Artist-in-Residence: Justin Barra, MPP ’10
by Victoria Criado, Editor-in-Chief on March 11, 2009 in Culture
Justin Barra is a first year MPP student studying education policy. He spent the last six years in San Francisco working in education and playing with his band, Smith Point. The band has recorded two CDs, and its music has been featured on several national television shows and commercials.
Q: How did you get involved with music?
A: I started playing music when I was about seven years old. I went to see a symphony when I was a kid and I fell in love with the violin – I thought it was the coolest instrument and I asked my mother if I could play it. When I turned about 14, I figured out that girls liked Bon Jovi more than Vivaldi, so I picked up the guitar. In college I started taking it more seriously, and I met our current singer at Georgetown. After graduation in 2002, we decided to move out to San Francisco together to form this band, Smith Point, and see what would happen. We played for six years – I stopped right before coming to the Kennedy School in August 2008.
Q: How would you describe your band’s genre?
A: This is the one question you’re always supposed to have an answer to, but you never actually want to answer because you like to think that you are better than the bands that you would compare yourself to! I mean, who is U2 after all? So I never compare us to a band, but we had a few songs featured on the show One Tree Hill (it’s a teen-drama if you haven’t seen it, kind of like The O.C.) and the music typically featured on that show is exactly what we sound like – we are very user-friendly, pop-music – the kids like it.
Q: It seems your band was pretty successful – why are you at the Kennedy School instead of pursuing music full-time?
A: First, though I have always loved music, and I’ve always been playing music, it was never a career I wanted to get into. All the people that I knew that had made music their career and were extremely successful – 20 to 30 years later they weren’t all that fulfilled. I remember one time meeting the bass player that was touring with Alanis Morissette and had played with Jane’s Addiction and a number of other bands. When you think of a successful musician you would think of the career that this guy had had, and he was taking online math courses while on tour. He said he didn’t get any more thrill from music, so he really wanted to take these math courses and figure out these math problems! Second, I always felt that I could do something more worthwhile with my life. Music for me was always something selfish. I did it because I loved it, and I always thought education was much more important and a place where I could make a much bigger contribution. I guess that’s why we all come to the Kennedy School.
Q: What is your most memorable moment as a musician?
A: Because we were on a few TV shows, we had people that heard us across the country – places we’d never played – and literally every day we would get emails from them. I remember one girl in Kentucky who told us about how her mother had just passed away and how one of our songs helped her get through that period in her life – even though it was a song we wrote about a breakup with a girl. That was meaningful because you never expect to affect someone in that way, especially someone whom you’ve never met. But that is the great thing about music, that it can affect you in so many ways that you never expected. When I think of all the emotions I ever felt, they always emerged the most quickly through music – through hearing music, or writing music, or playing music.
Q: Do you miss playing?
A: I do miss playing every day – there’s nothing more fun than being able to get on stage and perform your music, especially when you get out on the road; it’s sort of like your parents are out of town and you get to stay up late to watch Conan.
Q: What do your parents think of your musical career?
A: My mom is extremely supportive – the first time we were on One Tree Hill she got together with all her retired friends in Florida and had a watching party! I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during that episode.
Q: Who have been your biggest musical influences?
A: The great thing about writing music is that you can draw influences from everywhere. I listened to as much Journey as I did TLC growing up and I like to think that you can hear both of them in our songs. But the reality is that you can probably hear neither.
Q: Has music helped you successfully navigate through the core courses here at the Kennedy School?
A: Playing in a band is like being in a relationship with 3 people at the same time. If you can survive dating 3 people, then you can survive any group project or class.
Q: Even Econometrics?
A: There is nothing that can prepare you for STATA.
Q: Tell us more about the name of your band “Smith Point.”
A: The singer and I went to school in D.C. and there was a bar called Smith Point that was a tad, well, elitist. You had to be on a list to get in and there was no sign outside. We didn’t care much for the bar, and we took the name to San Francisco as kind of an inside joke, thinking no one would know what it meant. A year later, it became the Bush twins’ favorite bar in D.C. and so it totally backfired on us. You had one of two people that would come up to you: people that loved the bar and so you had to pretend to like it as well or lose them as a fan, or people that hate the bar and judge you by the name of your band. So that didn’t work out so well.
Q: Give me a rundown of some of your band’s superlatives – best, worst, and most bizarre show.
A: The best was probably playing for Obama [at one of his fundraisers]. The worst show was playing for a car wash in Oakland, CA to about three drunken guys and a bikini-clad car washer. The most bizarre might be the time we played at a charity polo tournament in Maryland, where we literally played on a flat bed truck while the horses were running around. John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted and Miss Virginia were both competing in the polo tournament. As it turns out, horses get a little freaked out by electric guitars.
Q: Are your musical aspirations fulfilled or is there still something you want to achieve as a member of Smith Point?
A: If I could somehow play next year’s International Student’s Day, then that would be about all I need to accomplish.
Q: What is the best way for people to get to know more about your band, see you perform, and become your friend?
A: The best way to see us perform is to pay for our band to fly out; the best way to listen to us is by visiting http://www.smithpoint.com; and the best way to become my friend is to buy our CD on iTunes.
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