LATEST NEWS
July 24, 2008
And now for a bit of closure...
Somehow this website still gets some traffic, which is odd since I haven't really done much with it save for the occasional news update for about two years...whoever you people are, you rock. I'm busier than ever, but these days my creative energies go towards teaching. My concerts nowadays are typically reserved for my students...yeah I can't sing them too many of my songs for obvious reasons but they sure are the most enthusiastic audience I've encountered. They love that Crawdad Song!
So if you've stumbled into this website, welcome. I don't know when I'll record another album, but there's still some fun to be had in the other stuff I have on here I guess. I hope the old songs bring you some joy, some inspiration, or maybe you'll think they suck so bad that you'll shut your computer off and go play some catch with your dad...that's a good thing too ya know.
I'll be writing, producing and directing our school's first-ever elementary play in the coming spring, so keep your eyes peeled for the fliers. I'm also working on a new kids' instructional guitar songbook and I will be putting some community film and jam nights together soon. So if you live in the greater Cream City area, here's to hoping we bump into each other soon. If not, enjoy the old songs and whenever I decide to record something I'll put it up here.
But don't hold your breath. ;)
-B
August 25, 2007:
New links and other stuff...
I added a few new websites to the LINKS page. Whether or not my site leaves you dry, I promise those other sites will soak you to the bone! (Hmmm...that sounds way cheesy when I type it but if I say it out loud it sounds funny...say that last sentence out loud and it'll sound more appropriate.)
In other news, YOUR President has recently given more greenlights to Mountain Top Removal. Well, we'll show him! With a goddamn BUMPER STICKER, that is!! Or at least a flier. Go to Mountain Justice Summer and start passing out some fliers and get people educated. As I said last time, if more people knew what was going on in Appalachia we'd be seeing a lot more fat cats' heads stuck on poles in the city squares while the peasants went about begging for bread and cabbage. On that note, read up and get educated and let's organize a demonstration!!
Lastly, there's a new film that just debuted at the Times Cinema here in Milwaukee that is one of the better political satires I've seen in a LONG time, which of course means that it must be a Troma film! Yep, yer friend and mine Lloyd Kaufman has just released POULTRYGEIST: NIGHT OF THE CHICKEN DEAD, a scathing horror comedy that manages to satirize the fast food industry better than the FAST FOOD NATION film ever could. Word is that Lloyd had to pay for a lot of this movie out of his own pocket so let's make sure he can pay the rent and keep making more movies that feature hillbillies screwing chicken carcasses! Go to the film's website and then call your local indie movie theater (or even one across state lines that you'd be willing to make the drive to) and tell them to carry POULTRYGEIST!
I move into a new place next week and I will not have a computer with me. Therefore, updates to this site will--as always--be few and far between but I've been writing some new stuff and I'm going to be playing a few shows in the fall so keep checking every so often and take care!
August 12, 2007
Much News To Report!
Well it's been several months since my last news posting so here's some quick notes:
Bedtime Stories For Crazy People, performed at the Beaverdam Theater in Asheville this past May, was a great success and proved that the parents of America are ready for children's plays that feature rednecks selling their souls! This is the part of the news posting where I would give a link to some of the press we got but all the Gannett news sites seem to require you to pay a damn fee just to see their articles if they're more than a few weeks old…sorry. Hopefully one of these days I'll create an ARTICLES link and scan some stuff to go on there…
A belated congratulations to my old friend Tony Palmeri, who recently won a term on the Oshkosh City Council! I've heard Tony say many times that Midwest politics are changing for the worse, but ah hell, if a person like Tony can attain political office in a place like Oshkosh, that's yet another reason to have plenty of hope for mankind…
Speaking of the Midwest, I'm back in it! As of June 2007, I have returned to Milwaukee to take up a teaching job in the inner city. Just like in Asheville, I don't plan on performing too many solo shows-rather, I'm much more up for the idea of jamming and if you are also so inclined come on down to the Bremen Café every 2nd + 4th Wednesday…there's a slew of good jams around here but that's my fav so far and I would be happy to have more clogging partners.
I wrote a new bio to replace the one I wrote (with the occasional yearly updates) in 2003. But if you still want to read the smartassed-to-the-nth-degree old bio, knock yourself out-they're both available to read on the BIO page.
Since it's no secret that I hate doing web page stuff, I thought it might be easier if I created a myspace page…in many ways it's actually more of a pain but if you want to see it check it out on www.myspace.com/barrywebersucks. Be forewarned that I don't log on much and there's nothing on my myspace site that you can't get here but if you're a myspace addict knock yourself out.
Political stuff: this October the FCC is "opening the window," so to speak, for the first time in seven years. This is YOUR chance to get together with a group of other concerned citizens and organize a local FM station!! Just put out fliers everywhere for a meeting, get organized, and have a few local benefit shows to get your funds together. Go to radioforpeople.org. for more information. NOW! Don't bitch about how much radio in your town sucks-check out that website and this Democracy Now! segment and get started on getting some great radio going in your area!!
More political stuff: Mountain top removal is like clogging in Appalachia--if you live there, your world is deeply affected by it and if you don't, you probably have no idea what it is. In a word, mountain top removal sucks. To sum it up, mountain top removal means blowing off the top of a mountain to get coal--it took millions of years to form, but within days an entire mountain is destroyed for good. I think a lot more of America would be outraged if citizens knew what was going on--please check out this website and this youtube entry for more info. Pass the links on, write local and federal authorities, and head on down south and attend a demonstration!!
Thanks as always for visiting; most of you know I hate taking time to update
this website but hopefully I'll have another posting sooner than later. As always,
if there are any new gigs or music or whatever I will post it here post haste..lord
knows I need to get some new pics on here as well!
December 21, 2006:
BLUE COLLAR SONGS FOR WHITE COLLAR ANARCHISTS is out now!
Hope you like it! Right now I've added all the mp3s along with lyrics and chords...if there are any bugs please let me know. Merry Christmas and enjoy the new mp3s--CLICK HERE to go straight to the BCS4WCA page and git started downloading!
November 22, 2006:
Final track listing for the new album!
Well folks, I have just finished the final mix of the new cd and the track listing has changed slightly; here is the final listing for BLUE COLLAR SONGS FOR WHITE COLLAR ANARCHISTS:
1. I Don't Want Your Millions
2. Leave This Town
3. Gonna Drink This Job Away
4. Minimum Wage
5. Man From Evansville
6. Hard Luck Blues
7. Poser Anarchists
8. You'll Never Get To Heaven
9. John Henry
I also am delaying the release date by six days to November 30th. The mixing took longer than expected and frankly since it's the holidays, I'd rather spend some time with the family than work on getting all the MP3s up by the 24th. It's 2:30 AM as we speak and I still have early xmas presents to wrap for the relatives I only get to see at Thanksgiving so I'm sorry for the delay but hopefully you'll find the album worth the wait!! Have a good holiday and check back here next week on NOVEMBER 30th to download the whole album for FREE!!
November 12, 2006:
New album coming soon and Barry has—I mean, I HAVE stopped writing my news updates in pretentious third person!
Hi everyone! Yeah, I know I haven’t updated this website in a long time, and it hasn’t been because there’s nothing new to say—it’s just that right now I don’t have a working computer and the public library doesn’t like it when I download website documents onto their desktop. Today I snuck into one of the computer labs at the friendly neighborhood university and their web stuff is totally different than what I’m used to…so if everything is messed up right now, I will hopefully fix it when I have a working computer in the next couple of weeks.
But as for the big news, I have a new album about to be released that I recorded in Madison County in early October 2006. The working title is BLUE COLLAR SONGS FOR WHITE COLLAR ANARCHISTS and it’s basically an album made to help get folks through their workday blues, ie, songs to sing as you fantasize about hitting your boss with a piece of heavy mining equipment. There are some songs on here that I’ve been singing live for years but never recorded and a few spanking new ones I just recently put together. Here is the current track listing:
1. I Don’t Want Your Millions
2. Leave this Town
3. Sweet Morphine ‘Fore I Die
4. Minimum Wage
5. Gonna Drink This Job Away
6. Hard Luck Blues
7. Poser Anarchists
8. You’ll Never Get to Heaven
9. John Henry
As always, the album will be available for free in MP3 format on this ol’ website shortly—right now, I’m saying the release date will be November 24, 2006. I am picking this day because it’s that infamous Adbusters BUY NOTHING DAY and I figger I can do my irrelevant, arm-chair activist part to help by encouraging my five fans to stay at home and download a whole lousy album for free as opposed to going to Best Buy and getting a really good album for $14.95. I also recorded a lot of extra stuff during the October sessions that I will also probably have available to download, including updated versions of “Suburban USA” and “I’m Coming Home” because frankly anytime I hear my 2003 “Bush” recordings my teeth kinda itch.
Finally, there’s a lot on this website that is really out of date, so over the next month or so I’m going to try to write a new bio and fix quite a few things that were funny and cute when I wrote them in 2004 but are now just kind of embarrassing. All this being said, thank you all for continuing to come to this site to get your folk fix and check back around November 24th, when the new album will be (metal singer voice) UNLEASHED!!
May 13, 2006:
Come see THE EMPEROR'S NEW SAUSAGE!
On May 24, 25, and 26th, the Beaverdam Players will present the children's play THE EMPEROR'S NEW SAUSAGE, written and directed by Barry Weber. Below is the official press release, please come if you can make it:
THE EMPEROR’S NEW SAUSAGE:
THIS AIN’T YOUR DADDY’S SCHOOL PLAY!!
Most of the time, children’s plays are a charming affair, treating their audience to an evening of adorable antics and harmless fluff. But just ask the Beaverdam Players--the North Asheville YMCA Afterschool’s Cutting-Edge Drama Group--about being cute, and they’ll stare at you like you had caterpillars crawling out of your nostrils. From May 24 through May 26 at the Beaverdam YMCA, the Players will proudly present The Emperor’s New Sausage, an all-ages production that promises to be anything but a traditional children’s play.
The Emperor’s New Sausage marks the Beaverdam Players’ third production, following their circus sideshow Freakamania Extravaganza in November 2005 and a radical take on The Three Little Pigs in April 2005. Loosely based on the popular story The Emperor’s New Clothes, The Emperor’s New Sausage is set in the kingdom of Latisha, where the current ruler, Emperor Kielbasa, has passed a law forcing Latisha’s people to wear sausages around their necks at all times. While most conform to this horrible law, a family of activist tailors decide to play a trick on the Emperor that results in him wearing an “invisible sausage” to the horror of the public. As Kielbasa begins to question his own motives, Latisha’s people find themselves at a moral crossroads: follow the laws no matter how ridiculous they are, or listen to their own hearts and stand up to their rulers when they feel their rights are being violated.
Over 25 elementary-age children from Western North Carolina are acting in this production, along with several others who are working hard behind the scenes. Having full-scale productions of any kind in an afterschool setting makes for quite a lot of sacrifices and hard work, but the Beaverdam Players are out to prove that they are anything but ordinary. So if you and your children would like to witness the antics of such mystifying characters as Lady Bratwurst, Cell Phone Steve, and Ms. Tater the Mutant Potato, all you have to do is come to the YMCA facility on Beaverdam Road in North Asheville (corner of Beaverdam + Kimberly) on May 24th, 25th or 26th (Wed thru Friday) at 7pm. Admission is free, though there will be an art auction before each show in which all money raised will go towards improving the afterschool campus. For more information, contact Barry Weber at weber@barryweber.net.
March 19, 2006:
Song Revisions!
When Barry was playing shows in late 2005, he performed updated versions of SUBURBAN USA and HARD TIME IN THIS LAND OF MINE. The revised lyrics for both songs are now available on this site by going to the ALBUMS page.
January 15, 2006:
Have yer kids learn to play guitar with SONGS OF HOPE AND FRENCH FRIES!
Barry has been very busy lately working on his next children's play, THE EMPEROR'S NEW SAUSAGE, and of course writing new songs when he can. In the meantime, he is teaching a guitar-playing class for several elementary school kids. To make the class less pain-inducing, Barry has compiled a how-to songbook entitled SONGS OF HOPE AND FRENCH FRIES specifically designed to teach youngsters how to play the geetar. If you have a kid who wants to learn (or if YOU want to learn for that matter), simply click HERE for the Works document--yeah, it's in Microsoft Works...sorry.
Nonetheless, what you get is instructions on the chords G, C9, D, A, E, Am, C, F, Em and B7 (essentially everything you need to play most any song out there) as well as full chord listings for some of the bestest American trad songs ev-ah including "The Midnight Special," "Crawdad Hole" and "900 Miles From Home." Now keep in mind this is NOT for sale--as it stands, some of these songs are probably copyrighted, and several of the pictures might have trouble loading. Hell, this was typed on an old 90s PC so the whole dang thing might end up bad upon download (if it does shoot an email por favor). So what we're saying is DON'T NOBODY FREAK OUT--this is merely a tool to help kids learn to pick an instrument besides their noses. Enjoy!