As a celebrated award-winning musician, Lindsay Barr has been a familiar name in the Peterborough music scene for years. With her thoughtful lyrics and high-energy performance style, Lindsay has held a healthy fan base for a long time. But these days, Lindsay can be seen combining her music with a new interest in acting which has her starring in two new shows in April.
On Friday, April 13th, Lindsay takes the stage in the role of tragic rock icon Janis Joplin in A Musical Journey with Janis Joplin at Peterborough’s Market Hall. Then, three weeks later, she takes the stage in the role of the villainous Captain Hook in St. James Players family production of Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure from April 27th to 29th. This is an opportunity to see two very different sides of Lindsay in two very different types of shows.
“I’m so excited I have the ability to morph into acting and do music because it satisfies both sides of my soul,” says Lindsay. “However, they are vastly different beasts. The idea of doing a show, working on it, and presenting it on a set block of dates and then moving on to the next one is exciting to me. It’s a never-ending cycle of creativity.”
Although she officially made her acting debut in 2016 in a tiny cameo in the St. James Players production of Princess Whatshername, Lindsay caught the acting bug when she took on the part of Shelly Williams in Killer Tree Production’s presentation of Evil Dead: The Musical in October 2017.
Using her energetic stage presence to her advantage, Lindsay created one of the most memorable roles of the year, prompting me to note her as the best new actor in the Kawarthas of 2017. Evil Dead was such an enjoyable role for Lindsay that she has committed herself to exploring theatre at this point in her career.
“It was a different way of working for me,” Lindsay says of her Evil Dead role. “I seem to be attracted to villainous characters or darker characters. I’ve very jovial and happy in my own life, so being able to play someone other than my own self was very interesting. When you’re a singer-songwriter you’re playing yourself, so being able to develop a different character was very exciting for me.”
For her next project, Lindsay is meshing music and theatre in an all-new original production developed by Rico Browne, Denis Goggin, and herself that celebrates the life and music of Janis Joplin. Called A Musical Journey with Janis Joplin, the show is a hybrid of music and theatrical performance that goes far beyond a tribute show: Lindsay is harnessing the spirit and soul of one of rock and roll’s most beloved, and most tragic, performers.
“My husband Denis and I were talking about doing a project together to get back into music and we were shooting around some artists that we could cover,” Lindsay says. “When Denis said Janis, I knew he had landed on something. Originally we were thinking of a bar gig, but it snowballed really quickly. Before I knew it, I was on the phone with Market Hall and I had booked a three-hundred seater.
“Rico Browne is the musical director and I let him put the band together. Denis is on keys and organ. We also have Bruce Francis on bass, Marcus Browne on drums, Jim Usher on saxophone, and Ben Foss on lead guitar.”
A proclaimed lifelong fan of Joplin, Lindsay’s relationship with the singer goes back to her childhood.
“My Dad had Janis Joplin’s Pearl album in his record collection,” Lindsay recalls. “I’d hear it as a little girl and I’d think how no other woman sang like that. Here was this woman who was impressive in her performance and her vocal approach, and I really got off on that.
“Then, in my teens, I was in a rock orchestra and my music teacher was my musical director in high school, and he put me on Piece of My Heart. The first time I sang it I was amazed that I could sing it. But my teacher knew, before I knew, that I would be able to sing it. That’s when I really started investing my time exploring her music.
“I identify with some of Janis’ aggressive movements and vocal stylistics and stage presence. But now that I’ve not just listened to her but have studied her, I have come to know there is a very gentle side to Janis as well — she’s not just a screamer. I’ve had to learn that, and I’ve learned it by realizing she is using all facets of her voice and she is using all ranges. She is truly a gifted artist.”
One of the most unique and iconic female performers in the history of music, Joplin mixed soul, blues, and psychedelic rock with a powerful and unmistakably original vocal style, making her one of the biggest icons of the late 1960s. However, underneath the fortune and glory was a sad and lonely woman who tried to ease her pain with drugs, liquor, and a constant party that never ended.
Born and raised in Texas, Joplin began singing while studying art at the University of Texas in 1962. In 1963, she moved to San Francisco where she struggled to make it as a singer. She then spent some time in New York, but her drinking and drug use didn’t help her musical career and, in 1965, she returned home to Texas to take a break from music and get herself together.
The next year, she auditioned for Big Brother and the Holding Company, a new psychedelic rock band based in San Francisco. She began singing with the band, whose performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 catapulted them to fame, with Joplin’s incredible vocals receiving most of the acclaim.
Joplin decided to leave Big Brother and the Holding Company in 1968 to embark on a solo career. After a historic performance at Woodstock in 1969, she released I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!.
The record received mixed reviews, which distressed Joplin, who was also struggling with alcohol and drugs, including an addiction to heroin. She was in the process of recording her next album, Pearl, when she was found dead in a Hollywood hotel room of a heroin overdose on October 4, 1970. She was only 27 years old.
Completed by Joplin’s producer, Pearl was released after her death in 1971. It would not only be her biggest-selling album, but her recording of “Me and Bobby McGee” (written by Kris Kristofferson, a former love of Joplin’s) would be her only Billboard number one hit.
“All she wanted was steady love,” Lindsay says of Joplin’s tragic story. “She was all over the place with love affairs, but she really just wanted a man to love and to love her. I’m the opposite end of that. I’m in a committed and loving marriage, and I didn’t have the same problems that she had in school. She was repelled by the popular people, and she wasn’t very popular among the men in her early days. I think we are a contrast, but with a lot of similarities.”
With 16 songs from throughout Joplin’s career, Lindsay’s set list includes classic songs such as “Summertime”, “Piece of My Heart”, “Move Over”, “Cry Baby”, and “Ball and Chain”. But the show is much more than just a tribute concert: it will also be recreating moments of Joplin’s public life on stage.
“There are people on stage as the audience, and we have actors who play Dick Cavett and Ed Sullivan and the hosts from Hollywood Palace,” Lindsay explains. “We have the iconic moment before her Woodstock performance where the gentleman talks about the brown acid. We are recreating moments from her career. It’s more interesting than just performing song after song after song.”
After the Joplin show, Lindsay will be putting on a very different hat for a very different kind of show when she takes on the role of Captain Hook in Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure. Although the St. James Players’ spring production is always a family-friendy show, Lindsay decided to audition for it right after her appearance in the family-unfriendly Evil Dead.
“The next audition in town after Evil Dead was Peter Pan,” Lindsay says. “I went in and they only gave me the role of Captain Hook to read. I did the audition as a male and I was a bit savage in it. They liked it, they thought it was funny, and I got the call that they wanted me to be Hook.
“That’s when they said they wanted me to play it as a woman, which threw me for a bit of a loop. I get to be crazy and over the top and be all these things that I love to be, and I can get away with it.”
With Lindsay in the role of the classic villain, her co-pirates are all played by adult men while the rest of the cast are all kids. This marks the first time in her career that Lindsay has worked with children.
“I’m forging new relationships with a very innocent side of our community,” Lindsay observes. “I’ve never worked with them before. I mind my p’s and q’s and keep the f-bombs on the down low. I am really learning to work professionally in every walk of life.
“I’ve got to admit that you can learn something from people from every aspect of their life spans. The kids are studious, and a lot of them have vocal coaches and dance instructors. A lot of them are thinking about carrying on in theatre. The youngest member of the cast is a girl named Emma, and she’s five. She plays Tinkerbell and she’s a special kid.”
In the short time I have known Lindsay Barr, she has become one of my favourite performers in Peterborough. Extremely animated and articulate, she has a huge personality, magnetic stage presence, and self confidence. I am captivated by Lindsay, whether she takes the stage as a singer or an actress, and believe she is a magnificent performer. While I’ve become a fan of her music, I am excited to see where her theatrical pursuits will take her next.
“I’m enjoying this journey,” Lindsay says. “I’m still fresh and not jaded. It’s new for me, so I’m not doing something that I’ve done for so many years. I’ve just gotten into it and I’ve been supported in so many ways.”
A Musical Journey with Janis Joplin will be performed at 8 p.m. on Friday, April 13th at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough, 705-749-1146). Tickets are $25 ($30 for assigned cabaret table seating) and are available the Market Hall Box Office or online at markethall.org. Tickets are also available (cash only) at Moondance (425 George St. N., Peterborough, 705-742-9425).
Peter Pan: A Musical Adventure runs from Friday, April 27th to Sunday, April 29th at St. James United Church (221 Romaine St., Peterborough). Shows start at 6:30 p.m. with 2 p.m. matinees on April 28th and 29th. Tickets will go on sale on Sunday, April 7th and cost $10 for adults and $9 for children (or $12 all ages for preferred seating in the first three rows). For tickets, visit stjamesplayers.ca.
