Photo by Diego Molina
Known for his vibrant catalog of glam-pop and roots rock, singer-songwriter Seán Barna has taken a surprising detour with his latest EP, Internal Trembling. This collection marks a significant shift from his established sound, born from a collaboration with members of the acclaimed Nashville bluegrass band, Hawktail. Embracing banjo, violin, and other traditional bluegrass instruments, Barna ventures beyond his comfort zone, both in songwriting and performance. While guitars and keyboards once dominated his music, Internal Trembling showcases his distinctive vocals against a backdrop of rich bluegrass instrumentation.
On the day of the EP’s release, I caught up with Barna as he relaxed on his dad’s porch in Connecticut. While many artists might celebrate with grand gestures, Barna’s plans were simpler: a celebratory dinner with his grandmother. This understated approach reflects the genuine and intimate nature of Internal Trembling itself.
Do you have any rituals related to album release day?
SEÁN: Release day is stressful, especially the digital stuff. The people that pre-saved it on Spotify got a notification when it came out: “Seán Barna By Internal Trembling is out today.” That’s what they said. So that’s Spotify helping me out, like always (laughs). I’m sure they’re going to pay me a lot of money for the release anyway.
I released An Evening at Macri Park in 2023. When I was touring around the country and Europe, I would go look in record stores to see if it was there, or I’d give them one if it wasn’t. That was my first physical release. This one’s not physical, just because it’s an EP. Ideally, I’d be launching some big tour, but nothing I do for music is something that doesn’t cost me a lot of money, so I can’t really make big plans.
Putting out the record is a lot of money—like paying for my own PR, for example. So it’s like I basically have to just go work for a while and then maybe celebrate it later. I could go on tour or something. I just did a little tour with *Mirah*—five days, well, four of which were with her. Nothing is happening right now anyway. It’s going to be Thanksgiving, then holidays and Christmas, Hanukkah, or whatever. So trying to do anything in the next month and a half is just running on a little wheel. I’ll wait till next year.
Do you have a day job?
SEÁN: I work on elections, actually. So I just got done with my day job. Every other year, I work on elections, doing writing and such. But I’d like to not do that again. It can be pretty negative. I don’t know if you noticed, but the past few months have been pretty negative. Kind of dark, you know? My guy lost, and I’m still like, “Ah, it’s over.”
Locally or nationally?
SEÁN: Well, I mean, I’m a liberal for sure. I’m a gay guy from New England. I won some local races. But the one that’s most likely to make gay marriage illegal—that guy got in. When I say “my guy lost,” I mean Kamala Harris, the person who wouldn’t make my friends targets of the national government. I wasn’t part of a team. But we won some races in New Hampshire, Illinois, and such. I’m always working on different stuff.
I don’t know how this happened—in my little bubble of people, I’m in Columbus, Ohio, it seemed like a slam dunk for Kamala Harris.
SEÁN: I love Columbus, Ohio. I’m about to drive my mom out to Colorado. I’m gonna stop at Dirty Frank’s Hot Dogs right off the highway. My friend Lydia Loveless lives in Columbus, Ohio. We laugh together more than anyone else I know. We can barely breathe, we laugh so hard when we’re together.
I’m in Connecticut. I thought it’s super blue, but it’s not, at least in some of the cities. I’m in the middle, in the more rural part. I bought some cigars down at the gas station because I was gonna smoke a cigar and celebrate. The guy working there carded me and he’s like, “Maybe you’re in drama school. The high school’s right up there and you have gray hair.” We were joking about how things used to be, like maybe you could have gotten away with buying cigarettes for your teacher. He’s like, “It’s all going downhill. It’ll go slower now that Trump’s elected.” I feel you shouldn’t just say that to some stranger at a gas station. I was like, “I’m not so sure about that.” I managed not to talk politics with some wonderfully charming guy at the gas station.
Where do you live now?
SEÁN: I live in rural western Colorado. It’s a 40-minute drive to the first stoplight. I’m thinking maybe of moving back to Brooklyn. Living in Nashville felt like living in a small town to me. Well, not a small town—that’s not what I mean. I mean, like what people probably think Columbus is, that’s what Nashville felt like to me because it’s smaller than New York. I love New York and LA—they are what they are. The next rung down—it’s not about quality, just scale—would be Nashville. But it’s really easy to feel like you’re just in a normal town or the country when you get a little outside of downtown. Where I live now is a very extreme drop on the other side but it’s a peaceful place. A lot of this record is about that, Lake City and Jack Rabbit Hill specifically.
I have a car that I love. I don’t really care about material things, but I have a Jeep Wrangler which is an obviously silly car to have in New York, but I live in Colorado where it’s like, “Wow, Jupiter’s really bright tonight” and then I’ll drive 20 minutes up the most incredible rocky hill, like one you can’t go up with a normal car. You just put it in four-wheel drive and go up, and all of a sudden it feels less ridiculous to have that car. You can do all kinds of stuff like that. It’s a real blast. But having that car—which I’m not getting rid of because I love it—in New York, or even Nashville, is kind of silly.
Let’s talk about Internal Trembling. I listened to your last record, and then I listened to the EP, and they’re very different sounding. As a songwriter and musician, are you constantly exploring different styles or is the EP a deviation that you needed to get out before going back to more glam-poppy stuff?
SEÁN: I think it’s less of a deviation to me than it might seem to anyone else. A couple of things went into this. Lyrically, on “Wallflower,” I’m absolutely talking about the queer struggle, queer rights. I’m talking about six people who lost their lives. The reason I wrote that song specifically is that I woke up the day after the Colorado Springs shooting and as a somewhat public queer figure—I’m not famous or anything, but there are younger people who might look to me—I felt like I had to say something about it. Then I realized, well, I’m a part of this struggle. There’s a certain sadness, grief, and comprehension that I have to deal with. I don’t have to respond immediately, though. So the lyrics, “You could be a wallflower or you could be the center of the show,” came from thinking more thoughtfully about it—not just an Instagram post. The song reflects on the history of this struggle.
My last record was a character study on a queer bar—a drag bar in Brooklyn. The idea was that these were safe spaces traditionally before 1969 because they were owned by the mafia, so the cops left them alone. After that, when the cops were beating us up, they became less safe. We fought through legal fights to have these things be legal, but also through violence and riots. If they hit us, we hit back. That’s a struggle. Now the idea is that you can feel safe here with your community, but you’re still bringing your struggles and demons inside. So, to me, the lyrical content is similar.
Looking at the new record, talking about being in love or grieving something, I look at a song like “Jack Rabbit Hill,” and I’m talking about grieving in Colorado, where I live now.
Compare that to “Routines” off Cissy, which is about my mom grieving the loss of my brother. We’re both grieving the same thing, but they’re three albums apart. It’s quite the same.
I’m a professional drummer, and I’ve drummed on all my records. But in this case, my old roommate and one of my best friends, Paul Kowert, he’s a first-call bluegrass bass player who works with the Punch Brothers, helped out. He’s touring with Dave Rawlings and Gillian Welch right now and plays in a bluegrass supergroup called Hawktail. Two members are from Punch Brothers. Paul just won a Grammy with Molly Tuttle and he’s played with YOLA.
I thought, if I write a collection of songs that distill down to their essence and set them against bluegrass-style music—if you’re half-listening, you might think it’s mountain music or traditional music or bluegrass music. But if you really listen to the lyrics, it’s the same sharp, cutting stuff.
As a rhythmic person—obviously, because of drums—there’s nothing more rhythmic than a bluegrass band. The way they breathe together is incredible. The hardest and most striking difference for me wasn’t the genre specifically—genres are overblown, it’s all the same chords and progressions—but learning how to sing lighter. I couldn’t be the lead singer; I had to be a fifth member of the band.
You can’t fight a bluegrass band rhythmically. You’ll sound ridiculous if you’re not breathing with them. That was the most striking thing for me. So it’s not that much of a deviation to me.
That being said, the next record, which is almost done—it just needs more money—is going to be different. Think Lucinda Williams and The Band making a record, but if The Band was a bunch of gay guys. It’ll be more Americana-rock-country or something. But it’ll still have my ridiculous, operatic, half-assed David Bowie voice.
As an artist, do you feel a responsibility to educate people on social issues, or are you more focused on expressing your own experiences? Your music, like Aaron Lee Tasjan’s and Katie Pruitt’s, helps me understand the world better.
SEÁN: It’s not educating people. It’s ‘fuck you’ if you have a problem with this. One of my first texts after Trump won was to Aaron: “We’ve got to keep going. Thank you for doing what you do.” Do I want to be known as a queer songwriter? No, I want to be known as a songwriter. I want to be known as a queer songwriter exactly as much as Bob Dylan’s known as a straight songwriter or Joni Mitchell’s known as a straight songwriter. The only reason you have to do this is because society insists on telling us we’re less than. We have to legally fight for just being equal. I have two responsibilities – one is to myself as an artist to be as honest as I can. If it scares me, go do it. My other is as a white guy from New England, from a middle-class working family that had access to all kinds of education and parents that were there, I’m among the least vulnerable queer people on the planet. For me to stay in the background and pretend it’s not happening just to try and get more followers, I can’t do that. Everyone has to decide their own level of vulnerability, and has to decide their own place when they’re ready. But I feel a responsibility to be honest with myself. I’m not trying to educate anybody.
I am trying to make somebody know that I could pass as a straight man and if they say something, I’ll tell them, “Oh, I’m gay.” There is a radius around me where absolutely any queer person, or any person – women, by the way, have to go through the same shit at bars – that’s standing next to me is safe to the extent I can provide a safe space. They are not alone. That’s all I mean. I will announce in a place, like the bar I go to in Colorado, it’s a bunch of people, they’re probably all Trump voters, not that it particularly comes up and not anyone has a problem with anyone else, but they all know that I’m a gay guy. So whatever you say, you’re gonna have to deal with this. That’s the only responsibility I have. It’s really not about education other than the more we actually get to know each other, the less we can hate each other almost all the time, except for people that stay in the left lane and go too slow (laughs).
Is there anything that is off limits in terms of writing lyrics or do you feel like your life is an open book?
SEÁN: I won’t hurt anybody. “Firefly” is about somebody and he knows. People that are close to me know who it is because they saw me lose my mind last year and just not be able to function in society. But I wouldn’t talk about him specifically or where he is or anything like that. I don’t want to bring attention to him or say something embarrassing about him by accident. I don’t want to hurt him in any capacity. But that’s it.
I have to, oddly enough, try to curse less because I curse pretty much all the time. I was talking to Bob Boilen, who came to my show the other day, and he’s like, “I wanted to play your song on my radio show, but you say ‘shit.’” I was like, “Oh, right. I forgot we are still this puritanical society.” It’s not his fault, it’s just how radio is.
I’m not a songwriter so I don’t ever have to open my doors to show the world some of my toughest or darkest moments. When you write songs that come from those spaces, is it difficult to perform those songs live, night after night, and go through those moments again and again?
SEÁN: We don’t know each other personally, but this is how I exist in life. If it’s overwhelming, and only certain people even want to be around me, I understand. I have friends who don’t talk to me anymore because I don’t have a poker face at all. I’m a raw nerve all the time. It’s exhausting for me, and it’s exhausting for them. But going on stage and singing my song, “Jack Rabbit Hill,” I’m right there in that feeling. I’m talking about looking for my brother, meaning trying to grieve my brother in Colorado.
My song “Routines” is about my mom sitting on this porch that I’m sitting on now. “This woman just sits on the porch / A house her daddy didn’t build.” It used to be that wherever you grew up, your father probably built the house with his friends. I’m thinking about my mom sitting on this porch, my dad bought the house but he built the porch. It’s something that’s lost generationally. It’s different than it used to be. “She’s been missing her mother today, as she does when she notices the birds / And the tattoo on her leg – her boy’s name – she says, ‘Fuck man, losing him still hurts’ / She says, ‘I’ll burn this cigarette until the very day I die.” This is a picture I had in my brain, I wrote it in L.A., but it’s about my mom sitting here on this porch mourning my brother. And then there’s a lyric that gets me every time: “She says, ‘I regret almost everything, but I’m so glad that I had you.’” I can’t sing that. I can’t pretend. If I’m going to sing it, I’m going to sing it because nothing about that feeling will lessen over time.
Anyone who survives losing a child is a fucking miracle. It was the hardest thing that ever happened to me, which is about half as hard as it was for my parents. The lyric about her sitting there burning that cigarette until the day she dies, she can do whatever the fuck she wants. She’s just trying to get through it. That was 21 years ago and that feeling is not gone.
I tell people the worst thing that could ever happen to me has already happened. Period. So when people ask things like if I’m nervous to go on stage, I’m like, “No. Are you kidding? You can’t scare me.” It’s a different perspective. It’s just not the same.
I don’t want pity. I don’t really do this anymore but when people used to ask, “How’s it going today?,” I would literally say, “Do you want me to answer that question for real or do you just want to move on? I’m giving you an option. I’m not going to bullshit you so if you want to move on, no hard feelings.” I did that for years because you end up comforting other people and you don’t have the capacity to do it. The last thing they want to know is how your fucking day is going, I can tell you that. And you wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
Speaking from personal experience, the greatest thing someone can say is something like, “It’s good to see you,” rather than asking how your day is. We all have things going on in our lives, some good, some bad, and the reality is that asking how someone is doing has become as common as saying “hi” and I really wish people wouldn’t ask that question.
SEÁN: I tell younger people, when they lose someone close to them, that they have a superpower that they don’t want. I was with my friend Stelth, the keyboardist for the Lumineers – I actually just toured with him as his drummer – and we were riding around on a tandem bike trying to give away two tickets to that night’s Lumineers concert. He had extra guest list tickets and was just going around to people asking if they needed them. These were people tailgating, adults who had taken the day off work. Of course, they already had tickets. There was a long line of people waiting to get into the general admission area at the amphitheater. It was a lot of younger kids who were excited to see the Lumineers. We kept riding by, and after a few times, people started taking videos and asking, “Who are these people?” Stelth isn’t as well-known, and I was dressed more like a rock star. They probably thought it was me who was famous, but it wasn’t. I saw these two kids, and one was wearing a Rolling Stone shirt. I said to Stelth, “Let’s go back there.” We went to them, and Stelth asked if they had tickets. The other kid, Donovan, said, ‘I’ll take the tickets.’
During the show, there happened to be an open seat next to Donovan and his friend so I just went and stood there for a second. They were 10 rows back rather than back in the general admission field where their tickets had been. Donovan’s friend said it was his first concert. Donovan knew all the words to the Lumineers’ songs and started crying. I asked him what was wrong, and he said, “This is my mom and I’s band. She died two weeks ago of breast cancer. She was supposed to come tonight.” I didn’t know the details when we gave them the tickets, but I just had a feeling about him as someone who had lost someone close. As soon as I looked at him, it hit me like lightning. I texted Stelth after Donovan told me that and he said, “Hold them after the show. Don’t let them leave.” He comes out with two setlists signed by the band and takes pictures with them.
Donovan and I have talked almost every day since then. He’s one of my buddies now, and I mentor him. I just told him that life is going to be shitty. Don’t try to make yourself feel better with useless things. Just focus on being kind to at least one person. That’s the only thing you can control.
You’ve talked about the lyrics of some of the songs on the EP. What can you tell me about the songs that I won’t get from just listening to it?
SEÁN: I’ll start more generally. Every song but “Firefly” was recorded in one day by my friends in Hawktail plus Dominick Leslie, who was in Hawktail at the time and how he’s in Molly Tuttle’s band full time. My old roommate, Paul Kowert, from the Aspen Music Festival in 2006, is also a classically trained percussionist. He has his bluegrass supergroup, and I asked him to play on the record.
I was a bit insecure because I’m a good drummer and musician, but these guys are on another level. We were at Blackburn Studios in Nashville, a very famous studio. Dierks Bentley was recording in the next room. My voice was shot, so I was just kind of humming along. It was a really cool experience.
Let me start with “Jack Rabbit Hill.” The bass solo in that song was played by my friend Paul. In 2006, we were both going through personal struggles. I was still grieving the loss of my brother, and Paul was dealing with something else. The bass solo in that song is my favorite 20 seconds of anything I’ve ever made, and I had nothing to do with it. It’s just so beautiful. It’s incredible to have him on a song that’s about my grieving process. He absolutely nailed it. He’s just so good. Having Mirah sing on it was also amazing.
All the instrumental tracks were recorded in one day. All the stories are the same because it was all in one day, But I couldn’t sing on it. A year later, I asked my friend Chris Carrabba, who’s in Dashboard Confessional, to use his studio. I needed a good mic and a quiet space to record vocals. He has a studio in his basement. I re-recorded all the vocals, other than “Firefly,” and I used the same mic that Chris uses for his vocals. He’s the nicest guy I’ve ever met in music, period. I haven’t met a lot of assholes, to be perfectly honest, but he’s just next level.
It’s funny that it’s a recording that’s now out but the instruments and the vocals were recorded a year apart. In that year, I spent time learning how to sing with a bluegrass band. This was going to be a four-song EP. I started talking to a guy I was in love with after a year of no contact. We had ended things badly, but we started talking about forgiveness. I wrote “Firefly” on my guitar, my first open tuning song. I recorded the vocals alone in that same room. By the end of the recording, I was in tears. That songwriting and recording process drove my neighbor crazy. I ended up moving out of Nashville because of it. I couldn’t live next to someone who complained about my music, especially since I could hear everything she did too. I asked my landlord to let me out of my lease, and he agreed.
I know you’ve toured and recorded with the Counting Crows. That’s a band that I just never spent any time with. What’s a good starting point?
SEÁN: It’s easy now to say why I like them, nobody would be like, “Why do you like Counting Crows?” They’re a massive part of my life now. But when I was living in D.C., punks would ask me about them. Like, ‘”What the hell is that band that did the Shrek song?”
I’d say, “Hey guys, their first record, the famous one, starts with 13 seconds of dead silence. Then Adam Duritz comes out and sings, “Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog / Where no one notices the contrast of white on white / And in between the moon and you / The angels get a better view / Of the crumbling difference between wrong and right / Well, I walk in the air between the rain / Through myself and back again / Where? I don’t know / Maria says she’s dying / Through the door, I hear her crying / Why? I don’t know / Round here, we always stand up straight.” First song, first record. That’s a good starting point.
That being said, and Adam’s with me on this, that’s not my favorite record. The songs are all solid, but I just don’t like the drum sound as much. It’s fine. I’m not criticizing a record that sells ten million copies. I bought a guitar on August 18, 2006 and on August 18, 2007, I saw the Counting Crows and started writing songs. When I first started listening to them, I bought Live Across the Wire. They have great live albums, and you never know what you’re going to get. Sometimes it pisses fans off when Adams goes off on tangents with the melodies. That album has Live at the 10 Spot and Storytellers. So it has them acoustic and then full band at the height of their powers, which was during the Recovering the Satellites tour. To me, that’s the only way to listen to them. Maybe start there because that’s where they shine.
Adam got shit on in pop culture, which bums me out because he’s a massive influence on me. He’s just the most important thing, both as far as bringing my career into the next level, singing on my stuff and talking about it, bringing me on tour, having me sing with them on their tour a little bit. He’s just a great dude.
Those are all ‘pinch me’ moments. Do you keep thinking to yourself, ‘I can’t believe this is my life’?
SEÁN: I stayed with him last week. He’s my friend. That’s the first thing. He and I connect on songs. I don’t give a fuck that he’s famous. It’s funny to watch sometimes. It’s nice that he has extra room for me at his house. It’s nice when your friends have a nice spot. You can stay and he’s probably going to buy dinner. But he’s my friend. It is funny that he has had such an influence on me, but I’ve had an influence on him, too. He thanks me on the Counting Crows album Butter Miracle Suite One. He asked me and Chris Carrabba, because he heard my record, Cissy, “How do I make this more glam rock, Mott the Hoople sound?” And that’s what he did.
I can’t emphasize enough that it matters to me that he’s famous as much as it matters to him that I’m famous, which I’m not. I mean, it matters, he brings me on tour with Counting Crows. That’s a huge deal and that would obviously not be the same in the reverse. He’s so underrated lyrically.
So ‘pinch me’ moments? Sure, there’s little funny ‘pinch me’ moments, I guess, but really, it’s just hanging out with my friend and playing music sometimes.
He could very easily have been the rock star and not paid any attention to this kid who came up to him and said, “You’re the reason I started playing,” right?
SEÁN: He came up to me! He saw me play and he comes up to me a couple hours later, taps me on the shoulder and recites my lyrics to the song “Cutter Street” to me. He said, “That’s a great fucking song.” And I was like, “Thanks. You’re the reason I started writing songs.” And he said, “I’m glad when it works out.”
The ‘pinch me’ moment, I will say that was actually unbelievable – he heard my record, Cissy and he says, “You have to let me sing on ‘Routines,’” which is the one about my mother. And I was like, “You could sing on all of them. You could sing the lead vocals on all of them.” Hearing him sing about my brother and my mother and my family, I think having a friend that wasn’t around then and having to get into all of what the song is about, but also having this man that has been so important to me artistically sing about that … I’m sitting there, me and my producer who loves them as much as I do, we’re sitting there. We just grab each other’s hands and we’re like, “Is this happening right now? He’s singing on our thing that nobody cares about because he likes the song.” And that’s what it is. The song.
He’s also told me that Margaret Thatcher of the Lower East Side, my EP that was supposed to be an LP, wasn’t as good as Cissy. That’s all he said. That made me go back to listen to it and be like, “Fuck, he’s right.” I cut four songs from it and now it’s an EP.
He gets slapped down for being a pop icon during a time which you were looked down on as an artist if you were selling records. This is a guy who hasn’t played Saturday Night Live since the first time because he wouldn’t do what they asked – they wanted him to play “Mr. Jones” and he said, “No, I’m playing ‘Round Here.’” That blew them up, by the way. He was 38-years-old when he got famous, it’s not like he was a kid. He was like, “I don’t care, Loren. I’m not doing it.”
Even with the first record, it was single after single. He gets a call while doing his Rolling Stone cover shoot. He’s staying at a hotel in Paris. It’s somebody from Geffen Records saying Kurt Cobain killed himself. They knew each other and were on the same label. He stopped everything – all the publicity for August and Everything After. He was about to shut down the Rolling Stone shoot, but his band said no.
He’s not a sellout at all. He has no interest in doing what you’re supposed to. I mean, you get hired to do a Shrek song; there are parameters, you’re not just doing whatever you want. He’s someone to learn from. He doesn’t compromise himself and really does what he wants. The Counting Crows haven’t been at the center of pop culture for decades, and they still sell out shows playing to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 people. They have 30 hits.
For his 60th birthday, I asked a bunch of his friends to record covers of Counting Crows songs. I call it Putting On Duritz. I gave him a private link. My cover of “Mr. Jones” is out there.
I got Frank Turner doing “Anna Begins,” Dashboard Confessional doing “Maria,” Matthew Koma of Winnetka Bowling League does “Round Here,” Fantastic Cat does “Einstein on the Beach.” I filmed myself giving it to him. He’s not someone who likes compliments, but he appreciated it. It’s a private link; only he has it.
Steven Kellogg is on there. Matt Sucich is on there. I think Steven Kellogg released his, I think Matt Sucich released his, but other than that, it’s only us three who have released ours.
He’s just been immense to so many people.
So as you’re getting ready to drive from Connecticut to Colorado with your mother, will you be listening to music and, if so, what will be on the soundtrack?
SEÁN: The first time I kicked in my mom’s stomach, and this is a true story, was at a Deep Purple concert during the song “Highway Star”. She’s had breakfast, which now that I’m older, I wonder what that means, with the drummer of the Doobie Brothers. She chased down the singer of Yes in the JCPenney lingerie area because he was trying to hide from her. She’s seen everybody – Elton John, the Eagles, in the front row, Bruce Springsteen at Giant Stadium in 1985, two weeks after I was born, which I actually gave him shit about when I met him and he gave me a big hug after. But yeah, she loves music. They were in their 20s when I was a kid. They were out drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and some Meat Loaf is blasting or Billy Joel or whatever. How cool is that, right? So, you know, Meat Loaf’s a huge influence for me, those big vocals. And he’s not kidding, you know? He’s playing a character, but he’s not kidding. And so, yeah, she’s a big music fan. I’ll blast Meat Loaf. I’ll put on Queen, I’ll put on the Eagles and she’ll absolutely love it.
