Pat’s hammer has busted more doors open for him in Music City than his guitar. After flunking his first audition at what Vince Gill calls “the center of the songwriting universe,” Bluebird Café, the owner hired him to remodel the restroom and hang out for free. “It was songwriting school for me.” Pat recalls. “Quite often, I got to listen to songwriters' first performances of what would later become one of the world’s greatest songs. Songs that were true, right out a songwriter’s life became my favorites. I quit trying to write hits and started telling my story. Then I started getting cuts.”

In a recent Country Music History book, Amy is quoted. “The laconic wit in his songs definitely sets him apart in Music City.” Kurland supported Pat’s work opening halfway houses in Nashville. Together, they became the first to broadcast open mics on the Internet, 1997. Live at the Bluebird Cafe later ran five seasons on the Turner South Network. In Peter Bogdonovich’s movie about the Cafe, The thing Called Love (River Phoenix’s last movie, Sandra Bullock’s first) Pat was given a small role playing himself as a wanna-be-hit-songwriter. “They cut my big part in order to keep it PG.” Pat laments. Buy Pat's Oxford House benefit CD here:

       Pat Barber is a handyman and Troubadour, just successful enough to still play his little known songs and survive at the bottom of the Music Industry Food Chain, (part timing as a handyman). He travels with his dog, Gabe, in an old 4x4 4-runner and lives in what he calls a Field Hut, a custom made little house for him and his dog that he pulls from town to town, playing sidewalks and coffee shops for tips.