Pat Barber – Singer/Songwriter

Pat Barber — Telluride, Colorado  ·  Kent Gunnufson

When I met Pat Barber, he was a very creative musician living in a tent near mine at the Telluride campground. He was homeless but still put together a record deal that the town backed. He is my Jim Morrison — Telluride's greatest singer/songwriter.

Telluride has always attracted a certain kind of person — someone who would rather be broke in the mountains than comfortable somewhere else. Pat Barber was that person in the most complete sense. He had nothing in the conventional way, but he had the music, and in Telluride, that was enough.

I've camped at the Telluride campground many times over the years, and the community that forms there is unlike anything you find in a town with walls and roofs. People share what they have. Musicians play for whoever is listening. Pat was always playing — working out songs, trying new arrangements, singing to the mountains the way some people talk to themselves.

What struck me about him was the seriousness underneath the wandering life. He wasn't drifting — he was working. The record deal he put together was real, and the town of Telluride got behind it because they recognized what they had in him. That kind of community support doesn't happen for just anyone.

His voice carries the altitude in it. There's a rawness that you can't manufacture — it comes from actually living the life he was singing about. Cold nights, thin air, the particular loneliness and freedom of being in a place that most people only visit. Pat lived it, and it came out in every song.

I think of him the way I think of the best mountain storytellers — people who didn't choose the mountains as a backdrop for their art, but as the reason for it. Telluride made Pat Barber, and Pat Barber gave something back to Telluride that the town still carries.