Man On Fire – Out now on Vinyl, CD, and Digital

Grammy Nominated Best Bluegrass Album!

While the liner notes of Danny Barnes’ remarkable new album, ‘Man On Fire,’ are stacked with a slew of heavy hitting friends—you may recognize Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, jazz pioneer Bill Frisell, and executive producer Dave Matthews, to name just a few—it’s Barnes’ characters who shine brightest on the album. Rendered with rich detail and deep empathy, they’re timeless figures grappling with the essential questions of their humanity, ordinary folks just trying to get by in a world that’s been rigged against them. Their stories walk the line between past and present, and Barnes’ virtuosic banjo and unassuming vocals manage to do much the same, fusing old-time tradition with modern experimentalism as they draw on a wide swath of American musical history, from Appalachian folk and Memphis rockabilly to Kentucky bluegrass and Bakersfield country.

A Texas native, Barnes first rose to fame in 1990 with the Bad Livers, the groundbreaking Austin trio whose adventurous sound would go on to carve out a path for future string band genre-benders like The Avett Brothers and Old Crow Medicine Show. Hailed by Rolling Stone for their “striking blend of virtuoso flash and poignant simplicity,” the group released seven studio albums during their decade-long run and earned praise everywhere from The Washington Post to The Times of London along the way. When the band dissolved in 2000, Barnes embarked on a new chapter, touring and recording under his own name and collaborating with a wide range of prominent songwriters including Bela Fleck, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen, Dave Matthews Band, and members of the Butthole Surfers, Dead Kennedys and Ministry among others. As a solo artist, he released more than a dozen critically acclaimed record, took home the prestigious Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo, and helped redefine the instrument’s possibilities with an innovative mix of analog and digital sounds he dubbed “folktronics.”