A Musical Journey Back to ‘My Mississippi Roots’
by Danny Colman originally published on Rock On! This Week’s Sound Bites…10/23/2025
“My Mississippi Roots,” I’m going deep on that one,” said bassist James “JB” Barnes as he discussed the recently released album of the same name. “I had to reach back to my family history on my father’s side. My dad was from Port Gibson, Mississippi, was born in 1928 and he’s not with us anymore but he is my lineage. The Barnes family name comes from that part of Mississippi, Claiborne County and that’s where my dad is from; there’s a lot of tradition down there in Mississippi; look at the blues musicians who came out of there (Mississippi). Muddy Waters, B.B. King, there is a lot of history down there, good, bad and ugly.”
Banes currently resides in the Piscataway area of New Jersey via Cleveland, Ohio but this record says very little about his life’s journey and much about the ancestors who made it possible; in particular, his father.
Armed with a strong sense of what makes him who he is, he embarked on a musical mission to bring his family history to the forefront through his music and perhaps most importantly, through his lyrics.
“There are some serious messages in these songs,” he began. “The lyrics on this effort, I have to give my producer Anthony Krizan some credit because he helped me develop my lyrics where they made more sense for the groove we were layin’ down. We kind of did the music first and I had an idea for the lyrics; for instance, “My Mississippi Roots” is the title cut of the record and my father’s story as well. My father died very young, I was four years old when he passed away but he’s the one with the Mississippi lineage. Two of my sisters and my brother were all born in Mississippi, I was the only one who was not born down there. During the mid-fifties my dad and my mom made the decision to get out of the Jim Crow South, they weren’t doing bad there, they were doing OK but they wanted to move north like a lot of families did at that time. So, I wanted the lyrics to tell a story and “My Mississippi Roots” is a prime example of taking lyrics and having them make sense. “I was born in the hollow way down south of the Dixie Line,” that’s my father talking, “My daddy made a living farming from dawn to dusk,” he grew up on a farm, “My momma drove a school bus to help take care of us,” my grandmother drove a school bus while my grandfather worked the land. He had a farm with horses and cattle; he wasn’t a sharecropper, he was just a farmer with a bunch of acres he bought after his World War ll service in 1949. So, those lyrics are really diving deep into my dad’s story because he didn’t live a long life. So, he died when he was 36, I’m 66, so I said it’s about time I tell his story. So, that’s what that song is about lyrically, musically it’s a combination of some grooves that I’ve played with over the years but the lyrics were really heartfelt.”
Before going any farther up the road or back to the past, let’s get an understanding of how the record and Barnes’ music career came to be. When asked how he discovered an interest in the bass and wound up in New Jersey, he was more than glad to share.
“I’m glad you asked that,” he laughed. “We were living in Cleveland, Ohio when my father passed away in 1964; my mother remarried. Her pastor in Cleveland was a gentleman named Bishop Watkins who was from Newark, New Jersey originally and he had moved to Cleveland many years before but his brother still lived in Newark. So, her pastor introduced my mom to his brother, she married him and what did we do? We moved from Cleveland to Newark in 1965. My older sister married a bass player named David Johnson and I kind of grew up listening to him pluck his bass; he was playing with some top people. He was playing with Roy Ayres and I kind of got interested in the bass from just being around his scene. I was like, wow! I just loved the bass, he had an upright bass and I never really learned to play that but I should’ve but he primarily played electric bass and that was an inspiring thing for me. I wanted to play the bass and as I grew up; what can a band do without a good bass player? You have some of the great bass players out there now who are great songwriters and producers. You’ve got Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke, Victor Wooten and the Rock bass players; I thought John Entwistle was a great player, Jack Bruce from Cream and in the Blues world; who did it better than Willie Dixon?”
“I’ve been a blues musician for, I’d say, 30 years or more,” he went on, “I grew up on kind of jazz music; jazz fusion and once I got my ears on the blues, I said, that’s just what I love. I mean, Hell, we might as well say it, Blues and Jazz are joined at the hip. There is no jazz without blues, there is no rock and roll without blues and I have a small three piece band that I started in 2012 so, we’ve been together a while. I’m on my third guitar player, the original guitarist unfortunately passed away from a heart attack, the second guitar player went his separate way, the gentleman that’s with me now, MoeDene, has been around for about four years and I met him through a mutual friend; he’s been in the R&B scene for a long time and we needed a guitar player so, I asked him to come sit in with us and it kind of worked out. The drummer, Tommy Doud, I’ve been playing with for the past 30 years or so. He started out in the Metal scene, he had a record deal until his lead singer rolled over in a car. He didn’t die but he couldn’t sing anymore and so I’ve been with Tommy for a long time.”
With that kind of longevity and creative support; what was it like and who helped with the recording of this new record?
“I used friends, MoeDene and Tommy were on “Blues Falling Down Like Rain,” I used my son; he is a Berklee graduate and a helluva piano player who is out in L.A. now trying to make a living. I used a guy named Chip Degaard, he’s a piano player and also a gentleman I’m working with on putting together a larger band to do tours with and I brought him some different singers. I brought in a gentleman named Steven Braxton who is singing lead on three or four songs on the record; I used him on my last record in 2023 called, “JB’s Favorite Things.” I pulled in a guy named Kevin Goins. He comes from a funk background, his brother Glenn Goins was part of the Funkadelic band with George Clinton back in the day before he passed away but before that he gave the keys to his brother Kevin who has been around for quite some time here in the New Jersey area. I used him on a couple of songs, he’s a great soul singer and he gave me the soul I was looking for on “Southern Girl” and “Stand Up and Give Peace & Love a Chance.” So, I used a few different people to make it a smorgasbord of talent. Anthony Krizanplays a lot of the guitar work on this album and is my producer and friend; I’ve known Anthony for probably 40 years. He was with the Spin Doctors for a short stint and he’s played with a who’s who of everybody and he has the studio in Raritan; Sonic Boom where we recorded it and he’s a great guy who puts out some good music. He doesn’t consider himself a blues man but I told him, I said, “Dude, you’re a blues man whether you want to be or not” (Laughs). It was fun, it wasn’t like we were working; you know? I’m a bass player, not a guitar player but I know what I want and I’d bring him some grooves and Ideas on tempo and pace; we have a very good formula together and we’d just create. A lot of these original songs were me and him brainstorming and putting them together like a puzzle.”
Ah, it’s great to have friends but sometimes you have to trust your gut and go a bit beyond what some of those in your corner suggest, even if they are already a bit more established; such is the case with “My Mississippi Roots.”
“It’s 13 tracks and I’ve become friends with Bernard Allison over the years and he advised me, “Keep it to 10 or 11 tracks if you can” but I guess I’m a little hard headed and I want to say so much. It’s 13 tracks, the first six tracks are like “Get Up and Go Blues” which has Steve Braxton singing on it and it’s an upbeat blues; talking about you having to move on, your heart may still be there but you really have to get up and go. The second track is a song I co-wrote with my first guitar player from the small band I did years ago and I wanted to resurrect a song that I heard him do. I changed some lyrics, I’m sure he didn’t mind since he passed away but I still gave him co-writing credit on the song and that’s “Gotta Make a Change.” You’ve got things going on in your life and you know you need to change them so you talk about it until you make a change (Laughs). That’s slow blues and so, there’s a little bit of everything from a blues point of view and there’s even some classic rock on this. I wanted to do a version of “Wild Horses,” I did a Beatles song, “Oh Darling” on the last album and I said I want to do a Stones song on this one and the title, “Wild Horses” reminded me of how I perceived my dad of being because he really loved my mom and “Wild horse couldn’t drag him away” from her, the only thing that took him away was his death. So, I wanted to do that song and make it kind of like an R&B song and the way Steven sang it gives it that flavor. “Sara Smile,” when I first heard that song, I heard it by a man named Michael Burks, he died pretty young, I heard his version of that song and said, “We are gonna do a blues version” but it still is connected to the R & B flavor. “Southern Girl” talks about my father’s search for a wife; that’s an assumptive song. I don’t know what was in his head back in the 1930s and ’40s because I wasn’t alive but it’s just an assumptive song being a southern man who wanted a southern woman to walk through life with and he met my mother and she happened to be from Louisiana.”
With the summer festival season all but over for this year; what does he plan to do to support this new r
elease?
“I’m looking to gear up for next year, I’m gonna do some local record release shows to get some buzz out there and help support the record and I’m putting together a bigger band so that I can do this record justice; not that I’m saying I didn’t do that with the last one but this one is a personal thing. This talks about my family and I really want to get it out there and connect with people over this record.”
To discover more about James “JB” Barnes and “My Mississippi Roots,” please visit https://www.bbdrhythmandblues.com/