Tom Barrett Bares Soul Full of Songs on ‘Everywhere We Live’

When Tom Barrett made the move from New Jersey to Nashville in 2023, he needed some time to adjust and brought with him a handful of songs he had written to help ease him through the transition. The songs partially chronicled Barrett’s latest journey, along with other reflections and conceptions, carried on his third solo album Everywhere We Live.

A follow-up to Barrett’s 2022 release You Are and You’ve Always, Everywhere We Live is etched in beginnings, remembering the old, and other meditations on self-doubt, homesickness, and moving moments in life. “The songs are so spaced out by when they were written,” Barrett tells American Songwriter. “Some were written before the prospect of moving [to Nashville] was a real thing, so there wasn’t a conscious thread running through them.”

“Two Places at Once” sets the more contemplative tone of the album of facing a new beginning, while missing one’s former home—We are alone, on our own, again … It takes time to find where you belong. “It’s when you’re missing home, and you’re thinking about the people that you used to have immediate access to that you don’t anymore,” shares Barrett, echoing more fragments of drifting on the slow dripping “The Window” and the more mid-tempo “Honest Eyes.”

The latter track was one Barrett had mostly written and recorded before he moved to Nashville but reworked once he relocated. “There’s like a ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ sort of thing,” says Barrett of the songs, “and there’s also a feeling of being alone, yet hopeful.”

Everywhere We Live gently pauses on two intermissions, the acoustic tapped “Interlude I” and dreamier “Interlude II” near the end. With the interludes and the overall sequencing, Barrett wanted to capture something more cinematic. “I try to make them like a story,” he says. “I’m very aware of the peaks and the valleys that some of my favorite records have. There’s a time and a place for a more up-tempo song. There’s a time and a place for a more sparse song, or a short instrumental.”

He continues, “I hope that people are willing to go along for the entire ride.”

On the piano-led “Do You Think About the Lights,” Barrett reflects on a day after he first moved to Nashville when a thunderstorm caused all the power to go out for hours. In the sweltering heat and humidity, he and his wife decided to rent an air-conditioned hotel room in the middle of the night, where he wrote the song after waking within 10 or 15 minutes.

With the exception of the ballad and a few others, songs don’t typically come to Barrett so easily. “I still have a difficult time writing lyrics,” he says. “Lyrics are just evasive, and I’m going through a period where I’m coming up with a lot of music, and I’ve got no lyrics.”

Running five minutes, and 30 seconds, “Art House Films” may pop out as a random offering, but is still with Barrett’s scope of personal revelations, this one steeped in self-doubt, or toiling with imposter syndrome.

For Barrett, the song stems from a more honest place of not feeling as curious as he once was about discovering new things yet still having this drive to make new songs. “Friends who also are singer-songwriters, we talk about imposter syndrome, feeling like you’re not worthy of doing what you’re trying to do,” shares Barrett. “Anything that you want to excel at, you obviously do it because you care about it. That’s where you walk a finer line. The more you care about something, the more you’re going to feel fraudulent from time to time.”

He adds, “When you make music or anything that you do, you have to be pleased with it before you can present it to other people. Everybody compares themselves and sometimes you worry about putting something out there, and how people will receive it.”

“The Animals” is another soulful glimpse into Barrett’s psyche, along with the penultimate “Red Light,” also the second longest track before the acoustic-strings instrumental “Nick,” which Barrett says was inspired by Nick Drake.

“It reminded me of a very cinematic close, like an old western or something,” says Barrett of the closing track. “I think those songs are better than whatever was played or happened in the movie. The same could be said for that song [‘Nick’]. It’s possible that could be somebody’s favorite song on the record.”

For Barrett, who set some of his musical roots in 2012 with the shoegaze trio Overlake, before releasing his solo debut 051480 in 2020—followed by All Is Right that same year, and You Are and You’ve Always Been in 2022—certain dynamics of songwriting have shifted since moving to Nashville. Even though he says songwriting circles don’t work for him, Barrett has noticed some shift in the construct of his writing.

“There are more times now where I’ll sit down with the guitar and I’ll write a song, and it never used to be like that,” says Barrett. “I would have all the parts of the song, the guitar parts, the drums, and the lyrics and melody would be the absolute last thing I would work on.”

Barrett admits that he’s still trying to find his way in Nashville, amongst the songwriting circles, and more communal reach of musicians. “When you first move here, you feel like you need to seize the moment, but I’m finding my circles,” he says. “And sometimes it feels like I’m jumping from circle to circle.”

Sometimes, he says he still has a difficult time calling himself a writer. “To me, a songwriter is someone who writes all the time, regardless of whether or not whatever they’re doing is going to be seen by other people,” shares Barrett. “I make these songs with the intent for a record, and I’ve also been like a musician much longer than I’ve been a songwriter.”

Already working on five or six more folk-driven songs he hopes to release in the spring of 2025, Barrett is also returning to an “old” haunt for the album release party at the Bowery Vault, one of the first open mic spots he frequented when he moved to Nashville.

“It’s a special place to me for that reason, and it also helped me a bit with my confidence,” says Barrett. “The more you hang out with people, you realize that they aren’t necessarily better than you, and you’re not necessarily better or worse than them. Everybody is just different. Everybody has their own voice and style that they bring to the conversation.”

Photo: Courtesy of Tom Barrett / Hundred Yard PR