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The Niki Barr band is one of Maryland’s more interesting bands that blends pop power and rock passion to create a unique sound that’s all their own. I had the opportunity to chat with front woman, and namesake of the band, Ms. Niki Barr, and she gave me some great insight into what the bands been up to.

The band has a new EP that will be released shortly and if you are familiar with the band in any way, you might be surprised to hear some of their new material, which shows serious musical growth for the band and sees them touching on Electronic sounding rock, but don’t let that fool you, it’s still that’s got an edge, but is far less organic than the bands previous material and the particular song I am referring to, “Undivided”, is really an amazing track if I’m being totally honest with you, and Niki commented that,

“Honestly, that song, we wrote for an offer that we had to pitch to Playstation and we did that song in a matter of like a day and it was kinda like one of those songs were we just wrote it for this Playstation thing and the song ended up being pretty kick ass, so I’ve always been a fan of alot of the synthetic sounds, I have a keyboard that I’ve been bringing out to shows now because of writing alot of songs, it’s just the piano sound and I decided to kinda take it an extra step and try some more synthetic sounds and I think it’s just because it’s the stuff that I grew up on, like Depeche Mode, I was always influenced by that sound and I think there’s kinda of a lack of it right now, so we started to use it in our music.

I was curious if Niki was planning on writing more songs in that electro-rock kinda sound and Niki replied,

“I think so..I think it’s gonna be...we are gonna put out an EP and it’s only gonna be about 3 or 4 songs, but once we finally get around to making another record, I’d like to use alot more of that synthetic sound live, a little bit more machine sounding, but with the rock influence. It should be interesting, it seems to be how things are shaping.”

Another new Niki Barr Band song, “Enough” is probably the heaviest thing I’ve heard from the band...EVER, and I was wondering where that particular song came from, and Niki said,

Well, that’s a song that Island actually wrote, he started writing it first and Island is of course my lead guitarist, so we all kinda have that really heavy influence, I just never attempted it before, perhaps because that wasn’t the main sound that I knew growing up, so with all of us together, writing as a band, we find that there are other influences that come into these songs and they are apparent now more than ever and it’s cool because it’s sorta given me a release, like to be able to attempt something that is, or as I would say almost challenging because I’m so used to writing a certain way and this kinda opened up alot of new things for me.”

What I always found interesting about the Niki Barr Band is that they have alot of influences and with the new material, they cover alot of ground, musically, like there’s pop material, singer/song writer style stuff, and now there’s electronic elements and then some really heavy stuff, so sound wise, the band is all over the place. Niki commented,

“Yeah, we are all over the board..actually, I think that is the thing that is so ground breaking for us with this new record is we are really gonna pull it in and start to develop our own sound...we’ve always kinda been all over the place, we’re kinda of a young band and we’ve only been together for a couple of years, and before that, I was just a solo artist, I was a songwriter and it was just me and a guitar and I played music and then you’ve got the 4 of us all together with all these different influences and I think it’s finally starting to get pulled together into this real raw, dark, sorta synthetic rock sound.”

Having seen the Niki Barr Band most recently opening for rock icon’s The Cult, I was curious how it was to play shows with them, and Niki interjected,

“AMAZING! Being a musician and on the road, ourselves, all the time, we never get to see alot of live music, we never have time to do that at all so we always look forward to playing with other bands and it was like us in a candy shop, we walked in and it was like, Oh, this is awesome! The Cult is just one of those bands that, I hope that people haven't forgotten about them, I think they had a pretty good turn out here in Baltimore, we went on the road with them and those guys are just really sweet, they definitely have their whole English Diva thing about them and I guess that comes when you’ve been on the road for so long, but I think Ian is just an incredible performer, but it’s really eerie to watch him..you can totally see Jim Morrison in him so much and we got to actually hang out with them for a little bit which was wild because we look up to them.”

Niki Barr Band fans have an EP coming out shortly to look forward to, but I was also kinda curious when the full length CD was coming out, and Niki said,

“I think when he have the money (laughs) we will record the full length. Luckily, we have a studio here and we are recording the whole EP ourselves, which is another reason we are pretty excited about this, because it’s all us and for once, we are taking complete musical direction and production...we are doing it all ourselves which will be interesting, but the record..what we are hoping is, after we finish this EP, we’re hoping to get some indie label support and to be able to continue our touring and also complete a full length record, because it’s very time consuming and expensive and as much as bands hate to say that they hate to be on a label, sometimes it helps, it really does.”

The Niki Barr Band has actually done a decent amount of touring for an unsigned band, and I was curious if they had any touring plans to coincide with their EP release and Niki commented,

“Yes, we are heading down South, we have a couple of weeks in Key West believe it or not and we’ll be down there for Spring Break and that should be wild and we are kinda heading all the way down the coast and Georgia based, we are looking to come back up to Nashville, Knoxville, Tennessee, and then eventually heading back up to Ohio and of course New York, which we play every now and then. Believe it or not, in Baltimore, we have less of a response than we do everywhere else! I’m not really sure what it is, I mean I don’t know if it’s just our style maybe is a little different than what Baltimore is used to or is it that we just haven't really built it up enough in Baltimore, which is funny, because we live here, but to be honest, we don’t play nearly as much as we could and maybe we’re just kinda over saturated, because we do live here, but we are kinda like on the outskirts, like Virginia and DC alot, we just don’t hit Baltimore as much...maybe that’s it too..we just play alot in this area, but as soon as we hit the road, it’s like a completely different response, it’s really weird, and I’ve heard alot of local musicians in the Baltimore area say the same thing that they do better out in Texas or in Atlanta, but I don’t wanna give up on Baltimore though, because this is my home and I think there’s some really great, cool, underground stuff going on, I just really hope that Baltimoreans can come out and support the scene and support alot of the local bands

I asked Niki what other projects the band had going on and she eagerly told me about the bands forthcoming DVD.

“We are about to release a live DVD and it will probably come out around the same time..we have it finished, we just need to finish the artwork and get that finished up and I think we have some audio that we need to finish as well, we’ve done all these tours overseas for the military and our tours took us to like the Middle East and then like the far East and like Japan, and we took some video camera’s and recorded live shows and recorded live audio and there’s a few performances on there and then there’s also an interview with us talking about the tour and everything and that will be really cool to release as well because I don’t think anybody has any live performances recorded of us for purchase.”

If you enjoy a good, high energy rock n roll show that’s fresh, fun, and interesting, check out the Niki Barr band on January 17, 2008 when the band plays the 8 X 10 in Baltimore.

You can check out music, tour dates and all the latest news on the Niki Barr Band at: www.myspace.com/nikibarr or www.nikibarr.com

Tags: 8 X 10, Local Rock, Niki Barr Band, Pop