Carolina on His Mind: BJ Barham’s Trip Back to Trump’s America

“Don’t call what you’re wearing an outfit. Don’t ever say your car is broke. Don’t worry about losing your accent; a southern man tells better jokes. Have fun and stay clear of the needle. Call home on your sister’s birthday. Don’t tell them you’re bigger than Jesus. Don’t give it away.”

This are the pearls of wisdom a father offers his son in Jason Isbell’s “Outfit,” originally recorded when he was with the Drive-By Truckers. Off all the familial-advice songs, this is perhaps the most credible and poignant — especially for Southerners.

BJ Barham is no Jason Isbell, but that’s only because no one really is. That Barham’s solo debut, Rockingham, even puts him in the ring with one of our greatest living songwriters speaks volumes as to the American Aquarium frontman’s potential as a top-flight chronicler of those who speak with a drawl and hail from hometowns without skyscrapers.

“Madeline” is Rockingham’s “Outfit,” a letter to a fictional daughter in or near Barham’s hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina. “I wish I could tell you that the world is a safe place, but I have seen the darkest side of people,” he sings. “But when the day they put you in my arms and my eyes got lost in yours, I learned that we are taught, not born with evil.”

The darkest side Barham speaks of wreaked havoc on Paris this past November, when 89 people were killed during an Eagles of Death Metal concert at the Bataclan Theatre. Barham and his band were only a few hours away in Belgium, in the midst of a European tour. The tragedy compelled Barham’s thoughts to race back home, with Rockingham swiftly pouring out of him.

It’s horrifying to imagine what Donald Trump’s response to an act of terrorism might be, but Barham paints a vivid portrait of the sort of white, undereducated, small-town voters — their Chevys stalled on the dirt roads of broken promises — who might feel as though he’s their last, best shot at reclaiming Old Glory. In “Unfortunate Kind” and “Reidsville,” they’re longtime partners trying to keep food on the table and rings on their fingers, while “O’Lover” and the gorgeous, heart-wrenching “Water in the Well” ponder darker, more desperate maneuvers like crime and suicide.

Rockingham starts on a melancholy note and ends with a gun to its narrator’s head. A concept album, it’s a masterwork of tone — dour and dourer. Small-town America is an idyll worth fighting for; it’s what this country was built on, after all. But while glomming on to a figurehead who promotes bigotry and anger might feel cathartic for a spell, any sense of euphoria is as fleeting as a hit of crystal meth. Barham came to Rockingham to bury its past; unless its residents are willing to embrace the future, they won’t have one.