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Join us as we dive into the incredible journey of BJ Barham, the founder of American Aquarium. In this episode, BJ shares his personal and professional evolution from a small-town North Carolina boy with dreams of becoming a lawyer to a celebrated musician with 17 albums. Discover how he created the highly popular annual music festival Roadtrip to Raleigh and hear about his transition from songs about bars and breakups to meaningful tracks on grief, parenting, and sobriety. Stay tuned for an intimate conversation that explores his love for North Carolina, the challenges and triumphs of his music career, and what it truly means to live a life dedicated to storytelling through music.
00:00 Raleigh Traditions and Local Pride
01:41 Meet BJ Barham: The Journey Begins
02:25 From Law Aspirations to Music Dreams
03:26 Discovering the Raleigh Music Scene
04:49 The Courage to Pursue Music
06:15 The Reality of a Musician's Life
11:41 Songwriting and Sobriety
24:55 Reflections on Hard Work and Success
25:53 The Roadtrip to Raleigh Festival
26:40 Challenges and Growth in Raleigh's Music Scene
27:54 The Impact of Roadtrip to Raleigh
28:37 Personal Life and Family Stories
29:36 Celebrating Raleigh and Its Culture
32:04 Inviting Other Musicians to Roadtrip to Raleigh
36:07 Future Plans and Vision Board
37:47 Lightning Round Questions
Creators and Guests
What is What’s Up, Wake?
What’s Up, Wake covers the people, places, restaurants, and events of Wake County, North Carolina. Through conversations with local personalities from business owners to town staff and influencers to volunteers, we’ll take a closer look at what makes Wake County an outstanding place to live. Presented by Cherokee Media Group, the publishers of local lifestyle magazines Cary Magazine, Wake Living, and Main & Broad, What’s Up, Wake covers news and happenings in Raleigh, Cary, Morrisville, Apex, Holly Springs, Fuquay-Varina, and Wake Forest.
020 - What's Up Wake - BJ Barham
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Melissa: [00:00:00] Certain things are synonymous with Raleigh tailgating at wolf Pack or hurricanes games with a bow box.
Of course, the hot sign is on at Krispy Kreme, a train ride around, pull and park and spring.
We can't underestimate our pride for hometown musicians.
One such musician is BJ Barham, who founded the band, American Aquarium [00:01:00] two decades ago, right on the NC State campus as a student. Over the years, he's crafted songs that cut to the heart of southern soul weaving tails of addiction, heartbreak, and redemption. He's single-handedly created one of the area's most popular annual music festivals, road trip to Raleigh, having just celebrated year 10 at another local landmark Lincoln Theater.
He's a little bit country, a lot rock and roll, but all Americana. I just heard a new term called the Alternative, which sums it up perfectly. Buckle up and join me on a road trip to Raleigh with BJ Barham lead, singer, and founder of American Aquarium. Hi, bj.
BJ Barham: Hey, how are you?
Melissa: I am so excited to get to meet you.
I've gotta start out by saying a, a shout out to the singer for my theme song on What's Up Wake. Her name is Angie Bagley. She is the lead singer for another local, incredible band called Stray Vols. I'm not sure if you've heard that. Amazing. You would, you would [00:02:00] love them. They're, they're really good. But when I first told her about the podcast, she was like, oh my gosh, you've gotta get BJ Barra on from American Aquarium.
I think it was probably around the time that road trip to Raleigh was happening back in February. So maybe she, you were fresh on her mind. But then I read a story that was featured in the May issue of Wake Clip, and I knew that I had to jet at the chance to get to know you. So thank you. I really appreciate you being here.
BJ Barham: Thanks for the invite.
Melissa: Let's start at the beginning. You're from Reedsville? Yeah. You're a North Carolina boy.
BJ Barham: Born and raised.
Melissa: Yeah. And so, and Reedsville, by the way, is just north of Greensboro. You went to NC State. Did you always grow up knowing you wanted to be a musician?
BJ Barham: No, I had zero. I'm a seventh generation North Carolinian which means if I'd have stayed home, I would've been a seventh generation tobacco farmer.
Lucky for me I decided to go to college. My dad told me very early on that school was kind of my only ticket out of that town. I hated growing up in a small town. I had much bigger [00:03:00] aspirations. And so my dad told me, he's like, we can't pay for college, so if you wanna go to college, you gotta start really hitting the books.
And so I spent most of. Middle school and high school academia was my, my focus. Every summer I spent at Duke University, at the TIP program studying law books. Oh, you're smarty. All I wanted to be was a lawyer. Okay. That's all I ever wanted to be. And then I went to NC State and was a double major in political science and history.
And I got on campus and that was my first interaction with live music. In Reedsville, we didn't have music venues. The closest thing to me was like the Greensburg Coliseum. So I grew up, there were two kinds of musicians for me. There was my uncle that played guitar at like the bonfire, and then there was like Garth Brooks.
There was no, there was no in between. There was no in between. And so when I moved to Raleigh, that was my first experience with like a music scene where you could go pay $5 and go to the brewery on Hillsborough Street.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: And see like a, your favorite punk band or, or an up and coming band, or drive to the cat's cradle in carbo.[00:04:00]
Once I realized that there was this kind of intermediate area of music where, you know, if you could play in front of a hundred people at a $15 ticket, you could make a living. That's when I started putting the books down a little bit more and picking up the guitar a lot more. And then fast forward to my halfway through my junior year, I got offered my first tour.
I never look back on it.
Melissa: Yeah. Peace out wolf pack.
BJ Barham: Yeah. I lo, I lo I love my time at NC State and I always joke that NC State, let me find out who I was as a person.
Melissa: Mm-hmm. Which
BJ Barham: is I think what college is supposed to do. Absolutely. Yeah. Know test scores and books aside. I think finding yourself as a person is, is one of the biggest benefits of going to college.
And for me, I found out that, you know, to the chagrin of my parents, that my life was meant to be on the road and meant to be touring and meant to be playing music. I wasn't supposed to be in a courtroom every day.
Melissa: Yeah. So that, that leads perfectly into my next question. You, you traded the the courtroom for a stage.
BJ Barham: Yeah.
Melissa: First of all, I would think it takes [00:05:00] a lot of courage to drop totally opposite aspirations. Leave college, start something new, but also a lot of courage to tell your parents that's what you wanted to do.
BJ Barham: Yeah. I was the first kid in my family that ever went to college, so they were really bummed.
Mm-hmm. The first kid that finally got a shot to college, they're like, Hey, you
Melissa: just finish one more year.
BJ Barham: Yeah. They got, they were really bummed and I come from a really blue collar family, so. They, you know, in their head, their son was giving up this really big opportunity to be like a rock star. Like this unobtainable, like unobtainable dream
Melissa: and trading a quote, normal life for a riskier life.
Yeah.
BJ Barham: They wanted me to follow A to B, which was a very straight line, which is go to college, a, go to law school, get married, have 2.5 kids house with picket fence. Mm-hmm. Climb the ladder. Be better than they were. I just had a different way of getting there at 41. Now I'm, I'm at the same spot all of my friends are at [00:06:00] 41.
Some would say in a better spot. But I didn't have to sacrifice what I love doing. So like I wake up every day and I don't have to go into a job for the next 15 years, and I still hate just to retire, just to pay for the, the style of life that I chose to live. I get to. 70 days outta the year, go play music for people.
And then the other 300 days outta the year, I just get to be at home, being a dad, being a husband, enjoying the life that I've chosen. Mm-hmm. The first 10 years, I think my parents might've been right, the first 10 years were tough. The first 10 years are sleeping on floors running up a bunch of credit card debt.
Melissa: But to your point, you kind of zigzagged here to this point in life, but. You could have been doing that as an aspirational attorney too. I mean, you're racking up a ton of debt for law, law school for sure. You're sleeping on floors because you gotta pay back the, the law school and you're struggling to get by to begin with.
So either way, the twenties are kind of, you know,
BJ Barham: yeah. Hindsight's always 2020, but at 41, talking to my friends that are lawyers, I, I, I fully [00:07:00] justify the decision that I made. I think I made the right one because they seem. I love them, but they seem miserable.
Melissa: Oh, uhoh.
BJ Barham: They like, it's, the workload is intense.
Yeah. And they don't love what they do.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: And I, and I've, hopefully
Melissa: some of them do, but certainly not in the way that you are looking at your life and loving what you do.
BJ Barham: Yeah. You can love a job. You're
Melissa: a rockstar. Come on. Yeah.
BJ Barham: You can love a job and still be like, it's a job. True. I never look at what I do as a job.
I get paid to stand in front of people and recite things I made up on my living room couch. Like it's, it's a pretty sick job.
Melissa: Yeah.
Really unlike anything else that is coming to mind.
BJ Barham: Yeah. There's not a lot that, that compares to it. Mm-hmm. Like, you don't get to get that kind of, you know, dopamine high every single night.
You don't get to stand in front of people and put out everything you have and get it right back. There's a nothing does that. No job does that.
Melissa: Well, I'm gonna skip ahead some of the questions I have because you're mentioning it now, but I am wondering what it's like to look out into a [00:08:00] crowd of hundreds, if not thousands of people, and everybody knows your songs that you wrote.
BJ Barham: It's a good feeling. There's, there's not, it's the high that we're all chasing. Because when they're singing those songs back to you, it it, it's not just them singing it back to you. It definitely strokes your ego a bit, but it also reminds you that like. What you are writing about matters. Mm-hmm.
Melissa: And
BJ Barham: that you're tapping into something that resonates with not just you and not just your friend group, but a large swath of the demographic. And it's fun. Our shows are these punk rock kids, or these rednecks, or these frat boys. There's dads and sons together as moms and daughters together, we've been doing it long enough to where our, our.
Our fan base really runs the gamut of, of, of, of a, you know, a cross section of humanity. Like it's fun to look out in the crowd and nobody looks alike it, but they're all there for one reason. They all have this one thing in common outside of the four walls of that club or whatever. They might not have anything in common, but when they're inside that club and they're all singing the songs together, we're kind of all [00:09:00] operating on the same plane.
And that's a beautiful thing when you're standing on and when you're the curator of that thing.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: When you're the, the reason that all of these people who have nothing in common find something in common, that's a powerful thing.
Melissa: Well, and I think that goes to what I was saying in my introduction is your music is really a blend of different genres, different styles.
It's not just southern country. It. And your fans are from all over the world.
BJ Barham: Yeah.
Melissa: So you are, you are bringing together people from not just one. Part of society. It's you know, a real blend of Americana, like I said. Yeah. We don't
BJ Barham: know what we are, we're the mutt of the, of the music world. Mm-hmm. And I, and I like that.
I like that we we're not a genre. We're, we're two rock and roll for country music. We're, we're way too country for rock and roll. You know, I'm a folk singer with a full band. You know, it's, it's, it's fun because not being, not having a genre kind of lets us. Do what we wanna [00:10:00] do. We get to write the music that we wanna make.
We, we don't have to fit it into a hole. It just gets to be like, this is the songs that we wrote. These are the 10 songs we wrote this year. They're all over the place. I hope you hope you guys enjoy. And that really does pull in different people from different groups.
Melissa: Well, on the flip side, do you find that that has been also a challenge because you're not fitting into one group?
Of course. Therefore, you might not, you know, be at the CMAs because you're not all country and you might not be on the rock station because you're not all rocks.
BJ Barham: Yeah. We'll never be one of those bands that that can play. You're not fitting in a box. Yeah, we, we can't fit in a box. And, and that's why, you know, we are, we, our success has been 20 years in the making.
We were never gonna be that band that just lit the fuse and wrote it to the top because we, we were too much trouble for record labels. We were too much trouble for radio people. We were too much trouble for everybody 'cause they couldn't put us in a box and we refused to go into the box. We refused to change anything.
We've been do it [00:11:00] yourself since day one. And we just, we didn't wanna give up that part of our business. We didn't wanna say yes to people, because when you take shortcuts to climb the corporate ladder, eventually you look back down the ladder and realize that you've gave up a lot of control.
You've gave up a lot of who you were. You gave up a lot of the reason you set out to do the thing in the first place. And so it took 20 years to get here. But I'm one of the few business owners, especially in the music world, that gets to say that I own 100% of everything I've ever created. The publishing, the masters, all of my records, I own the record label that puts out my records.
It took a a lot longer to get to where I wanted to get, but I didn't have to sacrifice a piece of myself to get there, and that lets me sleep a little bit better at night.
Melissa: Oh, I'm sure it does. Yeah. And, and speaking of owning everything, you are an incredible songwriter, and I'd like to talk about the art of songwriting and how you work through that process.
You've really, you've released an astounding 17 albums in 20 years. Little less than 20 years [00:12:00] since 2020. 20. Oh, 2005.
BJ Barham: 2006 was when the first record came out. Okay. So 17 records in 19 years.
Melissa: That's, I mean, it's truly unbelievable. I read that you gather notes kind of on your phone these days? Yeah. Voice notes, hand, you know, written notes, and you go away.
You put put yourself in a, in a room every what, year and a half or so, and just every 18 months. Yeah. Get to it. Writing, writing songs.
BJ Barham: Yes. I just make observations for 18 months. And it's song titles, it's lyrics, it's one-liners. It's ideas. It's overheard conversations in diners. It's just a collection, this kind of hodgepodge.
And I just collect them all. And then right before I go in the studio I go to, you know, I usually take a writer's retreat. I, I'll just book a place. For the last record, we, I took the family up to the Hamptons for two weeks and just. They had fun at the beach and I just stayed in a room for two weeks.
Mm-hmm. And just wrote a record. Before that, it was the [00:13:00] Outer banks and just going and locking myself in a room and looking out a window and writing songs
Melissa: locking myself in a room sounds absolutely amazing. I can imagine
BJ Barham: that
Melissa: I would be locked in a room and just, and just sleep the whole time.
BJ Barham: Yeah.
It's, it's, it's bench
Melissa: TV shows.
BJ Barham: It's very fruitful for me. Mm-hmm. Because it, I can't ride on the road. There's a lot of distraction on the road. Especially when you're running the business. So taking that time outta my schedule and not allowing myself to do anything else. Not having a tv, not having a phone, not having a internet access.
Just being able to sit down and kind of take this collection of ideas from in the last 18 months and formulating 'em, and it's 10 songs with a common theme. It's like putting a puzzle together after you collect all the pieces. Now the part is just sitting now, that's the fun part for me. You collect all the pieces and then you sit down and put the puzzle together and, and that's a, a ton of fun for me.
Melissa: I read that fans talk about how your songs used to be about bars and breakups, but they've matured into songs dealing with [00:14:00] grief and parenting and marriage and just, you know, the normal adult things as as life goes on. You have been very vocal about your sobriety, and I'm wondering if your sobriety plays a, a part in the maturity of your songwriting.
Of
BJ Barham: course it does. Mm-hmm. You know, it's really
Melissa: gotta play a part in everything in life. Yeah.
BJ Barham: It's, you know, everybody's got that sober friend and you realize how much, you know, they, they talk about it, how much they, it, it's part of who they are as a person and, and I think it has to be. Recovery August 31st of this year.
I'll celebrate 11 years. So that's, you know, a little over a quarter of my life. Congratulations. I've been sober now and it's a big deal. Yeah, I, I feel really good about it and it. If I didn't let it seep into the songwriting, I'd be doing it in injustice. My job as a songwriter is to make observations, process those observations into three to four minute stories, and then sing them to people and hopefully they can get the bigger picture that I set out to write in a very small package.
You're [00:15:00] taking these big ideas and you're just simplifying them into. Digestive pieces 'cause most people can't take those big ideas and put them into words. So your job as a songwriter is to take these massive life events, the, the darker corners of the human experience and distill them into something that is palpable.
Like, like that people can just touch and, and, and resonate with. And for me, yeah. When you're 20, I wrote what a 20-year-old writes about.
Melissa: Exactly. Yeah. I was
BJ Barham: gonna, the bar I was chasing girls. I, I, I had zero. I I wanted to burn out as quick as possible. But then you hit 30 and you get sober and you get married and you start a family and then your priorities change.
And so I started writing about this 'cause there's nothing sadder than like a 40-year-old talking about, you know, going to the bar and getting hammered. I. That's just, that's, that's not where I'm at. At 40. At 40, I'm losing my grandparents, I'm losing my parents. I'm having a miscarriage. I'm, I'm, I'm watching Friends suffer the most insufferable things in life.
Why wouldn't I write about that? Why would I keep writing songs about cold beer, pretty girl, dirt road, pickup truck. [00:16:00] Like, nobody needs to hear that at 40. If you're 20, great. 'cause you haven't lived enough to write about it yet, so you're just writing about the fun parts of being a redneck, the fun parts of the Southern experience.
But I think that once you turn
Melissa: and really the life experience, not just Southern experience because everybody experiences these things that you're talking about a
BJ Barham: hundred percent. And
Melissa: that's probably why your fans have continued to follow your evolution as, as a songwriter especially, and a performer,
BJ Barham: especially folks my age, they've grown up.
With my music. 'Cause when they found our band, yeah. I was writing songs about going to the bar and, and, and going home with somebody, but then they got married and so did I, and then they had kids and so did I. Then they bought the first house and so did I. And they started questioning, have I made a horrible mistake?
They have that, you know. So as long as people my age are listening to my music, I think that resonates with 'em. But what we've ran into is now we're getting to the second generation of fans, like kids that grew up listening to our music, 'cause that's all their parents played. So I have these 20 [00:17:00] year olds coming.
It's like, man, the new record doesn't really resonate with me. I was like, man, give it 20 years. I was like, you're 20 now. I was like, when you're 40, listen to these songs. That is
Melissa: a very good point and see if this makes
BJ Barham: sense again. That's when I'm, because that's when I push 'em. I'm like, man, go listen to this record I wrote when I was 20 because that's probably,
Melissa: listen to my old stuff.
That's
BJ Barham: probably where you're at right now. And, and that's been a really fun way. 'cause you know, when you start a band in your dorm room, you have zero foresight. You'd never think 20 years from now I'm gonna be still playing these songs that I'm writing and that the whole new generation is gonna be finding this band.
But then you fast forward and you grew up and you're 41. Even though I'm, you know, I got Peter Pan Syndrome, like I never had to really grow up. Mm-hmm. 'cause I still get to just be a, I have, I haven't had a real job since 2007. I've just worked worked big quotation marks in music, and so I'm able to kind of still do something I love that.
Doesn't feel like work, doesn't feel like a job, but I've found a way to support a family and to support 10 other people. Mm-hmm. You know, my band and [00:18:00] crew and support their families. And so it's I have a, a different outlook on life, I think. But, you know, I try to write from a pretty honest perspective and, luckily, I get to see whether or not I'm doing it right because that let the fans let me know if something resonates or something doesn't. And so 20 years in, I, I think I still have a pretty good pulse on what my fan base is going through and, and what I'm writing about.
Melissa: Do you ever feel the weight of that pressure, I guess, for lack of a better word, because you're, you've mentioned that you.
You own the business itself. You are, you are in charge of, of the entire being. That is the band, the, the record label, all of it and which you're holding people's livelihoods. In the palm of your hand and carrying your fans through. So do you feel the pressure of all that?
BJ Barham: Yeah, but it's, it's, it's, it's a good pressure.
It's not a, like an overwhelming pressure that like keeps me up at night. It's a pressure that reminds me every day that I got responsibility to people. I got a responsibility to be honest. I got [00:19:00] a responsibility to write about what I see. I got a responsibility to not ignore the hard topics. 'cause there's plenty of people that don't, that when, when life throws you like the biggest curve ball, you don't wanna talk about it.
You wanna bundle that up and hide it as deep as you can inside of you. And my job is, when I make those observations, is to somehow find a way to talk about the really, really, really hard parts. The stuff that you're not supposed to bring up at Thanksgiving dinner. The stuff that you're not supposed to talk openly and freely about in front of your friends.
Bearing emotion in front of strangers is what my job is. Mm-hmm. And, and not veiling it at all. Not trying to candy coat anything. Just be very direct with people because there's people going through that, that need to hear those songs and that's how we've, there's no fair weather American Aquarium fan.
You're either like, I've seen them 30 times, or you're the kind of person that's like, I just don't get it. Like, it's not for me. There's nobody who's like, ah, they're okay.
Melissa: Yeah. But you're, you're able to weave as a songwriter is kind of like poetry. [00:20:00] You're not, you're not necessarily just standing up and, and shooting a straight, like a therapy session.
You're, you've, you've woven these songs together to, to to express all of these big feelings Yeah. And, and ideas.
BJ Barham: Yeah. Nobody wants to be preached at for Yeah. For 20 to, or for, for two hours at a show. So you have to find a way to make your point through narrative.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: And you have to write stories.
About it. And luckily for me, I come from a long line of southern storytellers and people, you know, we, we had the gift of gab. We learned how to talk about stuff. We learned how to extrapolate a little bit to get the point across. You know, never let the truth get in the way of a good story is what I was always taught.
And so I was kind of born to be some form of an orator, but it just took a turn from. Arguing court files to, to, to telling stories about the, the human experience.
Melissa: [00:21:00] What do your parents think now?
BJ Barham: My dad doesn't get it. Okay. Still to this day, like he, some
Melissa: dads just don't get it. Well, he, he's
BJ Barham: one of those guys like, you gotta work 40, 50 hours a week of hard labor and you're not supposed to like your job. You know, your job is a means to an end. You, you work a hard job to take care of your family and make sure that your kids have a better chance at it than you did.
That's his motto. And so the fact that his son, you know, it, it almost feels like, like he, I sometimes he feels like I game the system. You know, like he, I found a way you cheated. Somehow I found a way to love what I do and not have to do it very often and still I. [00:22:00] Give my kids a better shot
Melissa: than I have.
But you've broken a cycle though.
BJ Barham: 100%. But he'll never look at it that way.
Melissa: Yeah.
BJ Barham: He'll never. We are the f we are the first generation of people that look at broken cycles. I believe that. You know? Yeah. We're the, I'm the first generation. I'm gentle parenting. You know, me and my 7-year-old communicate very well.
I'm the first generation in my family that has learned to Yeah. To talk to their children. And, and that's not a, a nega, that's not a slight at all. My dad was just doing what he saw his dad do and his dad was doing what he saw his dad do. It's just, that's how generational stuff gets passed down. But we're digressing I know.
Into a, yeah. We are gonna get off into a, into a therapy session. Yeah. But I think his first time he came to see me when I made my Grand Ole Opry debut. He came out and he got to stand backstage with me and he got to realize like how big of a weight that is. Like walking out on stage. Like before the show even started, they gave me like 10 minutes out on the floor by myself with nobody in the crowd, just the ghost [00:23:00] of the opera.
Just, just taking it all
Melissa: in.
BJ Barham: And you get to the first time you get to step into the circle. That, you know, Hank Senior stood in that circle. Johnny Cash stood in that circle. Everybody that has ever mattered has stood in that circle. And so my dad got to stand right beside of me as I walked into it. And, and I think for a moment, like every hero he's ever had that played music, his son standing in the same place that those people stood once.
And I think in that moment he was like, oh, like. You're pretty good at this, huh? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, duh dad, I'm doing okay. But he, you know, and it's not, he just comes from a different generation. Yeah. He comes from a different way of expressing feelings. He comes from a different way of making a living.
And so my dad's been to a couple of the road trip to rally shows and he's watched, you know, a thousand kids sing every word to every song. And I think he has an idea of like, oh, wow, that's kind of, that's neat that he's able to do that, but. My brother, God, God bless him. He, he works, you know, a nine [00:24:00] to five and he's elevated up to where he is like a general manager of a, of his gig.
My dad totally resonates with that way more than mm-hmm. Somebody that just travels around the world and plays, you know, stories for people.
Melissa: I would think it's hard for really any person to resonate with that though, for sure, because it's such a unique lifestyle. I. That I, I can understand, but I, I do think that all of our listeners know somebody, most likely a parent or a grandparent.
That would be the same way, you know? Oh, I, I
BJ Barham: think 90% of parents would be the same. Yeah. You want your kids to choose something stable. You want your kids to have stability, even if you didn't have it. You want your kids to have it. And when you, when you tell your parents that you're gonna be a rock and roller.
Like that's the opposite of stability.
Melissa: Absolutely. Like that. It sounds dangerous. There's a lot. There's a lot that goes into that term, the, you know, rock and roll lifestyle a hundred
BJ Barham: percent. Mm-hmm. You know, and I think my dad, there's a sense of pride that [00:25:00] comes from watching me succeed 20 years later.
'cause my dad was one of those blue collar guys. He taught me the value of hard work. He taught me that everything in this life is worth working for. If you love something, you're gonna work really hard at it. You're gonna bleed, you're gonna sweat for it. And I think that he finds some kind of appreciation for what I do.
Simply because I took a life lesson and I applied it in a very tradi, non-traditional way. And I think he can finally see that. I think he can see like, oh wait, you
Melissa: certainly were still a hard worker. Yeah. Throughout the years. Yeah. And I think, I
BJ Barham: think that he can see, oh wow, it didn't go, everything didn't go in one ear and out the other.
Like some of this actually stuck with him and he just took the lessons I taught him and applied 'em in a way that I had no idea that could, they could be applied. I think he sees how hard I work and he finds solace in the fact that, okay, he may have picked a really crazy thing to do, but he's doing exactly what I taught him to do, which is set your eyes on something and work for it until you get it.
Melissa: We've got to talk about road trip to Raleigh. Yeah, you, in the beginning, you were [00:26:00] selling out venues across America. But not necessarily selling out in your hometown. So that's really where the idea came from for a road trip to Raleigh, is you, you figured I'm just gonna bring all these fans that sell out across other towns.
I'm gonna bring 'em to my town.
BJ Barham: Yeah. Raleigh's a Raleigh's. Not really. When, when people list like the top, you know, top music markets in the country, you know, there's New York, there's la, there's Austin, there's Chicago, there's Nashville, there's Atlanta. Raleigh's not on that list.
Melissa: It is now though.
Raleigh's been there 'cause of road trip to Raleigh because of Dreamville. They're, they're, and, and the Bluegrass Festival and Hopscotch and the Bluegrass Festival. Yeah. Definitely. Like
BJ Barham: Raleigh's, Raleigh's definitely up in their game. Mm-hmm. But, but in oh two, when I started the ba when I moved to Raleigh, chapel Hill had us, Raleigh was the, the only time bands book places in Raleigh where if the cradle was already booked.
And so they'd book a show in Raleigh.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: And nobody was, Raleigh was not the destination. And then we, we faced that [00:27:00] probably the first 10 years week, we couldn't get over that two or 300 person at a show hump. We were playing. We sold out the brewery and then we moved to Martin Street Music Hall, which is where Kings is currently at.
We sold that out. Then we moved to the poor house and we probably spent five years at the poor house selling it out every two or three months, 350 people, but it never got bigger than that. And then we decided that we wanted to move to the Lincoln Theater, which is an. About a 900 cap room, but we never, we couldn't pull 900 people.
And so we decided, you know, we're selling out every show outside of North Carolina. Why not just tell those people to come to our hometown and that way we can sell out our hometown? And we did. Our first one was in February, 2015. And it worked. We did two nights sold out in advance, and we were like, oh, wow.
This is the ticket. And,
Melissa: but that says a lot about your fan base. A hundred
BJ Barham: percent. Yeah. But it, it's great because now it's grown in, it used to be the first road trip to Raleigh was about [00:28:00] 90% non North Carolina residents and about 10% North Carolina residents. And now I'd say it's more 50 50. I think Raleigh has come more online to who we are, just because our national presence has risen so much that people, that's
Melissa: so crazy to me that you have to, you have to be national before your, well, the
BJ Barham: old saying goes, you're never a prophet in your hometown.
Like they, they never, like anybody that knew me in college, didn't know me as like this. If I go anywhere else, if I'm flying through the Atlanta airport or flying through Austin or Nashville, people will stop me and tell me how my songs have changed their life.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: There's a lot of people that like went to school with me and they're like, oh yeah, that's just bj, just he makes up songs.
Melissa: Is that why you shaved your signature mustache? Oh
BJ Barham: my. So
Melissa: that people don't recognize you in the airport. My wife, I did notice when you walked in, there's no mustache. My
BJ Barham: wife made me shave.
Melissa: Oh gosh. My dau,
BJ Barham: my daughter loved the mustache. Dash. Oh, did
Melissa: she really? Okay. I would guess it would be opposite. Yeah.
The daughter would be like, dad, that's gotta go. My
BJ Barham: daughter loves the mustache. She's still young though. Wait till she's
Melissa: 13. 12, 13. And then try to grow a mustache then.
BJ Barham: [00:29:00] Oh yeah. She, she, she was heartbroken. But my wife right before New Year's Eve told me, she's like, if I was like, what do you want for Christmas?
And she's like, I just wanna, I just wanna see the hu the man I married.
Melissa: Mm.
BJ Barham: She's like, please shave the thing off your face. And so I shaved it and my daughter was like, you're not my dad anymore. And, but you got
Melissa: disowned immediately. That will happen many times in the future.
BJ Barham: Yeah. Me, my daughter, but we're, she's, she's.
Amazing. And she asked me this morning, she's like, are you ever gonna grow it back out? And I was like, oh, we just need mom to leave for like a week. And then, and then you got this.
Melissa: Just start growing it out while you're on tour.
BJ Barham: But yeah. Raleigh is Raleigh's home and so I never wanted to give up on Raleigh.
That's why a road trip was such an important adventure for us was because, you know, I'm, I'm a big proponent of growing where you're planted. I could have, I'm one of those guys. I have the means I'm very fortunate. At 40, I have the means to live anywhere I want to in the world. I choose to live in North Carolina.
I choose to live less than 90 [00:30:00] miles from the hospital I was born in. I've never lived anywhere else. I spent 18 years in Reedsville when I spent 18 years in Raleigh or the surrounding area. More than 18 years now. Gee, I'm getting old. You get, you are. Ugh. Ooh. I hate admitting that. I
Melissa: was gonna say that.
The math ain't math and the math ain't math. And but you, you came to that conclusion yourself. Yeah,
BJ Barham: but rra, I never wanted to abandon Raleigh. And that's, I'm the only band member that still lives in Raleigh. I'm the only person that still lives here. Simply because I like the place. I went to school here.
I fell in love with the people. I fell in love with the city and, everybody else in my band lives in Nashville, Atlanta, Richmond. But I'm, I'm still here because I believe in it and I love where I'm from, and, and road trip is this celebration of where I'm from. It's where I get to invite all my friends from around the, the country or I guess around the world these days.
I. To Raleigh and show off like this is what Ashley Christensen restaurants are. These are Scott Crawford's restaurants.
Melissa: Yeah. You've kind of curated an entire three day plan for your fans. Yeah. While they're in Raleigh, I tell '
BJ Barham: em where to eat, where to shop, where to [00:31:00] get coffee, where to get desserts. I tell 'em where I would eat.
And what's funny is like I go there during road trip to all these places. People see me and they're like, oh my God, you really do get coffee here? And I'm like, I wouldn't tell you to go get coffee somewhere if I wasn't willing to go get coffee there myself. Yeah. And so it's really fun because not only do I get to bring people to Riley back, I really get to show it off.
And there's a lot of people now who they've been to eight or nine road trips, and so they feel like they have a really good grasp. There's probably 15 or 20 couples that have moved to Raleigh because of road trip. They, they picked up where they were and they, we fell in love with the city. We wanted to live here.
And that's a really, that's a big. Tip of the hat to being like a music festival made you uproot everything and move to this place because you fell in love with it because your favorite band loves it.
Melissa: Well, I mean, honestly, you might need to stop spreading the word because we're getting a little proud of here.
Oh, trust me. It's, it's, it's, it's
BJ Barham: getting a little outta hand. I think the, I think the secret's out about Raleigh,
Melissa: the secret is [00:32:00] definitely out. We're gonna have to close the doors at some point. You part of part of the festival is that you're inviting other singers, musicians, bands, everywhere from grassroots.
Names that we necessarily not have, might not have necessarily heard of before. How do you come up with who you're gonna reach out to and invite?
BJ Barham: So I always try to invite some of my friends that have bigger names. Like in the last few years we've had Zach, Bryan, we've had turnpike, troubadours we've had,
Melissa: and now Zach Bryan has.
Massive. Like blown up. Massive,
BJ Barham: massive. Like mm-hmm. He, he op, he came and did road trip two years ago and now he's headlining football stadiums. Oh
Melissa: yeah.
BJ Barham: And can't
Melissa: get a ticket to his concerts now,
BJ Barham: two years ago. And what's great is we don't announce the openers until the shows sell out. So like you have to buy the ticket not knowing who's playing, and then we just deliver.
Because we have a, a really, I'm lucky, 20 years into this business, I've got friends that are really, really famous and I've got friends that are gonna be really, [00:33:00] really famous.
Melissa: Yeah. You can kind of see it now. Mm-hmm. And, and I, I've
BJ Barham: gotten pretty good at, I've got a good track record. If you look at all the people that have played the Last 10 Road Trip Brass, that's, that's a massive music festival.
Every one of those bands is huge.
Melissa: And you can say, I, I saw them back in the day. Yeah.
BJ Barham: And there's people who are like, I paid 40 bucks to see American Aquarium for a weekend. And, and they brought in. All of these bands. And that's a, that's a really good feeling to, to have your fan base trust you enough.
Like, I'm just gonna blindly buy tickets to this thing because BJ always delivers
Melissa: Well, and not just your fans to trust you, but the other acts to trust, oh yeah. Hey, I, I gotta go because this guy knows what he's doing. Well, most, most
BJ Barham: of these bands are too big to play the Lincoln Theater. They don't even play the Lincoln Theater when they come through.
And so like for me, like it's a big sell for me because you're asking these bands that usually play in front of, you know, two, three, 4,000 people every night. Hey, I need you to come play in front of 800 people.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: In Raleigh for, I need you to do it for me. I'm asking a favor.
Melissa: [00:34:00] Yeah.
BJ Barham: And they'll do it.
That lets me know that I've been a decent person because friends that should, good point. Friends that should not be playing road trip to Raleigh keep signing up to play road trip to Raleigh, and I'm very, very thankful for that.
Melissa: Do you think you're gonna have to start extending it to a longer period of time?
It's three days now, right?
BJ Barham: Yeah. It's just, we, we started at two days. In the last five years, it's been three days. And, I
Melissa: guess it's hard to do a music festival for longer than three days. Yeah. Longer
BJ Barham: than we could do it Sunday, but now the first February, Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, and so I'm not going up against a Super Bowl.
Yeah. And I don't wanna do it on, we, I don't wanna extend it back to Wednesday night. 'cause that just makes it a,
Melissa: all those blue collar workers Yeah. Gotta go to work. Yeah.
BJ Barham: Everybody's gotta get up and go to work. But I, I think that Thursday, Friday, Saturday that we've got into is. It's been really great, and it'll always be at the Lincoln Theater.
It won't get any bigger than that, so it'll just, the only thing that'll happen I guess is the price has to go up. But you, I guess
Melissa: with everything else, with everything else, there's inflation with the concerts as well, but you
BJ Barham: gotta, you gotta think, last year [00:35:00] the three day ticket was 120 bucks for six bands.
Get outta here.
Melissa: Yeah, you can. I You six literally cannot do that.
BJ Barham: Six bands with American Aquarium headlining every single night, like playing a different set. No repeats on songs, covering the whole catalog. Like you're for 120 bucks, you're not beating that.
Melissa: Mm-hmm.
BJ Barham: You can't even go see a show at Walnut Creek for 120 bucks anymore.
Melissa: You can barely go to a movie as a family of four. My family's five members. We can't even go to a movie for 120 bucks.
BJ Barham: Yeah. We just. Me and my wife and daughter went to the movies yesterday and it was like 75 bucks for three seats. Yeah. And concessions, and went and saw Lilo and Stitch.
Melissa: I was about to guess it's gotta be Lilo and Stitch.
Oh yeah. Yeah. We saw, yeah. I wanna see that one. You mentioned Grand Ole Opry, which is kind of the pinnacle for country artists. Yeah. You've also been written about in Rolling Stone, which is seemingly the pinnacle for rock and roll artists.
BJ Barham: For sure.
Melissa: You've appeared on PBS for the caverns sessions. Former Raleigh Mayor Mary Maryanne Baldwin proclaimed the [00:36:00] first weekend of February road trip to Raleigh weekend.
Now you've just hit the road again for yet another American tour. What else is on your vision board? Because, and can I see your vision board because it's all seems to all be coming True.
BJ Barham: I get to, I get to do this summer we get to play our first football stadium. We're excited. Where will that be? It is gonna be in Waco, Texas at McLean Stadium.
50,000 people.
Melissa: Speaking of booming Waco,
BJ Barham: Waco, I mean, thanks Chip and Joe. Chip and Joanna. Yeah, come on. The
Melissa: Gaines family.
BJ Barham: Yeah. Some buddies of ours, a band called Cross Canadian Ragweed is reuniting and they're only doing a couple shows and they're massive shows. And so the one in Texas is at Waco.
So it's us Wade Bowen, Shane Smith, and the Saints Turnpike, troubadours and Crosscut and ragweed. And they, they sold it, sold out in less than a day, 50,000 people. So I've never played in front of that many people in a football stadium. So I'm excited. Last year we checked off Red Rocks and that was a big bucket list for us, and we finally got to check that off.
I. Yeah, it's, it's, it's funny 'cause [00:37:00] everything I put on my vision board of, you know, it might take five or six more years, but it, it's been coming true and I've been very,
Melissa: somebody sprinkled some fairy dust on that vision board. I'm,
BJ Barham: look, I, I, and it doesn't escape me how, how fortunate I am to, to. Live the life I live and and, and have found success in a business that not a lot of people find success.
You know, the, this business is a nine, it has a 99% fail rate. The music business has a 99% fail rate, and every, it's, every day there's people lining up to, to try their, try their hand at it. And so I'm, I'm very fortunate that in a business where a lot of people walk away humbled I get to say that I've been here for 20 years and I'm still finding success in it, which is a.
I, I not a day goes by where I don't count the stars.
Melissa: Well, I could talk to you for another hour. There's a lot to cover, but it is time for our What's up, Roundup, where I ask a lightning round series of questions. The first one might be a little bit tricky. I read that local businesses have started to partner with [00:38:00] you during road trip to Raleigh, such as trophy brewing.
They're making a tough folks beer, or I guess they did this past, this past festival. Black and white coffee, made a cheer, wine inspired soda coffee. What is another North Carolina themed product you would like to see at the festival one day?
BJ Barham: Gotta warn Anita. Gonna have a Bojangles.
Melissa: I was wondering if it's gonna be a food theme, because you've got the drinks covered.
Whoa. Now, and I was thinking barbecue or Krispy Kreme, but
BJ Barham: yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm tired of seeing the Travis Scott meals at McDonald's. We need the BJ Barn meal at Bojangles. Oh, oh, come on, Bojangles. At, at least for a week. We need we need to push 'em in that direction. But I would love, you know, that's a
Melissa: great idea.
I
BJ Barham: would love to team up with Bojangles. For this last record, we teamed up with Duke's mayonnaise and they sponsored this last tour. And that's, you know, my, my Memaw would be very, very proud of me. Yeah, you gotta have big If she could, if she could have seen that. But Bo Jams, I can
Melissa: spot an outsider a mile away.
If they're not using Duke's mayonnaise. They don't know what they're doing. [00:39:00] No, they gotta go. If it ain't Duke, I don't trust them. Ift, I
BJ Barham: don't trust them. If it ain't Duke's ain. A sandwich. Yeah,
Melissa: and you can have the, the Bojangles and dip it in Duke's spanning, there you go. You have toured all over the country playing more than 4,000 shows in nearly every state, but you remain a North Carolina guy like we talked about.
If you had to live in another city or town, which one would you choose?
BJ Barham: Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Melissa: Oh, talk about random. Yeah. I thought you were gonna say Nashville
BJ Barham: Random. I, I, I, I'm in Nashville probably five or six times a month. I, I'm good with Nashville. Okay. I'm good. I like it. You'll stay on. I love, I love it.
We play the rhyme in auditorium in Nashville. I love going to Nashville. I don't wanna live in Nashville.
Melissa: Why Santa Fe?
BJ Barham: Santa Fe is one of the most magical places I've ever been. Me and my wife go there a couple times a year. And just kind of decompress and get away from everything. It's a really big, kind of like funky art scene out there.
Nobody bothers you. You can kind of disappear into the high desert. It's beautiful. Before we had kids, [00:40:00] we were very quickly talking about moving out there, but. I'll always have a place in North Carolina, but eventually when the kid goes to college, we will also have a place out in Santa Fe to,
Melissa: so that's in like the, the far corner of the vision board?
BJ Barham: Yeah, it, Santa Fe will be where I end up having like a retirement place, but I'll always have a place in Raleigh. 'cause you know, state games. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't, that's one part
Melissa: of the conversation we didn't get into. You were a, a student. We don't student, we don't have enough time student, we don't have enough time.
But you're still a, a big time Wolf Pack fan. So I, I, I knew I was gonna like you. If you could share the stage with one other band or musician, past or present, who would it be?
BJ Barham: Bruce Springsteen. That's easy. Good one. Good answer. That's easy. Bruce is, Bruce is my guy. He is the reason I play music. He's the reason I started a band.
He is the reason I try to tell stories that resonate with people. Bruce is not only one of my favorite musicians, he's one of the most outspoken musicians about what he believes in. Whether you agree with him or not the [00:41:00] the fortitude that it takes to, to speak up in dark times is, is very impressive.
And we're seeing that on display now. We're seeing why he's called the boss.
Melissa: Okay. You can't say Bruce to this next question.
BJ Barham: Okay.
Melissa: Who is your dream road trip to Raleigh Guest Act?
BJ Barham: Oh man, that's tough.
Melissa: Although I would love to see Bruce Springsteen. Bruce.
BJ Barham: Bruce will be good. My buddy Tyler Childers, I would love to see Tyler come up and play it.
Melissa: You can make that happen, right?
BJ Barham: We've came close a few times. Okay. But Tyler is, is on my list of we tried to catch him right before that, that rocket ship took off and now he's, that rocket ship's taken off and it's gone
Melissa: one
BJ Barham: one of these days. We'll get him back here.
Melissa: Alright, Tyler, if you're listening, clear your schedule for February.
BJ Barham: Yeah, he's he is been an old friend of mine like 10 years ago. You know, there was a bill and every time we used to go up to Huntington, West Virginia, we'd play and he'd always be the opener. And so I've got posters of Tyler Childers, some other band that's never gonna be heard of again, and then us for $5 that [00:42:00] nobody would wanna come to.
Now it's, it's funny 'cause now he's just kind of a household name, especially in the songwriting. Yeah. And he seems like
Melissa: a nice guy too. He's
BJ Barham: the sweetheart. Just salt to the earth guy. Cares about people. And we got a, we haven't announced it yet, but we got a show coming up with him and Chris Stapleton.
Melissa: Oh, great.
BJ Barham: Coming up in in, in September I think it is. So
Melissa: that's a heck of a list right there. Just
BJ Barham: a good guy who always remembers where he is from and that's a, that's a plus Also another guy in recovery.
Melissa: Please tell us where we can follow you, where we can find your tour dates. I, I, I'll, I wanna add, you've got an amazing line of merchandise.
Thanks. I was kind of hoping you'd bring me a t-shirt today, because I was looking at the T-shirts last night on your website and they're amazing. Yeah. Do you design them yourself?
BJ Barham: I approve everything. We got a company, we got a company outta Roanoke, Virginia called Press, press Merch. Shout out to those guys.
One of
Melissa: them is Bojangles related tshirt. One of them shirt a, Bojangles
BJ Barham: T we've ripped off a lot of North Carolina stuff. We got a Food Lion shirt, some, I saw the Food Lion shirt as well. Yep. Some Bojangles, some Earnhardt stuff. Yeah, there's a company up in [00:43:00] Roanoke, Virginia called Press, press Merch, and they do all of our merch design.
I send them an idea and then they just send me like the greatest version of that idea back. And we've worked together for the last 10 years and really kind of took over the merch game. I'm very, very proud of that partnership 'cause they just, they constantly deliver.
Melissa: And what is your website with all the tour dates?
BJ Barham: You can check out the main website, which is american aquarium.com. That's got the store, that's got the tour dates, it's got all the info you need on social media, facebook.com/american Aquarium at instagram.com/american Aquarium. Twitter's the weird one. It's US Aquarium. Just 'cause American Aquarium was 16 letters and they don't let you to use 16 letters.
And then TikTok is American Aquarium as well. So wherever you decide to doom scroll you can find us.
Melissa: Thank you so much. It was really, really great meeting you. Good you and good luck on your tour.
BJ Barham: Thanks a ton for having me on. Appreciate y'all.
[00:44:00]