Barbara Kessler feels most alive when she’s on stage performing in front of an audience. “Music has always been the single most powerful way for me to express myself,” she says, “the hands-down most direct way to communicate.” Her honest, engaging lyrics reflect the human condition, the universal experiences people share but have been socialized not to reveal. “I want my audience to feel like we’re having an intimate conversation in a living room,” she says. “An opportunity to connect in a seamless, heartfelt way.”
Yet it’s her demeanor on stage that really pulls people in – a combination of playful spontaneity and focused attention to the audience. “A gig for me is a night out for someone; they showed up for the music, and I need to show up for them.” Barbara owns the stage with a “dash of insecurity and a big glob of charisma” as someone recently put it.
Although her love for music and songwriting emerged in adolescence, Barbara didn’t enter the professional music scene until several years after graduating from Cornell University. She quickly made up for lost time when she entered Rounder’s Songwriter’s Contest at Great Woods Performing Arts Center in Massachusetts and won 1st runner-up. She caught the eye of judge Christine Lavin who invited her to attend the Martha’s Vineyard Songwriter’s Retreat. A song recorded at the event, “The Date,” landed on Rounder’s CD Big Times In A Small Town. The song received national airplay and led to the recording of her first CD, Stranger To This Land. Soon, Barbara was touring the country playing at coffeehouses and colleges. National acclaim for Stranger To This Land resulted in several high profile awards in 1995: Boston Music Award for Outstanding Debut Acoustic Album, National Academy of Songwriters Female Acoustic Artist of the Year and Kerrville New Folk Winner.
Barbara’s career soared even higher when famed drummer Jerry Marotta saw her perform at CB’s Gallery in New York and offered to produce her second album, Notion. A review of the CD by The Boston Phoenix said, “It’s not the hooks, the Froom-like production, or even the songs that make this album one of the best by any contemporary songwriter in years. What puts her over the top is her voice. A smoothly subtle and sometimes jazzy, versatile soprano full of surprises.”
Putumayo seconded that opinion by choosing the album’s haunting title track, “Notion,” for inclusion in its classic 1996 complication, Women’s Work, a theme that weaves its way through all of Barbara’s CDs. “I wrote ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ (Stranger To This Land) because she was a role model for me. She wasn’t a character’s wife or secretary. The show was about her trying to live an honest life as a single woman in the 1970s,” she said. “Women’s life choices seem more complicated in a lot of ways.”
Barbara made her own difficult choice in 2000.
After sharing the stage for nearly a decade and a half with the Indigo Girls, David Wilcox, Shawn Colvin, Dar Williams, Arlo Guthrie, Richie Havens, Livingston Taylor, Christine Lavin and many others, Barbara decided to stop touring with the impending birth of her second daughter, Elaina. “I became a stay-at-home singer/songwriter so I could be present for my two daughters,” she says. “Trying to be a Super Mom-Singer made if hard to do either of them well.” The post-touring years included a self-awakening that Barbara credits for moving her singing and songwriting in a new, deeper direction. She also ventured into improv and musical theatre, even appearing as a double in the movie, The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.” Her songs continue to be placed on TV shows like NCIS, JAG, Passions, One Life to Live, The Young and The Restless, All My Children, Ed, Felicity and on the SONY PlayStation game, Rogue Gallery.
Barbara’s especially proud of a “mix-tape” benefit CD for moms she compiled and produced called Mothers Helping Mothers. “Gathering the music of other singer-songwriter mothers such as Lori McKenna, Eliza Gilkyson and Karen Taylor-Good helped me navigate the joyful but also challenging transition into my then newer role as a mom.” She’s also coaching young artists on performance and songwriting, as well as producing their CDs in her state-of-the-art antique-barn recording studio.
Barbara is about to make another choice.
Now that her daughters are settling into their own lives, she’s eager to return to the live performances and audience interactions that she loves. “I’ve been contemplating going back out on tour, on some sort of limited basis” she says. “The past couple of years I’ve volunteered with our local theater group to host their open mic. Quite simply, it’s reminded me of the power and immediacy of a voice, an instrument, and a song – and the human urge to be heard. And to listen. People do need songs.”
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