The Weed Garden

We listened, and we liked what we heard! We've selected "Anchors" as the Song of the Day for December 28th. - FM102x.com

We listened, and we liked what we heard! We've selected "Anchors" as the Song of the Day for December 28th. - FM102x.com

...a very obvious, unique flavor and vibe. The soft vocal delivery is well done and sounds fantastic. This has a lot of cool elements... - Billboard.com

...a very obvious, unique flavor and vibe. The soft vocal delivery is well done and sounds fantastic. This has a lot of cool elements... - Billboard.com

A Penn State School of Music professor
is donating the proceeds of a solo concert he
will perform to the Centre County Women’s
Resource Center, a not-for-profit organization
that assists women in abusive relationships.
Paul Barsom is leaving behind violins,
timpanies and the other instruments on
which he built his career as a concert music
composer, bringing only an acoustic guitar
and a microphone to his April 5 gig at
Webster’s Café in State College.
“I think I’m at heart just a rock musician,”
he told Voices. “But I happen to be also
good enough at doing classical music to
somehow manage to make some kind of a
profession out of it.”
Although his classical compositions have
been performed in major cities and universities
across the nation, this will be the first
time Barsom performs solo before a State
College audience. He’ll be debuting a peck
of original rock songs—which he describes
as sounding like “prog rock masquerading
as indie-pop.”
“I’ve been in this community for 20 years
now,” he said, “and there are lots of people
who know me and don’t know what I do as
a musician. I want to share what I’ve been
doing the last four years.”
Barsom said he planned to pursue rock
music from the beginning, but the demands
of family life and his day job got in the way.
Only after a sabbatical did the 47-year-old
have time to devote to creating popular
music.
“By the time I was in my early 20s I had
pretty much stopped playing any kind of
rock or pop music,” he said. “I concentrated
on all the academic music I’d been doing. I
just didn’t feel like I had the time to invest
in it to really do something like this. It’s
only now coming to a point where I can.”
Plus, he said, only recently has he
become artistically prepared for this undertaking.
“If I had done this 20 years ago, it
would have been kind of lame,” he said.
His decision to donate proceeds to
CCWRC was “not a deliberative process at
all; it just came to mind,” he said.
“This organization is indispensible,” he
continued. “We would just be a less civilized
society if we didn’t have it. There’s so
many things in this community that have
given me the opportunity to cultivate this
project. Any chance I have to take any of
the resources I get from that, and put them
back in the community where they could do
something worthwhile, why not?”
Anne Ard, executive director of CCWRC,
said although her organization covers the
majority of its operating costs with federal
and local government subsidies, donations
are more important now than ever.
“[Private donations are] absolutely critical,
especially as funds from the state and
federal sources get tighter and tighter,” she
wrote in an email. “We use the funds
raised locally to fill in those gaps.”
“I think it is really great when people use
their gifts and skills to find unique ways to
support victims of domestic and sexual violence,”
she said. “We could not do this work
without them.”
As much as this concert will benefit
CCWRC, Barsom’s music also has a lot to
gain from it. He said the songs as they
appear on his Web site, www.paul
barsom.com, are rough drafts; some of their
components having been virtually improvised.
“To me those recordings sound incredibly
raw and rudimentary,” he said, adding that
he realized the songs needed time to “season
and develop a personality.”
“It doesn’t sound like they’ve really
gelled yet,” he said. “So I thought the only
way I can get to that point, especially on the
guitar parts, is to create some sort of solo
version and play them.”
Barsom’s music is a fresh variety of indie
rock, crisp and tasty, with all the complexity
one would expect of a highly educated
concert composer—and of course, it’s
locally grown. He said he draws influence
from all corners of the musical world, from
the exotic complexity of Balinese Gamelan
to the jarring simplicity of The Sex Pistols.
“It’s probably not going to be like anything
people expect or maybe ever even
really heard before,” he said. “Whatever
they think they’re going to hear when they
come, it’s not what they’re going to hear.”
He said his array of musical influences
often surface as a single passage, which in
no way resembles its creative source.
“There’s one little moment in one song
where it’s just two chords played with a
slide that comes from an Aaron Copland
ballet,” he said in illustration. “I know it’s
not the same note, it’s not the same music.
It’s a gesture and the intent of the whole
thing is right out of ‘Rodeo.’”
Apart from his body of original work,
Barsom will perform about an hour of covers.
His concert will begin at 8 p.m. with
tickets costing $5 - Voices of Central Pennsylvania

A Penn State School of Music professor
is donating the proceeds of a solo concert he
will perform to the Centre County Women’s
Resource Center, a not-for-profit organization
that assists women in abusive relationships.
Paul Barsom is leaving behind violins,
timpanies and the other instruments on
which he built his career as a concert music
composer, bringing only an acoustic guitar
and a microphone to his April 5 gig at
Webster’s Café in State College.
“I think I’m at heart just a rock musician,”
he told Voices. “But I happen to be also
good enough at doing classical music to
somehow manage to make some kind of a
profession out of it.”
Although his classical compositions have
been performed in major cities and universities
across the nation, this will be the first
time Barsom performs solo before a State
College audience. He’ll be debuting a peck
of original rock songs—which he describes
as sounding like “prog rock masquerading
as indie-pop.”
“I’ve been in this community for 20 years
now,” he said, “and there are lots of people
who know me and don’t know what I do as
a musician. I want to share what I’ve been
doing the last four years.”
Barsom said he planned to pursue rock
music from the beginning, but the demands
of family life and his day job got in the way.
Only after a sabbatical did the 47-year-old
have time to devote to creating popular
music.
“By the time I was in my early 20s I had
pretty much stopped playing any kind of
rock or pop music,” he said. “I concentrated
on all the academic music I’d been doing. I
just didn’t feel like I had the time to invest
in it to really do something like this. It’s
only now coming to a point where I can.”
Plus, he said, only recently has he
become artistically prepared for this undertaking.
“If I had done this 20 years ago, it
would have been kind of lame,” he said.
His decision to donate proceeds to
CCWRC was “not a deliberative process at
all; it just came to mind,” he said.
“This organization is indispensible,” he
continued. “We would just be a less civilized
society if we didn’t have it. There’s so
many things in this community that have
given me the opportunity to cultivate this
project. Any chance I have to take any of
the resources I get from that, and put them
back in the community where they could do
something worthwhile, why not?”
Anne Ard, executive director of CCWRC,
said although her organization covers the
majority of its operating costs with federal
and local government subsidies, donations
are more important now than ever.
“[Private donations are] absolutely critical,
especially as funds from the state and
federal sources get tighter and tighter,” she
wrote in an email. “We use the funds
raised locally to fill in those gaps.”
“I think it is really great when people use
their gifts and skills to find unique ways to
support victims of domestic and sexual violence,”
she said. “We could not do this work
without them.”
As much as this concert will benefit
CCWRC, Barsom’s music also has a lot to
gain from it. He said the songs as they
appear on his Web site, www.paul
barsom.com, are rough drafts; some of their
components having been virtually improvised.
“To me those recordings sound incredibly
raw and rudimentary,” he said, adding that
he realized the songs needed time to “season
and develop a personality.”
“It doesn’t sound like they’ve really
gelled yet,” he said. “So I thought the only
way I can get to that point, especially on the
guitar parts, is to create some sort of solo
version and play them.”
Barsom’s music is a fresh variety of indie
rock, crisp and tasty, with all the complexity
one would expect of a highly educated
concert composer—and of course, it’s
locally grown. He said he draws influence
from all corners of the musical world, from
the exotic complexity of Balinese Gamelan
to the jarring simplicity of The Sex Pistols.
“It’s probably not going to be like anything
people expect or maybe ever even
really heard before,” he said. “Whatever
they think they’re going to hear when they
come, it’s not what they’re going to hear.”
He said his array of musical influences
often surface as a single passage, which in
no way resembles its creative source.
“There’s one little moment in one song
where it’s just two chords played with a
slide that comes from an Aaron Copland
ballet,” he said in illustration. “I know it’s
not the same note, it’s not the same music.
It’s a gesture and the intent of the whole
thing is right out of ‘Rodeo.’”
Apart from his body of original work,
Barsom will perform about an hour of covers.
His concert will begin at 8 p.m. with
tickets costing $5 - Voices of Central Pennsylvania