EDITOR’S NOTE:
Call & Response pairs two Curious Goldfish conversations, recorded months or years apart, with artists who may or may not know one another. Different paths with the same question running underneath. “Call and Response” is one of the oldest structures in music: Carried from West Africa into American spirituals, gospel, blues, and jazz, where a leader sings a phrase and the community answers. The form survived because music has always been a way for people to talk to each other across distance and time. It's a reminder that music connects people who don't know they're already in a conversation.
Twelve months apart, with the Gulf Coast behind me during the incredible 30A Songwriters Festival in Seaside, Florida, I asked two musicians with 50 years separating them the same thing: How do you build a life in music without it taking you down? Their answers were as distant as their age gap, and they surprised me because you’d think the younger musician would be a little bit more ambitious and free, and you’d expect the older, more experienced musician to be a little bit more conservative and cautious.
Jack Barksdale, from Fort Worth, Texas, was 17 when I spoke with him. He is mature beyond his years. I found him through two previous guests: Lindi Ortega, who cut some songs with him in 2024, and Jacob Furr, a Fort Worth songwriter I've not only had on the show and but also hosted at a backyard show here in Atlanta. Jack had been recently signed to Truly Handmade, the label tied to Guy Clark's estate, and when we spoke he was weeks from recording his first album for them.
Dan Navarro has been on the road for most of 50 years. He co-wrote We Belong, the Pat Benatar hit, with his partner Eric Lowen in a single night in 1983. This August is the 50th anniversary of his first cut. Along the way he voiced characters on Family Guy, Coco, and Encanto, and joined the board of SAG-AFTRA. The last time I saw him before 30A he was playing in the round with Lily Winwood at Eddie Owen's Red Clay Music Foundry outside Atlanta.
Jack guards himself. He won't pretend to know more than he does, and he's paid attention to what the road did to another Fort Worth troubadour: Townes Van Zandt, the songwriter he grew up on. So he writes only what's true to him, and he leans on his family to keep the cautionary tales at a distance.
I try not to be something that I'm not and pretend that I know everything, that I'm full of wisdom and life experience. I just try to write about the things I think about and the things I know about, which means a lot of times I'm just writing about myself. I just try not to fake anything.
Dan built his whole life on the opposite instinct. The guy who kicked him out of a failing band called two months later, wanting to write a song. Dan was still furious. He said yes anyway, and that song was We Belong. Years later a friend offered him a hundred bucks to sing in a garage. He said yes, and it turned into a voice-acting career that now covers his health insurance.
The only answer is yes. How bad can it be if you made a mistake? Don't do it again.
Neither instinct is without tradeoffs. Jack's restraint keeps him honest, but he's a teenager and the road hasn't tested him yet. Dan's yes gave him a life he never could have drawn up, and it also handed him a few crashes, including a relationship on his last record that he compares to stepping into (and getting stuck in) a tarpit. Jack is still deciding what to protect. Dan gave up protecting it decades ago and bet on saying yes instead.
One is careful because he's seen where the road takes people. The other is fearless because he already made it through.
I don't think they'd agree with each other, and that's the point of putting them in the same room. If you've got a young writer in your life, or you've been at this long enough to have your own scars, listen to both and pick your side. Here they are, you can watch for yourself:
The 2026 State of Music in the Age of AI & Streaming Report is out. Get your free summary here.