Listening to Baby Barnyard’s moody, atmospheric dream pop might lead one to think Amanda Freeman is singing about wistful remembrances and lost loves.
Not quite. More like atomic orbitals and kinetic-molecular theory.
“Even though I think they sound sort of like love songs, maybe, or at least like they’re about people, they are actually about quantum mechanics and the laws of thermodynamics,” explains Freeman, who lists high school chemistry teacher on her resum?. “I have a really hard time writing lyrics, so I just write them about cool stuff that I know about.”
After years playing flute in local bands World’s Greatest Dad and Trials and Tribulations, Freeman decided it was time to write and perform her own material. She initially planned to enlist a few area musicians to back her up, but lack of confidence in her guitar playing and inexperience singing with others kept her tunes confined to the bedroom in which they were composed.
Yet once songs materialized and began to sound good to her, she took them out into the world as Baby Barnyard—named after the petting zoo at the Three County Fair—and the response was positive enough for her to take a year’s hiatus from teaching to focus exclusively on transforming her music into something more than just a hobby.
Freeman says a typical song begins with an idea for a melody or a chord progression, which she mulls over and hones until the composition is complete. If she gets stuck, she’ll bring in old bandmates like Ryan Crowley and Steve Yarbro [World’s Greatest Dad] to work things through.
On more than one occasion, Baby Barnyard’s music has been likened to the dreamy soundscapes of the landmark David Lynch television series Twin Peaks.
“As I kept writing songs, this sort of distant, melancholy sound started to emerge and I just went with that,” she says. “I don’t want the songs to be sad. When I write a song, I feel like I’ve achieved the aesthetic I want when it makes you get that bittersweet feeling of remembering a really good memory.”
So far there are only self-produced bedroom recordings, but Freeman promises a debut EP, recorded by Sore Eros’ Adam Langellotti, by year’s end. There is also a Baby Barnyard tour in the works for early 2012.”
Baby Barnyard plays The Elevens in Northampton Oct. 23 along with The Renderers, Sore Eros, and Bill Nace. For songs and more information, visit http://babybarnyardband.com/.
