It’s the time of day when the sun is getting ready to clock off and let the moon hang out for the night, and I’m sitting in a damply lit bar in Ballard across from Lincoln Barr, lead singer and brainchild of Red Jacket Mine. The loud rock music playing over the speakers makes my Sony hand recorder feel inadequate, and also annoyed — as it has to work double-hard to catch the voice of my interviewee. No matter. I have no empathy for the daunting tasks taken on by machines.



Over the past five years Barr has turned his solo project into a full-blown musical experience with the aid of three other band members. Now he is eagerly anticipating the release of Red Jacket Mine’s new album, Lover’s Lookout. Sitting here in Ballard, I get the sense he is a member of my apathetic fraternity as he turns his cell phone off.

Red Jacket Mine’s new album is quiet and fairly basic rock in the vein of Counting Crows — complete with keyboard preformed by Ken Stringfellow of Posies fame. The album was recorded to tape instead of digitally, but this isn’t something you would notice when listening to it.



I wanted some answers so I asked Barr some questions.



CHUCK DULA: Why are you called Red Jacket Mine?



LINCOLN BARR: I was looking for a name that was kind of suggestive without really meaning anything. So, I was looking through these folk anthologies and I found a song called “The Red Jacket Mine Disaster.” I just thought it was a really neat combination of words without really meaning anything.


DULA: Why did you call your album Lover’s Lookout?



BARR: I wanted something that sounded nice, rolled off the tongue nicely, and actually sounded like an album title without being melodramatic. Most of all, I just thought it sounded like an album title.



DULA: If you saw a microwave in the middle of a crowded intersection would you save its life?


BARR: No.



DULA: Just as I thought.



Red Jacket Mine will play the New Frontier this Saturday.



[The New Frontier, Red Jacket Mine, Burning Rivers, Gavin Guss, Saturday, June 13, 9 p.m., $5, 301 E. 25th St., Tacoma, 253.572.4020]