The Barefoot Movement are a string band from North Carolina built around childhood sweethearts now husband, wife and parents, Tommy Norris and Noah Wall. I first came across them at Skipper’s Smokehouse, a beer and deep-fried gator tails bar in North Tampa, Florida where they were opening for a Grateful Dead tribute band. There was a sparkiness in their show and a deftness to the playing as well as some great hooks that drew this listener in. Sadly, attempts to enjoy more were hampered by the fact their merch was stolen while they were on stage.
The group at the time comprised Wall (fiddle and vocals) and Norris (mandolin, guitar, vocals) with Quentin Acres (guitar, vocals) and Hasse Ciaccio (double bass, vocals). As the name suggests the band played barefoot. With four singers the quality of the harmonies was outstanding. However, what really had the audience stopping and taking notice was the sheer energy with which they performed.
Since then, The Barefoot Movement has seen members come and go while continuing to put out recorded music and touring pretty relentlessly.
The first album issued by the band was Footwork (2011). Independently released, it’s 12 tracks of a band finding its stride. One of the standouts is Tobacco Road which you can see here:
Shortly afterwards The Barefoot Movement put out a live album Live At The Turnage Theatre. Recorded at the theatre in Washington, North Carolina on 9th July 2011, the 18-song set features songs from Footwork as well as a number of standards. It’s a very intimate recording in which the band really kicks, providing a real window on their live sound. Is it pristine? No, but it’s alive. It’s not easy to find but well worth the effort.
Roll forward to 2013 and The Barefoot Movement have added pop sensibilities to their bluegrass roots and came out with a record which, had it been reviewed in these ages, would have been an easy 9, nudging 10 and had it been on a reasonably sized label could well have been a breakthrough, Figures Of The Year (2013) opens with a cracking instrumental, Sheepherder, before rolling into the first of the big tunes Lay It All Down On Me. Wall’s vocal melody is interlaced with sweet lines from guitar and mandolin while the bass gently nudges the song along. Listening to Figures Of The Year front to back is strongly recommended. To whet readers’ appetites here is Second Time Around, one of the band’s most popular songs.
Figures Of The Year came with a bonus track, a version of Blind Melon’s No Rain, providing an early indication of Wall’s inner rocker.
Prior to the release of The High Road EP (2014) , Acres had left to be replaced by Alex Conerly on guitar. The High Road is a set of traditional tunes including a version of classic Wade In The Water arranged by Wall who was inspired by hearing the late Eva Cassidy’s version. This version is from a couple of years later.
The following year the band released a second live album, Live In LA (2015). Recorded on 20th March 2015 in Culver City, the recoding sees Conery well bedded into the band. The set is a combination of the songs from the most recent studio album and EP, but with added oomph in a live context.
Between then and their next record, Ciaccio left and was replaced by Illinois-based and jazz-trained bass player Katie Blomarz. Now based in Nashville, the band signed to Bonfire Records and in the Autumn of 2019 played the label’s showcase at Nashville’s legendary Station Inn during the 2019 AmericanaFest. Their performance was first class and they seemed poised for bigger things until the pandemic hit. The members moved back to their respective home areas in the absence of touring.
The Barefoot Movement stepped up their efforts during that dispiriting time, launching a Patreon, and setting up remote “TuneTwists” where they would cover songs selected by fans and then record a pieced together video from members’ respective homes. Norris is pretty adept technologically, perhaps as a result of a “day job” composing music for video games so the videos, which you can still find on YouTube and have pretty impressive production values. The band also hosted The Barefoot Movement Variety Show MC’d by Wall and bringing in an impressive set of guests including Bryan Sutton and Sierra Hull. Slightly flaky but always fun the regular shows lifted the spirits of band and fans. Later as restrictions eased, they launched a “Carcapella” series, recording videos of the band performing songs acapella in a car.
In 2020, the first fruits of the Bonfire collaboration emerged, the EP Rise And Fly. Comprising seven tracks, this was the first recording from this version of the band. The record opens with the traditional Early In The Morning and includes this funky Lonely Mississippi Blues written by guitarist Conerly.
He left the band shortly afterwards although he played on the recording of the band’s Bonfire full-length album Pressing Onward (2021). This ten-song set is a delight featuring some songs that had been around in the repertoire for some time. The artwork is a drawing of the band’s bus heading out on the road into the sun and opens in the same spirit with Wall’s Back Behind The Wheel. The record includes a driving cover of Jimi Hendrix classic Fire. The songs are a mix of resilience and poignancy. This is Easy.
Blomarz moved on to other projects although she still performs from time to time with The Barefoot Movement. The band has now reverted to the core duo of Norris and Wall supplemented by other musicians live and, in the studio, as necessary. Wall is quoted in the publicity for Let It Out (2024): “It feels like the end of that Fleetwood Mac dream, but it has also challenged Tommy and me to get comfortable with sharing ourselves, and all of the different influences that we share both within and outside of Bluegrass. Historically, the songs we’ve recorded were primarily mine and Tommy’s, but co-arranged by whatever members we had at the time, so that had a big influence on which songs we chose to work up. But now that it’s back to just the two of us, I think we are finally ready to tell our story.” Let It Out sees a reflective mood epitomised in Wall’s Realign (Catch My Breath).
The Barefoot Movement are still creating, still touring and still engaging with their fan base. Both have other sources of work – in Wall’s case, she performs for audio books and has an impressive range of accents (including Birmingham, UK!). They’re also focused on family and bringing up their daughter. But their love of music is what drives them. Recently they had a live show available for fans via Patreon which closed with a cover of Ozzy Osburne’s Crazy Train led by metalhead Wall’s vocal and fiddle. Here it is from the 2024 IBMA. Summing up nicely why more people really should know about The Barefoot Movement.
