Morning Mojo broadcasts live every Tuesday from 9am-12noon on WCNI 90.9 FM. We are a non-profit, commercial free station located on the campus of Conn College in New London. I'm Ali and for the last year and a half that is where I have been, spinning great music both old favorites, hidden treasures or brand new bands to me. Barefoot Truth falls into the last category. I had been hearing a buzz for months, then I finally caught the boys in Old Saybrook at The Kate, fantastic show, full of energy and talent. Will Evans of Barefoot Truth stopped by the WCNI Studio just before Thanksgiving. Will and the band were getting ready to play The Garde Theater the following weekend and we spoke about that and much more, here is part of our conversation that day.

AK ~ Good Morning Will, thanks for coming in. Let's start with the beginning. You are one of the founders of BFT, correct?

WE ~ Myself and Jay Driscoll from South Hadley Mass and I started 7 years ago on the CT shoreline and here we are returning. We've all disbursed now but it's nice to come back and have a beautiful theater to play our music and share with people.

AK ~ Especially being hometown boys.

WE ~ That's right.

AK ~ Now I know you've been selling out lots of shows, but this is a big theater.

WE ~ Ya, it's huge, we have been selling out small clubs and venues across the North East. It's kind of ambitious to jump into a room this big but it's just such a beautiful space. I'm just happy to be on stage there and it's a great place to come over the holiday weekend. Very special. We are also encouraging people to bring down a non-perishable donation, which we will be giving to the United Way. We did this last year and it was a success.

AK ~ Nice way to give back, do you have an opener at The Garde?

WE ~ We have a band opening up for us called "The Sweet Remains", friends and musicians that we played with in Europe. If you like Crosby Stills and Nash type harmony, they will be right up your alley.

AK ~ Really looking forward to the show! Now what about Videos? I have seen a few and they are very cool, are you guys working on more?

WE ~ We've been putting out music videos for several years now but trying to come up with a fun, creative video is always been our mission.

It's really amazing what you can do with the Social Media nowadays. Bands can blow up with one Youtube Video that goes viral. So that's what we are trying to tap into now.

AK ~ Who came up with the video of the band singing in a wind tunnel?

WE ~ It was something we talked about doing. We looked into indoor skydiving and too big a risk doing it, because we had no idea if we would be able to hold ourselves steady in the wind tunnel, sing and put the whole video together but it worked out great. The company, Sky Venture in New Hampshire was amazing, letting us in there for 2 days and play around in the sky dive simulator. The song for this video is Roll if you fall, so go on the website, Barefoottruth.com and check it out. You will see what we are talking about. Lots of fun, I highly recommend it!

AK ~ Now your last CD "Carry us On" just dropped September 6th of 2011, what's next for the band?

WE ~ I'm back to the writing part of my life. We will probably take January and February to just be people, normal lifestyle, not traveling in the band, late nights and stuff. Hoping to be doing a lot of writing and possibly a solo record late in the spring.

AK ~ Are you the prolific one in the band or does everybody bring songs to the table?

WE ~ Garrett Duffy, harmonica player, just recently hatched from his shell and is now doing lead vocals and singing on one of the songs on the new album, (Carry us On), that he wrote. It was fun to be producer, and just offer my advice for a change, instead of bringing the song and having everybody kinda add their 2 cents. So there's certainly lots of collaboration going on in the studio with the guys bringing ideas and stuff. For the most part I'll have all the vocals and lyrics written out and then everybody really contributes to the music.

AK ~ Do you guys ever do covers?

WE ~ We actually covered a tune called "Rivers of Babylon" on a short EP we did that we did with another singer/songwriter friend of mine that you can find on YouTube. It's an old spiritual, reggae hymn. Actually we will be doing a cover at the Garde, an old classic by the Band, it's a good one! We also try to incorporate a lot of sometimes funny pop music. We will sneak some lines in, we did "Single Ladies" a couple of years ago, we snuck that into our song, "Broken Road". It's fun to mesh the two styles.

AK ~ Last time we spoke Barefoot Truth had gone over 9 million spins on Pandora, any idea what it's up to now?

After a genuinely humble laugh, Will's reply : Well, I haven't checked recently but Pandora has been amazing for us, the social media and networks that are available to us now are making it possible for independent bands like ourselves to make it to the top 10 in itunes, and to continue to put out records and continue to tour. For us it's about being smart about not burning ourselves out. So many bands think you just have to play and play everywhere, a lot of bands can do that but for us, we are close to home and family is very important to us all. Balance, a kind of normal lifestyle with the craziness that is the music industry is a challenge, but we are making it work.

Since this interview took place on air, I had the pleasure of Will playing a song for our listeners. He went into "Easy Come High" first then after the second break he played an unrecorded song called, "Playing with Fire". You can catch both of the songs on Youtube, on my channel, Trixie65ful, we taped the in studio performance.

Also the other videos that we mention can be found at Barefoottruth.com.

AK ~ Do you ever get stage fright?

WE ~ Well, I've certainly felt the pressure on stage.

AK ~ I've said that when that nervous buzz goes away, if you're not excited or passionate about it, then it's time to do something else.

WE ~ I agree, you stress about it but you look forward to it, a chance to show what you're made of. I guess there is an adrenaline that kicks in, it's funny, about a month ago, we were headed down to the south, South Carolina and then heading west. We were in Philadelphia then DC, and I had just horrible, horrible stomach cramps, something wasn't right. I thought maybe I had a flu bug coming on and just didn't know if I could play the show. As soon as I got on stage, now I'm not going to say the pain went away, but, all of a sudden this adrenaline just came and kicked in. Got through the show, immediately got horribly ill and went to the hospital where I had my appendix taken out. So it was definitely a serious situation but when the lights go on , or the game is on, you take the stage or field and just go do what you've got to do.

AK ~ Glad you're ok, that was serious. Changing gears completely, another video I saw of yours had you surfing, is surfing part of your life?

WE ~ Ya, definitely, that's how Garrett, our harmonica player, and myself actually met in college. We did a surf weekend with another buddy from school and from there it's like I started playing the acoustic guitar and Garrett on harmonica..and off we went.. Maybe it's cliche or very Jack Johnson but they really go together, surfing and music. They are so seamless, acoustic music especially. It just makes so much sense, you go and have these great experiences in the water and you're out there, kinda giving and receiving life, and it's so easy to go and play music and write music because it's such a seamless situation.

I think that video was shot in Matunick, 26 degrees that day...Brrrrr.....

Well, I hope this month finds Will in warmer waters as his plan at the time was to spend exploring Kauai and the islands. The show at The Garde drew an enthusiastic crowd that included fans from a broad spectrum. They played songs from the new CD, older tunes and the cover from The Band turned out to be, "The Weight", and it was a fantastic version. We were also treated to "Crazy Love". The new CD “Carry us On” is a great addition to my collection and I look forward to watching their star rise and hope they keep their bare feet planted as firmly on the ground. I look forward to hearing what sounds come next from their journey. Be it solo projects or more Barefoot Truth I'll be looking for it come spring. Thank you Will Evans, Jay Driscoll, Garrett Duffy, Wayno, Andy Wrba.