Earlier this year, American Aquarium passed the 20-year mark as a band, but frontman BJ Barham isn’t tapping the brakes. The independent, roots-rock outfit is closing out 2025 with a flurry of shows and a block of studio time with producer Shooter Jennings in Los Angeles, all while Barham finalizes plans for Aquarium’s 11th annual February festival, Roadtrip to Raleigh, and makes a personal foray into local politics.
“We’re out to remind people that we’ve been here for 20 fucking years now, and aren’t going anywhere,” Barham tells Rolling Stone. “We’ve built a foundational thing… The band is trend-proof. We don’t have to give in to Facebook or TikTok or any of that stuff. We are a band that writes songs, we put out songs, and we tour our ass off until it’s time to write more songs.”
An illustration of the grassroots mentality that drives the 41-year-old Barham came on one weekend in late August when Aquarium headlined a show in Memphis at the 400-capacity Hi-Tone on a Friday, then made the eight-hour, 550-mile drive to Waco, Texas, overnight. The next day, Aquarium was the first of five bands playing to a sold-out crowd of more than 40,000 people at the Boys From Oklahoma show at McLane Stadium, headlined by Cross Canadian Ragweed and the Turnpike Troubadours.
The juxtaposition of the two concerts comes across as whiplash, but Barham insists it creates a dynamic that allows Aquarium to thrive as the price of live music rises for artists and fans alike.
“We consider ourselves kind of a chameleon in the rock & roll world,” Barham says. “We can tour with punk rock bands. We can tour with country bands. I can go on tour with a folk singer, and then go on tour with the Drive-By Truckers, and then go open a bunch of shows for Turnpike. We always joke that whether it’s five people in the crowd or 50,000, you’re getting the same show from us every night. I don’t care if there’s only a small amount of people in a shitty dive bar or at a stadium, you’re getting the same thing from me, and that’s what our fans really appreciate.”
It’s a tried-and-true approach Barham is embracing, and he’s extending it to the studio. In November, the band will join Jennings at Sunset Sound Studio 3 in L.A. to record Aquarium’s 11th studio album. The previous two Jennings collaborations — 2024’s The Fear of Standing Still and 2020’s Lamentations — are two of Barham’s personal favorites in his entire catalog. A pre-sale campaign featuring escalating perks that ranged from signed vinyl to personal concerts covered the cost of the project. “Our fans completely funded the production, manufacturing, promotion and advertising of the record in three days, and gave us a major-label budget,” he says.
That’s the part of Barham’s career that he’s hoping to translate into politics this fall when he runs for a commissioner seat in the Town of Wendell, North Carolina, his hometown. Rather than a major fundraising event or leveraging his hometown fame in his run, he’s taking a door-to-door approach as he chases this seat. He started showing up to town meetings to oppose what he sees is overdevelopment in the Town of Wendell. “We have the beautiful ability to say no to developers,” he says. “It’s a pretty simple platform, and what I’m finding is that a resounding amount of my neighbors agree with me.” Barham showing up to town meetings to voice such opposition led to one commissioner brushing him off: If he doesn’t like the town’s direction, he told Barham, he should run for the board. The songwriter decided on the spot to do so.
Throughout his career, Barham has been outspoken on social issues across social media with a decidedly left-of-center worldview that he also reflects in his music. In “Southern Roots,” off Fear of Standing Still, he implores fellow natives of the American South to re-evaluate their ties to history and cut them when they conflict with equality and progress. Barham is not the only such Americana artist crossing over into politics — see the run for Tennessee governor by longtime steel player Adam “Ditch” Kurtz, who has played with the likes of Silverada, Joshua Ray Walker, and Aquarium — but he’s unique in that he’s doing it at the hometown level. That means Barham finds himself courting residents across parties and ideologies.
“I’m treating this campaign just like I treat the music business,” Barham says. “There are major-label artists that are bought and paid for already, that don’t have any say in the decisions they make. I’m not one of those. I’m not a major-label politician. I am the indie guy. I’m the grassroots guy. I’m the guy who has knocked on over 1,200 doors in my neighborhood, and shook the hands of my neighbors and asked them what they want to see out of our community.”
Right around election day, and as Barham gears up for a tour with Murder by Death, he’s expecting that Roadtrip to Raleigh will officially sell out. The 2026 incarnation of the festival, held at the Lincoln Theater in Raleigh, is set for Feb. 5th through 7th. Barham has yet to announce the lineup — which in prior years has featured names like Zach Bryan, the Turnpike Troubadours, 49 Winchester, Muscadine Bloodline and Charles Wesley Godwin — but nearly a month into pre-sales, he says most tickets have already been sold.
“This goes back to building trust,” he says. “Our fans know that whatever we do, we’re gonna do it to the best of our ability. If you like what we’ve delivered to you over the last 20 years, I’ve got a gut feeling you’re gonna like what we deliver to you next year.”
Josh Crutchmer is a journalist and author whose latest books, Never Say Never and Red Dirt Unplugged are available via Back Lounge Publishing.
