Venice Magazine (October 1996)
Kristen Barry
by Nicole Ronco
"I had my first band when I was 15, and I've been trying to make a record since then," says the very charming Kristen Barry. Now 26, the Seattle resident has finally gotten the chance to make her dream come true with her debut release, The Beginning. The Middle. The End. Listening to Barry's blistering "alternarock" rants, which blend the hooks of Juliana Hatfield with the smoldering anger of unheralded Casey Scott (the artist Barry is most reminiscent of), you can't help but wonder what took the music industry so long to wake up to Barry's ferocious talent. We can just be grateful that they did before it was too late.
After waiting 11 years for the opportunity, Barry almost never gave herself the chance to see it come true. She says there were many points where she was so discouraged she almost waved the white flag. The most serious of those times came when she was 24. "I called my manager and said, 'I can't do this anymore. I tried. I'm gonna' be 25 in a couple of months. I quit. I'm gonna' go back to school.' And he said to me, 'Okay, if that's what you wanna' do.'" Having not received the answer she was looking for, Barry was forced to say to herself, "Who am I kidding? I can't quit." She was blessed, or cursed, depending on who you ask, with a passion for music. She says of her yearning, "I'm a slave to it. I can't walk away from it." In reality, Barry's been waiting for this her whole life, or at least since she was five. That's when she started playing the piano. Since that point, it's been her life. She says, "I've always communicated through music. I'm much more articulate musically than verbally. Music is my one way of explaining myself."
It's easy to hear, in the fiery tone of The Beginning. The Middle. The End., the musician who says, "When I was a little kid, if I got in a fight with someone, I wasn't the one that was gonna' fight back. I would go down in the basement, to the piano, and talk it out there." She's still waging the war through music, on songs like the powerful "Gotta Go" and "Seeing Gun." But don't get the impression this is just another angry young musician. Despite the feistiness she exhibits on both her record and in concert, Barry maintains an engaging sense of youthful excitement about everything coming her way. Sort of like Alice wandering through Wonderland, Barry beams about her potential fans, "I'm really curious to see who shows up. I have no idea who my audience is."
