Songwriter Showcase at White Water Tavern Provides Magic

B.J. Barham performing

by Julian Spivey
The White Water Tavern is a small music venue and tavern hidden in Little Rock, Ark. that doesn’t seem like much to look at upon entering. It’s just an open floor with a bar near the entrance and the tiniest stage I’ve ever seen at a music venue in the back right corner from the front door. The wood boards under your feet move and creak while you’re moving along to the music and the walls and ceilings are lined with paper posters of past events at the venue.

The place is absolutely magical though. I realized this not long after stepping into the venue for the first time some years ago to see a show by Cory Branan. There’s a mutual feeling of love and camaraderie between the musicians and the audience every time I’ve been. The sound is near perfect. You feel more in love with music while at the White Water than you’ve ever felt. I’ve seen great shows there: Branan, Austin Lucas, Sarah Shook & the Disarmers and most recently before Saturday afternoon American Aquarium, for which the venue is so important in the past of the band that songwriter B.J. Barham immortalized it in lyrics to multiple songs, but maybe most notably in the words of “Rattlesnake” with “That first time I saw her, down at the White Water, dancing across those ancient hardwood floors.”

It was one of the local venues I was most concerned about not being able to survive the pandemic in 2020 that shut down music for at least a year and was thrilled when it made it through the other side. And I’ve only been to the White Water a handful of times. Though, I know we have a great future ahead of us.

This weekend (Dec. 2-4) the White Water Tavern hosted its annual Holiday Hangout were musicians both local and from across the country came to this little one-room corner stage to share in the fun and camaraderie and see another year almost ready to end. Over the weekend acts like American Aquarium, Branan, Lucas, Ben Nichols of Lucero, Rod Gator, The Vandoliers and more would perform at the Hangout.

Unfortunately, I did not have tickets for the Holiday Hangout. I hadn’t seen them go up for sale and the night I wouldn’t have wanted to miss (Saturday night) I had already had tickets to see comedian Nate Bargatze across town at Simmons Bank Arena (no real regrets it was the best stand-up set I’ve ever seen live).

Luckily though, the White Water Tavern put on a Songwriter Showcase free to the general public on Saturday afternoon hours before the real shindig got started, and as soon as I saw Barham was one of the songwriters featured I knew I had to go. I’ve seen American Aquarium live three times and they’re a can’t-miss live act Barham has become one of my favorite active songwriters. The event also featured Isaac Hoskins and Isaac Alexander, both of whom I’d never heard before, but the only way to love new music is to seek it out. I would soon learn guys named Isaac know how to write a good song.

The three songwriters would perform 12 songs, four apiece all solo and in the round over the span of about an hour, not including the unplanned roughly 20-minute or so intermission for a medical emergency involving a fellow attendee who collapsed to the hardwood floor with 911 being called to check her out.

I feel bad having not gotten all of the song titles for the performances by Hoskins and Alexander. Luckily, Hoskins just released an album, Bender, at the end of November and at least three of the songs he performed Saturday afternoon are on that album, so they were easy to find. I only caught one song title of the four songs that Alexander performed – even though I thoroughly enjoyed them all.

Barham’s music falls along the lines of country-rock but is often a bit more on the rock side for me. Hoskins is a country singer out of Texas. Alexander, a local, is more indie-rock style.

There wasn’t a bad song among the dozen performed by the lot on Saturday.

---

Isaac Hoskins performing

One of the best moments of the entire show – though I’m not sure Hoskins would agree because he seemed a bit perturbed by an equipment malfunction – was when he stepped out front of the stage and performed his first song (the one I couldn’t find the title of) without the help of a mic. I’d seen this previously at a White Water show from Austin Lucas (though he did it intentionally) and something about seeing a performance done this way just adds to the magic of it all.   

The three songs Hoskins would perform off Bender were “Leon’s Blues,” “Moments I Would Never Trade” and “The Pistol and the Prayer.”

Right when Hoskins started “Leon’s Blues” is when the medical emergency happened and brought things to a screeching halt for a bit. When things got back going Hoskins continued with “Leon’s Blues,” a song about an old dustbowl kid and WWII vet who was lonely and considered an old drunkard by the community, but as the human, he was by the song’s narrator and his mother. It may have gotten the biggest response out of the crowd of any performed during the event. “Moments I Would Never Trade” was inspired by Hoskins’ engagement and was one of the few “happy songs” of the showcase, which the songwriters remarked upon a bunch. I certainly didn’t mind because like Barham says in AA’s “Starts With You”: “sad songs make me happy.” Hoskins would finish with the revenge song “The Pistol and the Prayer,” which he said he had performed the night before on night one of the Holiday Hangout at the tavern.​

---

Isaac Alexander performs

Once again I apologize for not being able to locate most of the songs Alexander performed through his Spotify output (maybe they were unreleased?), but I enjoyed his lyrics and style. The one song I was able to locate is “Like a Sinking Stone” off his 2017 album of the same name and you could tell there’s some obvious inspiration from Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” on the track, which is certainly cool.

One of the great things about attending live music is finding new artists to spend your time with. I went to the Songwriter Showcase for Barham but came out a fan of both Hoskins and Alexander and eager to listen to their discographies.

The great thing about seeing Barham solo is you’re likely to get a couple of performances you haven’t already seen him perform live with his band. While I had seen “The Long Haul,” off 2020’s Lamentations before it’s one of his best so I loved hearing it again done as a solo performance. I’d also seen “One Day at a Time” from 2018’s Things Change but hearing him do it with just his voice and his guitar is fantastic. The other two songs were ones I don’t believe I’ve seen him perform live before, so it was truly a treat for this fan. Those songs were “How Wicked I Was” from Lamentations and “The First Year,” a song he wrote about losing his mom, off the newest album Chicamacomico, which came out in June.

I can’t thank the White Water Tavern enough for putting this free event out there for us, especially those of us who couldn’t make the Holiday Hangout. I hope to see these events again in the future and next year I’ll be looking more closely for those Hangout passes! ​

---