Southern Folk Artist:

William Barnes was planted in the culturally fertile, musically rich soil of Montgomery, AL in 1978 at the geographic crossroads of the southern music scene and at a crossroads in time for American society. Barnes grew up immersed in socially-intertwined soulful music and started making his own at age ten. Through some blistering summers, cruel winters and occasional dormant seasons, he has consistently born good musical fruit at harvest since first growing “music to eat” for a living in 1993.

For William, music is life, or at least his preferred way of interacting with the world around him: “Hearing music shapes my thoughts in a beautiful way, and I attempt to shift the atmosphere around me in this same direction when I play. Playing music heals me… and hopefully others as well.” He began working as a musician & bandleader at the age of fourteen and is still going strong 30 years later as a composer, producer, performer, educator and advocate for all things innovative and soulful.

Barnes has been blessed to make beautiful music with lifelong friends, old-world masters and new-era mavericks of all stripes and genres. Through frequent detours, long scenic routes, steep hills and low valleys, he always finds his way home, with a big bag of joyful noise in tow. If you wander down the long and winding musical road-less-traveled in search of fertile soil for long enough, odds are: you’ll find him there… manning a tiller.