole damn time.” There's nothing wrong with that. It's just some people have a different way of getting there.
We're all heading to the same place. [chuckles] It's how quickly and how unsafe you want to get there. I chose no seatbelt, 90 mph in the left lane, but I don't know. I go back there at least once a month now because my dad's there, my brother's there, my niece and nephew are there, all my family is still there. I'm the only one that got out of Reidsville.
Now when I go home, I'm the city boy. I'm the kid that's been around the world. I'm the kid that's seen everything. I'm the rock and roller. As a young kid I was very cocky about that. I was like, "I'm the one that made it out. Screw everybody else." Now, I just see that we're all on different paths.
You live only a couple of hours from Reidsville? Do you go back often?
My daughter loves going there. I love taking her to the places that were integral to my upbringing. She knows what Short Sugars (a legendary local barbecue restaurant) is. My brother lives in the family home, the house I was raised in. He bought it from my parents a few years back and completely renovated it.
Now, when I go home to see my brother, I go back to the place that I lived in my entire childhood. That's where he is going to raise his kids and, I'll be damned, if he has two kids at least one will take that house over and raise their kids there. That's just how it goes.
I'm glad to be the kid that got out and sowed some seeds somewhere else. You know what I mean? I can't brag too much. I live an hour and a half from where I was born. I didn't go on this crazy pilgrimage across the country. I ran from a tiny North Carolina tobacco-farming town because I thought I was better than that. I ended up settling down in, you guessed it, a tobacco-farming town that's a quarter the size of Reidsville.
That’s ironic.
It's even smaller than Reidsville. (Laughs). I always find some humor in that. I spent most of my 20s and 30s running from the place I was, only to end up in a much smaller version of Reidsville.
The second part of this interview, which goes into more detail about American Aquarium and Barham’s personal journey, will be emailed to subscribers on Friday.
Our relationship with our hometown(s) can get complicated. I took the same path as Barham did; I used to point and laugh at people that never left, came around a little bit, and now I totally get it.