OXFORD — A traveling musical duo has settled down in Oxford and promises to “folk” things up for the locals with their “dirty folksy blues.”
Whiskey Street Wumbo is a new local acoustic folk band formed by couple Ryan West and Sandy Barker.
West, 26, sings lead vocals and plays guitar and mouth percussion and brass. Barker, 24, sings back-up vocals and plays mandolin and washboard.
The couple met in Venice Beach, Calif. four years ago. West was “busking,” which is slang for “street performing,” when Barker saw him. “I liked his music. I liked everything about him. I knew I had to do something about it,” said Barker.
West started playing guitar when he was 14 years old in Riverside, Calif. He was home-schooled by a tutor, because he had medical problems. It was his tutor that taught him how to play. Before learning guitar, West played piano and sang in his school choir and MADRIGALS.
“I sang my whole life and started playing piano at age 12. After I learned guitar, I started picking up other instruments quickly like banjo and accordion. I played for my friends at parties and brought my instruments to school to play for lunch money,” said West.
Barker started playing musical instruments in grade school in Norwich. Her first instrument was the trumpet in fourth grade. Like West, Barker also sang in her school choir and MADRIGALS. It was not until high school that she decided to travel and play guitar.
“I left with the carnival and started hitchhiking. I wanted to go out and see the country. Really, the only way to make money when you are homeless is to street perform,” said Barker. “I did a lot of improvising and sang about whatever I wanted. If I was hungry, I sang about cheeseburgers.”
West started out singing covers, but began writing his own music when he was 18 years old. He also began traveling with other string bands and even made it on the radio in Michigan.
“At first, I liked making people laugh; I wasn't very good at playing music at first. Once I started getting better, I sometimes made people cry. Music is a beautiful thing,” said West.
After the two musicians met traveling and busking, they performed together all over the country, including at popular music scenes like New Orleans, Austin, Nashville, Santa Fe, Fort Collins, Seattle and L.A.
“I started to learn a lot of Ryan's music, which is mostly folk and old songs from the 30's and 40's. Folk is what we ended up with, I guess,” said Barker.
When Barker became pregnant with West's child in 2013, she and West formed a band with a bass player and a fiddle player called "Pregnant Mama and the Whiskey Bottles" in Riverside, Calif. As she moved further along in her pregnancy, Barker decided to move back to her hometown of Norwich to be close to family and West followed.
They formed Whiskey Street Wumbo after the birth of their son, Ryder Lee Roman West, on August 23. “My mom helped us with the name. Whiskey street sounded cool and the word 'wumbo' is from the show Sponge Bob Square Pants. It means 'the opposite of mini' in the urban dictionary,” said Barker.
The folk band is working on a debut album. Barker's stepfather, Marc Funaro, is helping them record a CD. The album is titled “Roaming West” as a play on words regarding the duo's past travels and recent birth of their son.
They say the songs on their album are a nice mix of upbeat tempos and heart-felt ballads. “I like to write about hard life situations,” said West. Their favorite song is about climbing a mountain, which was written as an analogy for Barker's pregnancy and the birth of their son.
“I don't think we can compare ourselves to anyone. I don't think the music has ever really had a theme. It has a feeling to it more than a theme,” said West. “It doesn't really have an opinion or point-of-view. Just a feeling.”
Whiskey Street Wumbo performs weekly at Nathaniel Greene's Publick House on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. They have also performed at The Blarney Stone Pub in Norwich and the Oxford Tavern in Oxford. A show at the Brackney Inn in Brackney, Penn. is also in the works.
When discussing the future of the band, the couple said they hope to go on tour one day and be able to make ends meet with their music. They currently live with their two-month-old son in a camper in Oxford. Barker is looking for a job so West can focus on their music.
“When we started out, it was just something we liked to do. It's different now. I told my friend in high school that as long as I could play music, I didn't care if I was homeless. He told me I had no ambition. We didn't really have any ambition until we had Ryder,” said West.
“Listening to music is one thing, but actually being involved in making music is amazing. What keeps us going is the fact that people like our music and it makes them happy. We’d rather do music than anything else,” said Barker.
Whiskey Street Wumbo’s album “Roaming West” will be for sale by Christmas. In the meantime, the band will continue to perform at local venues like Nathaniel Greene's Publick House.
For more information, visit Whiskey Street Wumbo on Facebook.