Overcoming Personal Trauma With Songwriting
When tragedy strikes, our emotions are often momentarily fixed in an air of confusion and grief. Moving forward, we attempt to recover, but doing so can be remarkably different for each of us.
For BJ Barham, tragedy would motivate the singer-songwriter to complete his album Birmingham, a personal meditation of abstract nostalgia on individuals and locations he lived amongst. During November 2015, Barham was in Belgium, only two hours away from the terrorist attacks which struck Paris.
In two days after the fateful attacks, Barham had begun and finished writing Birmingham. The solo LP features conceptual narratives which are fictional yet realistic in Barham’s eyes. He addresses the death of small towns in America, the misfortunes of the blue-collar worker, and even his daughter who was yet to be conceived with picturesque acoustic musings.
Clearly, he sees himself in these challenges, even if he did not actually face them at the time he was writing. Barham’s work is evidence that the abstractions of the past and the future can have a vivid effect on the songwriting of the present.
Fans can see Barham at Songbirds North in the Choo Choo Entertainment Complex this Saturday evening at 7 p.m., performing songs from Birmingham along with his band, American Aquarium