At 17, Jack Barksdale has yet to get his driver’s license. But he’s got a good excuse. He’s been too busy navigating existentialism and the meaning of life and death.
The Fort Worth singer-songwriter and guitarist is a textbook example of an old soul, writing tunes about topics his peers won’t be thinking about for decades, if ever: “The End of Days,” “Martyrs,” “God Is Dead, I Am Dead, And So Are You” are three song titles from Voices, his latest album of somber country-folk.
It’s heavy stuff coming from a musician who until recently sang in the soft, high-pitched voice of a child. He’s been releasing records since he was 11, but now that his voice has dropped, Barksdale may be finally ready for prime time.
Truly Handmade Records, the label run by the estate of Texas folk legend Guy Clark, will issue Voices on June 13, and Barksdale will perform an album-release concert a day later at the Post in Fort Worth.
I caught up with Barksdale by phone from Fort Worth, where he’s homeschooled, before he left for a short tour of the East Coast. Our conversation has been edited for clarity.
You wrote your first songs before you turned 10. How’d you start so early?
My parents aren’t musicians, but they loved music. My mom’s an English major who has a passion for language and writing, so I was aware of cool words and I probably had a larger vocabulary younger in life than some people. That was definitely a big influence.
One year, for my birthday, I got Johnny Cash at Madison Square Garden, and I’d listen to that every night. I became like a little super fan. And then I started getting into Guy Clark and his tribute album, This One’s For Him, and the early recordings by Townes Van Zandt, like Our Mother the Mountain. At first, I didn’t quite grasp Townes entirely. But I was mesmerized by how he used language and how his songs were like little poems, just really beautiful and dark and interesting.
What inspired your new songs on Voices?
“The Man, The Myth, The Legend” is a mix of dark humor and satire. It’s basically just me making fun of myself and how I might come across. I thought it was a good way to start off the album, as sort of a preface.
I wrote “The Cost” about the meaninglessness of life. It takes more of a nihilist turn, whereas “Only Human” deals with many of the same things but goes more in an existentialist direction. Recently, I’ve been getting into the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. He has some really interesting writings about social rites and art and theater that have really influenced my songwriting on this album — especially Brecht’s ideas about the distancing effect (Verfremdungseffekt), where you make your ideas look strange to try to get your point across in a way that makes less assumptions.
Do you think that you process the world differently than other people your age because of your songwriting?
Maybe so. I have kind of a strange situation, which is that if I’m going to write a song and share it with as many people as I can, I want to make sure it’s true and I really am behind what I’m saying. I’m trying to be intentional, to dive into something and understand it as much as I can. So my (perspective) just comes with my songwriting and my situation. Everyone, in a big way, is just a product of their own circumstances.
“Song of the Artist” is a haunting tune. Is there a story behind it?
It was inspired by the sheer amount of stories about once-in-a-generation artists who died before public success could benefit them. Van Gogh is the famous example, right? But the song is an amalgam of all these different artists, from all sorts of art forms. There’s this cycle where we become obsessed with the artistic martyr, and while we’re obsessed, there are countless artists living today who are going through the same hardships.
Are you willing to put up with hardships to be a full-time musician?
I think I’m always going to write songs just because it’s a really fulfilling art form. But the music business … it’s not a good business. Society has a blind spot for artists, in a strange way: A lot of people want art in their lives, but it’s hard for artists to support themselves. You have to be really clever about how you go about it. I’m just trying to find that niche, that corner I can stay in. And if not, then I’ll have to get a more typical job and make (music) a side thing.
Your singing voice has lowered drastically in the last two years. How does that impact your music?
Yeah. The way I’ve approach things hasn’t changed much — I’ve been trying to write about these serious topics for a while. But there was kind of a disconnect listeners experienced, by hearing it through such a young-sounding voice. So I think, in a way, the voice dropping will be helpful for listeners. It takes away a layer of separation.
It’s not surprising when older songwriters write about mortality. But it’s unusual to hear a teenager singing about it.
Well, death is kind of a universal thing. We’re all going to experience it, right? It’s part of the human life trajectory. With a lot of the songs on this album, I was trying to understand life and a world without inherent meaning and the finite nature of existence. So it seems incomplete not to talk about (death), too.
A lot of people aren’t allowed the time to grapple with those things, to make sense of your surroundings — where you are, where you’ve been, where you’re headed. They have to worry about other things in life. I think if everybody was given the slack to be able to think about these things thoroughly and come to terms with everything, there would be a lot less stigma and fear about death and other hard realities.
Details
With opening act Verlon Thompson, 8 p.m., Saturday, June 14 at the Post, 2736 W. 6th St., Fort Worth. $25 and up. Tixr.com/groups/afallon
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