She has had the opportunity to support some of the biggest names on the acoustic scene, including Dougie MacLean, Ken Nicol, The Strawbs, John Parr, Chris While & Julie Matthews, Jez Lowe and shared a stage with country/ rock band Smokie on their 2008 UK tour date at the Metrodome Arena. As well as work on her new album 2010 has seen the birth of a new musical partnership with long time friend and award-winning piano accordi- onist, Harriet Bartlett. You‘ll be hearing more of their work together in the coming year.
“Well thanks for that lovely introduction Mike, most people usually say, Charlie Barker... who’s he?“ Those were the words of singer/ songwriter Charlie Barker to broadcaster and folk singer Mike Harding as she walked on stage at the semi-final of the Radio 2 Young Folk Award.
Many is the time that people, not in the know, have been expecting a grizzled cowboy with boots and Stetson to walk on stage, only to be greeted by a tiny blonde standing behind a Martin guitar. Within minutes though, Charlie pulls the audience in with her storytelling and crisp clear vocals. Many of her audiences are astonished that by the age of 24 Charlie could have developed such a confident and conver- sational style.
In fact Charlie has been performing for a long time. She is a classically trained musi- cian who has been playing cello since the age of seven and guitar since she could hold the instru- ment.when most of her contemporaries were miming
to Spice Girl tracks, young Charlie was learning to play Nanci Griffith and Janis Ian. We all have our own musical heroes.
Charlie played cello in a number of orchestras in her native South Yorkshire, before being selected, at the age of 15 to appear on the BBC1 TV programme “The Next Big Thing”. She was the only young solo artist to both sing and play live before the studio audience. This led to Charlie fronting a 13-piece soul band as lead vocalist at the National Festival of Music for Youth 2002, held at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Even at this young age Charlie’s tight vocal abilities were singled out for special praise by the festival judges.
“Appearing on TV at such a young age was such a valuable experience, it taught me how to deal with nerves and become more of a performer as opposed to someone who just sings songs. Joining a soul band gave me the opportunity to do something entirely different to what I’d always performed, but it wasn’t long before I wanted to return to doing more acoustic music.”
More recently, Charlie has been promoting folk and acoustic music to young people in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire on the Peak FM stage as well as promoting her new album in between appea- rances at local music venues and folk clubs. She recent-
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