Barns Courtney

Guitar-smashing chart threat

I go out there and I play as loud and as hard as I can. I beat the thing with my fists...

Some guitarists widdle, some riff and some just want to smash the thing to splinters. The latter best describes songwriter Barns Courtney. “The way I play is pretty unorthodox,” he tells TG. “I go out there and I play as loud and as hard as I can. I beat the thing with my fists. If I lack technical proficiency, you know I’m going to make up for it with passion.”

This approach seems to be connecting. Ahead of the release of his debut Attractions Of Youth next month, the songwriter has already amassed nearly 14 million plays of his single Fire. Barns is not counting his chickens, yet though: his first band, Dive Bella Dive, signed to Island only to see their debut album shelved, leaving the songwriter with little more than an acoustic guitar and a diet of canned sardines. “I remember going to Co-op and the woman at the counter said to me, ‘Ah what, you ’avin a fish party?’” he laughs. “I was like, ‘No, I’m just poor…’”

Rather than wallow, Barns channeled his energy into recording new material with ex-bandmate Sam Berns, using found sounds and a knackered piano in lieu of bass or drum gear and, lacking an amp, distorting an acoustic with multiple re-tapings. Demons exorcised, the bombastic desperation of those recordings attracted his current label Virgin. Looking back, what possessed him to keep going?

“I think, when it’s in you, you don’t have a choice,” confesses Barns. “I love that Charles Bukowski poem So You Want To Be A Writer?, where he says: “Unless it burns like a sun in your gut – don’t do it!” That’s how I felt: like it was burning a hole through my gut and I had to get back into it.”

FOR FANS OF George Ezra, Mumford & Sons Gear Fender Blues Junior III