Kevin McCarthy

an evening with Kevin McCarthy and his incredible bandmates from Los Angeles and New Orleans Songs with Friends In late August 1997 a bespectacled, goateed, ponytailed, Phish shirt adorned 18 year-old guitarist, Scott Barkan, was in NYC riding downtown on the subway, with a group of other college freshman on an orientation field trip. They were traveling the eighty some odd blocks as a group, to get ice cream in Greenwich Village, (how adorable is that?) It was there, on that train, that he first met another another naively optimistic, wide-eyed college freshman, that being Joshua Smith. The two became fast friends; sharing a deep love for many things, and constantly jamming together in the dorm with Josh on his solitary hand drum and Scott on his plastic Ovation acoustic guitar. Inseparable, they soon made a successful plea to their RA to become roommates in the MSM dorm. The following year and what would have been their sophomore year of college, the two young men made the sage decision not to return to manhattan school of music, and instead, start a rock band in Josh’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. This choice was motivated by their desire to break into the budding, lucrative, jam-rock scene happening around the Midwest and East Coast during the late 90’s. The plan worked perfectly. They recruited bassist Jeremy Bleich (a cohort of Josh’s, and fellow member of the band birth which had recently formed), and the band Friendship First; was born, well, sort of. The band originally went by the name, Barky, and so, the band Barky was born in 1998. This trio, Barky, was reformed by Scott with new members when he wisely returned to college the following year of 1999, and through some circuitous movement with different members with Scott at the helm, Barky evolved in a masterful NYC-based instrumental rock fusion trio which turned many an ear and made impactful recordings. Look them up! After several years, Joshua and Scott found themselves thrust together by sheer proximity once again, unintentionally becoming neighbors in San Francisco. Circa 2005, this is where their story converges with another friend of Josh’s from another era of making music in Cleveland, Ohio, with songwriter Kevin Mccarthy. During the several years that followed Scott and Joshua’s time performing in Cleveland, Joshua had been introduced to songwriter Kevin McCarthy by a childhood friend. They made music together during these formative years of the early 2000’s, with Josh playing drums when they performed Kevin’s songs around Cleveland and the surrounding area until McCarthy and Smith migrated west, drawn in by the siren song, and misty allure of San Francisco. In their mid 20’s Kevin and Joshua both lived in the San Francisco Bay Area performing regularly as Kevin’s band, one that often incorporated Joshua’s old Manhattan School of Music chum, you guessed it, Scott Barkan. It was during this era of the mid-aughts Joshua and Scott formed a new trio, one that played a more developed form of song-style composition inspired less by jam bands and more by lyrical instrumental tunes with song-like structures, Friendship First. Both bands recorded albums back to back in Oakland, which are in various stages of being prepared for release. The music of Kevin McCarthy invokes the spirit of Jeff Buckley and Leonard Cohen with a band of special, masterful musicians. Friendship First owes its musical roots to folks like Bill Frisell Trio, Shudder to Think, and Wayne Krantz. They will be performing the music of Kevin McCarthy as well as the music of Friendship First. Instrumental and vocal songs with Friends, in a special weekend of shows!