Music Connection (September 1996)

Kristen Barry

by Tom Kidd

The story of how 26-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist Kristen Barry came to sign with Virgin Records in early 1995 actually begins long ago. The seeds that would become Barry's debut, The Beginning, The Middle, The End, were planted in Seattle, where Barry grew up. That's also where both her manager, Kelly Curtis, and his better known client, Pearl Jam, grew up. "There's something to be said for going with someone you know." says Barry, "He's stuck by me."

Seattle is never far from Barry's thoughts. Besides the songs on her full-length CD, she can also be heard on the recent Home Alive compilation, a benefit record for a Seattle-based community project advocating self-defense awareness.

Curtis stuck by her, and also helped, first landing Barry a development deal with Epic in 1991. She'd known friends who worked for the label, and they took her tape inside. But the label kept trying to hook Barry up with other songwriters, which didn't sit well with anyone involved with the project. Barry thought she should be writing songs the same way she did when they signed her - alone.

That's what Kaz [Utsunimoya, Executive VP of A&R; at Virgin Records] thought, too. He was working at Virgin's publishing company, when Epic approached him looking for other writers. "He said he didn't know why I needed other writers, but kept my tape," Barry says.

Virgin Publishing next entered the game, approaching Barry with a publishing deal, but she wasn't interested. She really wanted to sing and writer her own songs. "I could have co-written some hits and had a song on the radio, but I just wouldn't have been happy," she says.

Just when it looked like nothing was going to happen, Kaz ran into Curtis on a New York City street. He remembered Barry from four years previous, still liked her, and was now in a position to take her into the label as an artist. Suddenly, everything fell into place.

Now that she's signed, Barry's not disappointed that it took so long. "I'm glad nothing came of that," she says, "because I thought it was too early. The time allowed me to grow, to do something that is all me."