Micah Barnes
Last Sunday I went to the Carleton to attend Micah Barnes’ show Up on the Roof, and I had a glorious time. I was first introduced to Barnes’ music through his husband, Thom Allison, who is an exceptional musical theatre actor and now director who I was very fortunate to meet just weeks after I first moved to Toronto in 2007. The majority of the crowd here in Halifax knew Barnes as a member of The Nylons, an a cappella group founded in 1978 in Toronto best known for covering The Turtles’s “Happy Together,” Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye,” and the Tokens “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” I didn’t grow up listening to the Nylons, so I was definitely one of the least familiar with the group at the show on Sunday, but I’ve just realized today that the original members performed “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” on the Treasure Island episode of Sharon, Lois & Bram’s Elephant Show in 1986, and now I’m sure that that was my introduction to that iconic song as a child. Barnes didn’t join the group until 1990 when original member Paul Cooper retired. Up on the Roof takes us through the true story of Barnes growing up as a young child playing the piano and singing at home, navigating being gay as he grew up in Toronto in the 1970s and 80s, and then how he hit this huge professional success in joining the Nylons against the backdrop of the escalating AIDS crisis. His own personal loss during this time prompted him to leave Canada for Los Angeles in profound grief and sorrow, although there is a happy ending waiting for him back at home. It’s a poignant evening of music, and a deeply personal story that Barnes is sharing with audiences in this very intimate and vulnerable performance.
From his work with the Nylons Barnes is known for singing pop music, and especially the kind of Doo Wop/Motown music of the 1960s, but he is also an accomplished jazz singer and piano player. The original songs that he has written meld jazz with the very specific New York Cabaret style of storytelling songs. And so early in the show Barnes performs both “Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)”, written by Jimmy Davis, Roger Ramirez, and James Sherman for Billie Holiday, while standing up at the piano in the centre of the Carleton’s tiny stage, and also “Shop Around,” recorded by the Miracles in 1960. In both cases we see that these two musical genres had an impact on Barnes as a young musician. And in the same way, the tone of the show keeps oscillating between the more languid, emotional longing of the jazz and the bouncy, cheekiness of the pop.
The songs that Barnes performs to create the arc of this piece are perfectly chosen in a way that he doesn’t have to speak too much in between, instead he is able to let the music tell the story and carry the emotional weight of it. “Happy Together,” (1967) for example, which is a song that he sang often with The Nylons, expresses the joy and ecstasy of the early days of his relationship with esteemed Indigenous dancer and choreographer René Highway, who helped his brother, the esteemed playwright Tomson Highway, create the character of Nanabush for The Rez Sisters (1986), and René choreographed Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989). The euphoria of this beautiful love affair briefly overlapped with Barnes booking a dream gig with the Nylons, and he led us in a sing along version of “Silhouettes” (1957), first recorded by The Rays. I was unfamiliar with this song, but it sounds so much like so many other doo-wop songs of the time it was very easy for me to pick it up and join in, and I’m a complete sucker for this genre of music.
Everything comes crashing down as Barnes sings “The Ballad of Pleasurette,” a response to Highway becoming sick with AIDS- related complications, and then his death in October of 1990. Barnes’ voice drops down to his gravelly lowest register to create an ambiance of a much rawer and darker world that feels dangerous and cynical, especially compared to the frothiness of the music from the 1950s and 60s. At the same time, there is both a defiance and a wistfulness too that weaves its way through the song mourning the life that might have been.
“I Will Follow” is the showstopper before the intermission where Barnes croons beautifully about wanting to follow Highway into the after life, whether he has to wait a lifetime, he will perpetually be waiting to be reunited again. The lyric that really jumped out to me, especially in my own grief, was “there’s one who waits/and one who goes before;” this framing of the person left behind as someone who is waiting for their own turn to die really broke my heart.
“After You” continues to be a dialogue between Barnes and Highway as he chronicles the “Lost Years” that he spent in Los Angeles after he left The Nylons in 1996. The continued refrain of “I thought you’d want to know” is interesting, as it suggests a rupture between them, perhaps the grief was too much and so the memory of Highway was pushed away for a time, but now, with some more self reflection he is being evoked anew. This song melds immediately into “Spadina Moon,” a song about returning to Toronto and suddenly being enveloped in all his memories of his life with Highway and the happiness that they experienced together. It does feel like in both of these songs Barnes is exploring having to really contend with his grief rather than trying to escape from it.
“New York Stories” represents a new chapter for Barnes with the entrance of Thom Allison into his life. Stylistically there are a lot of similarities between “New York Stories” and “The Ballad of Pleasurette,” but while the latter feels like it could be from one of those darker more political musicals from the 1930s the former sounds more like a love song from a hit musical from the 1940s. The show ends on a hopeful note, and we see a really beautiful example of someone who is able to bring this love story about Highway to life, while still honouring his current more recent love story- as is often the case in life, especially when it comes to loss.
Barnes called his show Up On the Roof, alluding to the Carole King/Gerry Goffin song of the same name that he sang with The Nylons, and there were a few different references to roofs in the show, including another Nylons’ song “Up the Ladder to the Roof” (1970), sung first by the Supremes. Barnes also mentions being up on the roof in “Spadina Moon,” and this grounds the show very much in this theme of climbing above the pedestrian, the rat race, and experiencing a blissful higher state with someone you love, and also being closer to Heaven, and thus, closer to Highway, even, I think, through finding love again.
You can find Micah Barnes’ music on Apple Music and Spotify, and for more information visit his website. You can find out what is coming up next at The Carleton here.
