Barley Vogel and James Burnett ought to have nothing in common. She’s an artist whose family owns and runs the famous Valley House Gallery. He’s a musician who founded the now defunct Museum of Bad Art. She studied art at Christie’s. He started the Mr. Ed fan club. She bought the Lakewood Arts Academy after teaching there for years. He earned the nickname “Big Bucks” after taking a date to McDonald’s.
A case of opposites attract? Not according to them. The Junius Heights couple have been together 15 years, and both say they’re very much alike.
They are, after all, both artists who work with a variety of mediums. Vogel creates in just about every type of visual art, be it sculpting, photography, drawing or painting.
“I like anything that really speaks to some part of me, things I get a bodily response to, or that really delight my eye,” she says.
Burnett is a singer, songwriter and musician. He also paints and draws, although it’s not his primary creative interest.
“He actually draws better than I do, which is kind of frustrating,” Vogel says.
The only norm in the couple’s daily schedule is the lack of one. If they share a meal together, it’s usually breakfast, served at a restaurant. They don’t have children, but as animal lovers they hardly come home to an empty house every day.
“We have one dog, four birds, five cats, five fish and one million headaches,” jokes Burnett.
It’s not how most couples live. But neither would have it any other way.
“He’s definitely a Type B person, and so am I,” Vogel says. “But both being artists, part of the beauty of our relationship is we both like a lot of freedom, being able to decide what we want to do when we want to do it. And we really support each other in what we do.”
Vogel says she tries to show her work at least once a year, a goal that proves difficult because she invests most of her time and energy into the art school.
“There’s just not much time to create with the school,” she says.
Burnett sings and plays guitar with his band, the Volares, which has made two albums in the past five years. But he has long made music a part of his life, whether through owning and working at music stores, promoting artists and concerts or buying and selling music on his own.
“Right now, I’m building the world’s ultimate White Album collection,” he says, “because I still think the Beatles will be popular one day.”
The remark reveals what probably most makes him interesting and definitely makes his and Vogel’s relationship more fun: his healthy yet somewhat strange sense of humor. “It’s all about humor,” Vogel says. “My laugh muscles are probably the best in town, because I never stop laughing.”
Burnett has a love for all things unusual. A champion of dead formats, he has worked for 12 years on a documentary of the 8-track tape. His band is named after a car that went out of production in 1980 and was named “the most recalled car in history” by Consumer Reports.
He produced albums for Tiny Tim, along with starting his Mr. Ed fan club.
“I’ve always been drawn to eccentric characters,” he says. “And the most normal thing you ever saw with Tiny Tim was when he was on stage. He was never less than interesting.”
And if off the wall things are cool, surely putting them all together is even cooler.
A huge Led Zeppelin fan, Burnett brought together Tiny Tim and Brave Combo, the polka band, to record Stairway to Heaven. He persuaded Tiny Tim to record the Mr. Ed theme song as a single and perform it at Edstock — the Mr. Ed music fair he produced. Then there was something called Tinypalooza, which of course was a concert starring Tiny Tim organized in the mid-1990s.
He finds humor in just about everything, including his band.
“At last count there were 27 Volares fans,” he says. But underneath it all is a serious musician.
“He’s a rare talent,” says Vogel. “I don’t know the right word for how great I think his lyrics are. It’s pretty miraculous what he’s done with this new album.”
The album is Godvertising, which the band recorded in England, with some help from several rock legends and local musicians.
Its release party will be in Dallas in October, and anyone wishing to buy it must either attend the party or call Burnett up himself. He made the album under his own label, and though he has distribution channels in place in England, here in the States he’ll be selling it out of his house.
The reason, he says, is a simple one: “I hate bar codes on album covers, and all the major labels have them. Doing it under my own label, I can get away with not having them. So it all comes down to the bar codes.”
Despite his confidence in the music, Burnett has no desire to perform in front of an audience. “We’re strictly a recording band,” he says. “I generally don’t like performing. It’s too nerve racking, and I like to get everything right.”
Hold on a minute. Maybe we can believe that the king of kitsch and champion of the chucked is a serious artist underneath. But a perfectionist, too?
“It’s because you’re showing people the thing you really care about. It’s part of your soul, and that’s dangerous,” Vogel says thoughtfully, just before adding: “But I think it’d be a blast, personally.”
She should know. When Burnett was reluctant to play for his first CD release party, she gathered several friends to perform with her as a tribute band to the Volares, the Aspens. And she’s already planning the band’s comeback for the second release party.
An unusual way of supporting a spouse, maybe, but perfect for a couple for whom creativity is a necessary part of life.
“I have to make art,” Vogel says. “It keeps me healthy.”
“If it’s not making me healthy, it’s at least keeping me less crazy,” adds Burnett.
