The name Anton Barbeau may not ring a bell, but the Sacramento-based singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has an impressive body of work that goes back decades.  He’s about to release his umpteenth album of original material, much of which is considered psychedelic.

Barbeau’s new album, which drops on September 22^nd, is called Morgenmusik/Nachtschlager and features guest spots by Colin Moulding (XTC), Donald Ross Skinner (Julian Cope), and Andy Metcalfe (The Soft Boys, Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians).

Barbeau was kind enough to answer a few questions for Psychedelic Scene.

 

Psychedelic Scene: The songs on your upcoming album Morgenmusik/Nachtschlager were written during three distinct writing sessions, with two trips to Berlin and one in California. How did these different environments influence the mood and themes of the songs you wrote in each location?

Anton Barbeau:  I’m a child of 1967. Sgt. Pepper is my star sign. That said, this album started on a very un-psychedelic note. It got weird quickly enough and ended up in a haze of much magic and many synchronicities, thankfully.

The first batch of songs was written with no album or concept in mind. I was in Berlin, in March 2022, alone for ten days in the flat I used to share with my ex. Jetlagged, I’d be up very early and back from coffee in time to begin my “office hours” at 10 a.m. I’d turn on the drum machine and the tape recorder then sit at piano or guitar, muttering a few chords and mumbling a melody with maybe a hint of a lyrical phrase, shaping a verse, then a chorus, not worrying much about lyrics. I’d work until noon, then run errands, get more coffee, get stoned, and start the next song at 2 p.m. I was recording rough demos, and singing whatever came to mind. I’d do a bit of song tidying in the evening, but mostly, I’d leave the day’s work alone. The next day, I’d start fresh with new work. 14 songs in barely over a week were the result. The best thing was that I was able to turn the judgment switch off, writing without concern for “good” or “bad.” I knew I’d be able later to sharpen lyrics and let go of songs that just didn’t have the spark. It was a new, freeing way to work.

I returned to Berlin in September. My ex wasn’t away this time, and she was mostly working from home, so I had to be a bit stealthier in my writing. If she went to the office or stayed at her boyfriend’s, I’d get to work writing. I didn’t write as many songs during this stay – but I’d also been writing in California. I was obsessed with Iggy Pop’s The Idiot and the feeling of dirty Berlin it contains. My own experience of more than 9 years in Berlin was wide and occasionally wild, but really, I’m not a party boy. I did read Jung’s Red Book in Berlin – that was my idea of middle-aged danger, perhaps. Still, I love that Berlin can be anything one wants. It’s easy to find the filth and broken glass and bloody vomit and the sticky black light stains if you wish. I wanted to dip my little toe into a dark puddle, but I did so from the safety of odd pop songs. I’ve had enough sex, drugs, and rock and roll in my life to fill a flimsy book, but the joke is that on a given Friday night if I wasn’t on tour, I was probably home stoned watching shitty Schlager (traditionally “lite” and trite pop music) on German TV.

Finally, the California songs… Some of them came to me between the Berlin sessions and some came after. Certain songs, like “Waiting on The Radio” and “Ganja on The Farm,” seem to glow. Others, like “Coming Clean” and “I Demand a Dream,” are darker and would fit just as well on the Nachtschlager disk.

It’s not that this was a pure division of light and dark. Songs written in the first session sometimes got moved to the second disk etc. The main thing is that musically they make sense wherever they fit. Songs usually know more than I do.

“Waiting on the Radio” is the lead single and the opening track of your new album. Can you delve into the inspiration behind this song and how it captures that “golden light” of California?

And yet most of the musicians on the track are Brits! I’ve got Colin Moulding, Donald Ross Skinner, and Andy Metcalfe all on the same bus – three people who were essential to some of the records that shaped me. Crazy.

Anyway, “When I was younger, I wrote songs to impress girls. These days I write songs to impress drummers” was a line I used to introduce this tune at a recent gig, and it’s true, it was written for a drummer. He ended up on tour with Lindsay Buckingham and couldn’t do the session date, but my intention was to write something right on for him, something that felt like a single. Many of the songs on the double album are what I’m calling “fictions,” meaning, they’re not as auto-biographical as much of my previous work has been. I’ve never taken a Greyhound bus to Reno, for example. As for the “California Light,” I dunno… that’s just how I see this song… it glows golden, with touches of green.

 

Nostalgia seems to play a significant role in your music, as evidenced by your childhood memory of a song on the radio and your desire to recreate it. How do you balance this nostalgic sentiment with your desire to create something new and innovative?

 

The Beatles never sat still – they moved from 1963 to 1966 in a couple months. Sonically, I’m a pragmatist, not a purist. As much as I love the sounds of the psychedelic 60s, I’m more inspired by the creativity behind it, not the tech specs. You don’t need an electric sitar to know which way the wind blows, right? That said, I found an old Casiotone 201 keyboard for sale while I was making this album. My dad bought me a brand-new one of those in 1980. It changed my life and turned me into a musician. The first song I ever wrote, called “Come Back,” is featured on this new album (I guess it counts as one of the “California” songs!), and naturally, I had to add layers of Casio to the track. While the Casiotone brings me the joy of good memories, it’s also just a groovy-sounding instrument, as viable and vital as it ever was. I do dig into the dirt of my own life and I find things fascinating now that I rejected or ignored back when.