Dan and Kasey Barnhart, Healing with Music

 

 

Common Chords By Randall Hill

Dan and Kasey Barnhart

Fourteen-year old Kasey Barnhart was going through a tough time. Her parents, Dan Barnhart and Jan Howard, were splitting after 19 years, forcing the Carolina Forest 10th grader to deal with the complicated feelings that come for the children involved in such breakups.

“The emotions I felt were mostly anger cause I didn’t know what was going to happen,” she said during a visit at her father’s home outside Conway. “I felt like getting my words out in a song would help a lot more than throwing stuff across the room and yelling and crying. Music helped me a lot.”

Several months after the split, Kasey was making one of her regular visits to her 38-year-old dad.

“She started playing guitar about a year ago,” said Barnhart, wearing his trademark ball cap and a well-worn black Taylor guitar T-shirt. “I thought it would be kind of neat to write a song together.”

So father and daughter teamed up, and the collaboration produced an emotional ballad about their situation.

“The song `Stormy Weather’ was about our family breakup and how difficult it was on her and on me,” said Barnhart, taking a break from a recent practice session. “It was about healing.”

After they started writing together, performing together was the next step.

“Most of my friends don’t know that I sing and play guitar,” said Kasey, who lives with her mother in a two-bedroom apartment in Carolina Forest.

“We can’t just sit together and talk, that would be awkward,” she said, dressed in an angelic white dress and brushing her reddish blond hair to one side of her face. I’m a teenager and he’s an old man. Putting words and feelings into a song really helps our perspective to see how each other is feeling.”

Singer/songwriter Dan Barnhart and his daughter Kasey perform their song "Stormy Weather" in this music only video for Common Chords.

 

 

Singer/songwriter Dan Barnhart and his daughter Kasey perform their song "Monsters" in this music only video for Common Chords.

 

Stormy weather

By Dan and Kasey Barnhart

Four bedroom house we called our home

Now me and mom we live all alone

Two bedroom apartment on the edge of town

Kind of hard without you around

Walking around wonder if it will ever

Be the same as before when we were all together

Looks like I’m in for stormy weather

Though the skies are blue

Sweetheart you know that I love you

You know your mom and I both do

But we couldn’t get along

But you ain’t done nothing wrong

Walking around wonder if you will ever

Smile like you did when we were all together

Looks like I’m in for stormy weather

though the skies are blue

I’m not that little girl you use to know

I cant believe how much you’ve grown

Gone are the days of baby dolls

Now its cell phones and ipods

Walking around wonder if it will ever

be the same as before when we were all together

Looks like I’m in for stormy weather

Though the skies are blue