Del Barber is the son of a draft dodger.  He grew up in southern Manitoba, balanced on the line that separates town from country.  His heroes yielded hockey sticks and fishing rods. 

Del woke up one morning at 19-years-old and he began to run. Any train, bus, road or trail, fuelled his desire to see more at whatever cost.  He traded his athletic heroes for writers that died young. He chased Jack Kerouac’s ghost across the continent, working dozens of jobs to get there.  Del also planted trees in northern B.C., served coffee and breakfast in Georgia, and drove drug addicts to their court dates in Winnipeg.  He worked as mountain guide, a janitor, a construction worker, a groundskeeper, a landscaper, a farmer, a counsellor, an ice-maker, a teacher’s assistant, a driver, a roofer, a fisherman and more; in 15 states and 8 Provinces.

At its core, Del Barber’s album Headwaters is about searching for the source of our desires, and the freedom that comes from understanding the ways in which the sources influence our directions. Rivers can’t change where they begin, or where they run, neither can we change our histories or escape their influence on us.  Headwaters is a collection of parables, hymns and manifestos, stories of love and loss, sadness and joy, threaded together by the search for an ultimate source.  Headwaters is his third record in four years.

Del is 28-years-old, a guitar player and a songwriter.  Sometimes he preaches, sometimes he rhymes and he knows that he will never do anything but this.  His world has turned into managers, agents, airports, festivals and promoters, but his source is still just a dashboard, a radio, a guitar and a pen.