Local musician and graphic artist Derek Barber recently dropped by West of Twin Peaks Radio to chat with MJ about his solo project, Perhapsy, and new record, The Lost Paintings of Kathar. Barber, who is also a part of numerous local acts including Spacemoth, Mahwam, and Bells Atlas, found himself deeply contemplating the art of art, or more specifically, the singular act of creating art during the pandemic. His new LP is a result of exploring the muses of his own music and those of other artists.

Listen to the full interview here, and enjoy a few clips and quotes from the conversation below!

MJ: I listened to The Lost Paintings of Kathar several times before I read the liner notes, and it's interesting because my feeling about the album was authenticated, so to speak, by reading the notes. Can you explain to me and the listeners what the overall theme of the album is?

Derek: I think when I started writing the album, I didn't necessarily have a theme in mind. But as I usually do with albums, I write a fair amount of songs and kind of choose the ones that have something in common with each other. And it turned out that, this time around, some of the themes that were coming up were…sort of painters and the creative act. I like to do a lot of visual art myself, so that's something that I think about quite a bit. And my father was a pretty talented watercolor painter as well. So I think it just happened to be that some of those songs sort of fit together in a certain theme, kind of naturally.

The title track about that particular painter kind of came about as a two-part song: “The Lost Paintings of Kathar” and then I have another song called “The Found Paintings of Kathar.” So it’s a storyteller thing…a particular story I imagined. When I think about writing for an album, I think it's a little similar to a short story collection, you know what I mean? Some things bleed into each other, but it's not like a novel where everything is related, necessarily.

When did you start working on the songs that are on the album?

Almost all of them started at least a few months into the pandemic. I think that must have influenced how they were written a little bit, too. I wasn't playing a lot of music with other people at that time, like most people weren't, so I was very much just kind of in my own room and, you know, tooling around with ideas. Some of the songs are a little older than others. There's a few songs that I've written in the last year, like maybe the last six months, but then most of them are probably at least a couple years old.

Several of the songs actually reference painters that people may or may not recognize, but as I said, I listened to it a couple of times before I even read the liner notes. And what I was getting out of it beforehand is I felt you were exploring within yourself what it meant to be an artist. Because I feel the album is very personal, and I felt you were wondering…almost struggling to embrace defining yourself as an artist. Am I getting close?

That's relatively fair, yeah. I mean, I think almost everyone that does anything that's creative struggles a little bit with pursuing it and self identity and how do you carve out a space for yourself in the world that you're creating, so to speak. It’s something that I think about a lot. If I ever have doubts about what I'm doing or feel a little lost at times, it's also, like, the same thing that kind of brings me back to center base is the creativity thing. So it's always an ebb and flow, I feel, with doing anything creative. I think when you start to compare yourself to other artists, whether it be in painting or music or whatever it is, I find that if you do that too often, that's when you start to lose track of who you really are. You sort of get confused, or at least I do, when I start to compare myself. What I've found to be the case is that the less I do that and the more I just kind of try and follow the inner voice or whatever you want to call it, the better off you are.

I have talked to numerous musicians who said that during the pandemic they were struck deeply with “who am I if I can't perform music?” because everything was shut down. You're a touring guitarist, you're a music teacher, you're very involved in music. Do you think that with the shutdown of the world and your life as a musician, you were kind of questioning what to do as an artist if you couldn't spread your art?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, I feel like we're still figuring out what it means, you know, like, when that happened and how we're adapting to it. To be honest, I think that, for me, doing a lot of teaching and acting in a way that's not constantly on the road is a very healthy thing for me as a person. I know people that are on the road all the time. It's just tough, like, physically and mentally, so I've always kind of been okay with being more community based with what I work on and do. Unfortunately, and maybe this is a broader topic, but I think especially in this country, it's hard for artists to just have a life and career. People love art, people love music, but we don't really, as a society, at least in this country, really put our money where our mouths are. So I think that's a tough thing for people to have their livelihood based on; they have to really push themselves to the limits to just survive. It shouldn't be that hard.

The Lost Paintings of Kathar was released on cassette via Fountain Inc. and Friends of the Fountain Records

The song “Here” references your family, and it's like you're speaking to them about the choice of art as a path and not just a passion.

That song, when I was writing it, I was in kind of a tough place. I think it was just right before the pandemic hit. But that song was sort of a reminder to myself about…it always sounds silly talking about it explicitly…but looking back on it, I could say that it was just a reminder about what's important in my life and friends and family and people that care about me. It was just sort of like me re-centering things, like, what is here and what is around me and to not get too lost in thinking negative thoughts. Me, as well as a lot of my friends, struggle with depression occasionally, and sometimes music can be a nice way out of that.

What age were you when you intellectually, consciously said to yourself, “art is my path, music is my path”?

I don't know if I've ever had a moment where…I think it comes in small doses, maybe, where you just have a moment where you're like, “I just love this thing,” you know? There's no other thing that makes me feel as good as this, maybe. But I also associate that with the creative process in general, not just music or not just visual art, like I think it all comes from the same place, I really do. And I think that people would have better collaborations with other artists if they thought about that a little bit more.

Listen to the full interview to learn more about Derek’s hometown, how music factored into his upbringing, when he first picked up a guitar, his high school band, living in Nashville, how he got to the Bay Area, the music community here, and more.

The Lost Paintings of Kathar is out now.