Playing Texas-style blues rock gospel while living in the heart of Belfast is no mean feat. But that's BARRY BYNUM. Andrew Long spoke to the one-time member of Liberation Suite.

Barry Bynum

Since bringing his time with veteran CCM act Liberation Suite to a close, blues guitarist Barry Bynum has kept extraordinarily busy what with live session work as well as studio work with many artists including playing a gig with blues legend John Lee Hooker. Hooker apparently told Barry afterwards that he played like that other young white guy, Eric Clapton.

Barry has recently launched his own record label, Contraflow Productions, and the first release also marks his first solo album, 'Stickin' Your Neck Out', a "scorching album chocka full of Texas rock blues licks" (says Greybeard Cummings).

Barry and his wife are now based in Belfast. "I grew up in Lubbock, Texas, which is where Buddy Holly came from," explained Barry, in his Southern drawl. "I got interested in playing contemporary music from the age of seven or eight. I began to play a ukulele and a small guitar and through my teenage years I ended up with some problems, through friends that were into drugs and stuff like that. I became a Christian when I was 16, after having already played semi-professionally for a few years, and at that time I really felt God gave me a vision to play contemporary music in a Christian context, communicating the message of what had happened in my heart. I'd never heard of contemporary Christian music, I didn't even know what that was, but myself and a few of my friends just had the idea to make a Christian rock band, just to see what happened, so one thing led to another and before long we were out on the road."

Barry described his musical influences as being drawn mainly from blues-based rock, Hendrix, Clapton, Cream as well as straight blues, mainstream rock and even a touch of jazz. Many of Cross Rhythms CCM train spotters (myself included) will remember the early Liberation Suite albums. During our conversation Barry and I touched on the origins and achievements of the band.

"Well, it grew out of the fact that somebody had tried to put together a band to back this choir. I wasn't even a Christian yet, and they said, 'Hey, you want to come along and play your guitar?' and I said, 'Okay.' We had a horn section and bass, drums and guitar and another guy playing keyboards and over the period of a year members of the band gave their lives to the Lord. We started to go out and play on our own without this choir attached, because our music was much heavier, not exactly choir type stuff, so I'm not sure they would have wanted to come along. But we began to play school dances, we'd play stuff from the top 40 or whatever and start playing our own songs and it became a really great opportunity to do a bunch of witnessing. By the time I was 18 we'd become a full time travelling band. Off and on Liberation Suite spanned about 18 years, a large amount of that time we were on hiatus, we retired the band about three different times, but the final tour was in 1981, which was when we actually stopped touring the band for good. There was sort of a reunion album, and we just wanted to come back and play some places we'd been and see some friends in Ireland and do a bit in Europe as well."

So how did Barry, a born and bred Texan, end up settling in Belfast? "Well, when we retired Lib Suite in 1991, my wife and I had felt for quite some time that we might come and spend a while on this side of the water and take two or three years out to do ministry. It had been a long time since I was full time in this and we began to lay it before the Lord and a lot of things came together in terms of visas and government permission, people encouraging us and helping us get started over here and from the time we started playing in the autumn of '93 it's been all go. I never dreamed there would be so much happening in such a small place. I'd been to Northern Ireland several times before, so we had connections here from the past. This is a whole new thing for me now. Liberation Suite was wonderful but I'm playing to a whole new audience who have never heard of Liberation Suite, I generally don't even put it in my publicity because it doesn't make any difference to them, they don't know me from Adam, they come along to the gig and they hear the music and they either like it or they don't and in a way I'm enjoying that because it's like a fresh start and people seem to be enjoying what we're doing. I play to a lot of 14-25 year olds and I find they're rediscovering basic straight ahead rock, it's a whole new thing to them but the funny thing is I've always done pretty much the same thing but all of a sudden I guess I'm accidentally hip."

Barry had not formed Contraflow Productions just to release his own albums, he also plans to find talent in Ireland and record it and get the product in the USA, the UK and Europe. Although currently 'Stickin' Your Neck Out' is the label's only release Barry has already found two groups that he feels are excellent, so the wheels are in motion for a really promising new label for CCM.

Barry is also acting as producer for the albums. "I've been producing albums for years," he explained, "and I played a big production role in the Lib Suite albums, so sometimes it's quicker to get what you want by just doing it rather than trying to explain it to somebody, although having said that I would really like to throw it open to some cracker producer to come in because it's a lot less work!"

Future plans include securing wider distribution for the album, as well as for other Contraflow product. There is also the possibility of a visit by Glenn Kaiser to do three or four blues nights in Ireland with Barry.

"I played 93 concerts in '94 and almost that many in '95 so it's a busy, busy life and I'm really enjoying it, God's really doing some great things. Hopefully by summer I'll start a second album, maybe a bit different to the first one. I like to explore different directions, I'm really interested in putting together an honest to goodness acoustic band and doing some really serious acoustic music, as well as continuing the electric thing."