Barbara Lynch

barbaralynched@gmail.com Barbara Lynch acquired her passion for singing and playing piano from her mother. At 11 years old, she was playing weddings and high masses with the choir in the church in Ayton, Ontario, Canada, where she lived. In high school, she began writing songs. But by the time she graduated from Trent University with an honors B.A. in philosophy and literature, she had no idea what she was going to do with her life. So, she set out to play in piano bars in Canadian Pacific Hotels and Holiday Inns, where she developed her Tom Waits-style dark and self-deprecating sense of humor, which she worked into her solo act. By the early 1980s, Barbara was a one-person, piano act playing in rock clubs, but she was stuck in a cycle of performing in one horse towns. She got out of the Northern Ontario circuit fast. After a year of working in retail on Yonge Street in Toronto, she started appearing as a guest with artists such as Micah Barnes and David Ramsden, and found herself performing in the gay club circuit near Church and Wellesley Streets, in Toronto. In 1992, she began recording her first EP Don’t Talk to Me, produced by Roxy Music and Japan producer John Punter. By 1997, she was signed to Duke Street Records, who released the album Goodbye & Good Luck. However, this didn't lead to much progress in her career, so she left the music business. Barbara became a caregiver for the elderly and for dying AIDS patients for a number of years. She also joined Greenpeace as a full-time staffer, running the phone canvass. Then she started writing songs again. When he joined Greenpeace, in 2007, Barbara found a kindred spirit in John Timmins. The two musicians spent a lot of Sundays and vacation days in 2008 recording the album In The Nickelodeon, which she self-produced, bringing in additional musicians like Eric Brown (11), Christopher Plock, Katherine Wheatley, and John Wojewoda to fill out the sound.