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Indie Outing: Land of Talk

Andrew Barr with Land of Talk

Indie-Jam Connection: The members of The Slip—Jambands.com’s first New Groove of the Month in 1998—have hovered over the great indie/jam divide for a number of years. The genre-jumping group provided an even more direct bridge from Canada’s tight knit indie rock community to Boston’s fertile Berklee-inspired jazz/funk scene when drummer Andrew Barr and guitarist Brad Barr relocated to Montreal a few years ago. Upon moving to town, the musicians sat in at a variety of jam sessions and quickly proved their instrumental virtuosity (at one open jam Andrew Barr particularly impressed locals with African percussion prowess).

Andrew Barr also became friendly with Broken Social Scene singer Elizabeth Powell, joining her group Land of Talk and then playing drums throughout the band’s full length debut Some Are Lakes. The album—which was released by hipster-approved labels Secret City and Saddle Creek in Canada and the U.S., respectively—was produced by longtime Slip fan and current indie darling Justin Vernon (who played in a few jambands himself before forming Bon Iver). Barr continues to perform and record with Lands of Talk when his schedule permits and appears on the group’s sophomore album Cloak and Cipher. Powell recently returned the favor by singing on The Barr Brothers’ self-titled release.

Notable Jam Moments: For most of his tenure in Land of Talk, Andrew Barr has performed for new fans unaware of his jamband roots. But those worlds merged in 2010 when Land of Talk did a short tour with Barr’s other band Surprise Me Mr. Davis, a psychedelic folk group consisting of The Slip, Nathan Moore and Marco Benevento. Andrew Barr played with both bands each night and showed off his ability to jump from folk to rock to experimental improvisational music and catchy indie rock in a matter of minutes.

Lot Talk: “There’s this coffee shop [in Montreal] where all the musicians go to get coffee in the summertime. I can remember two or three times that I got asked to play drums for people just sitting there having a cup of coffee. But Lizzie and I had mutual friends and she was looking for a drummer and I saw her in the coffee shop and she asked if I wanted to come play on her record called Some Are Lakes,” Andrew Barr, Jambands.com