If you are interested in having Brian & Sheralyn Barnes perform for your event or concert series, please contact Brian through the contact page.

Sheralyn Barnes is multi-talented. She’s an incredible painter, writer, and musician. We’re involved in a number of projects together, including music. We are also married.

Musically-speaking, we wear a number of hats…

• We perform as “Café Mélange” in homage to our love of café music from around the world.   www.cafemelangemusic.com

• We love classic swing tunes and movie muisc: Nat Cole, Fats Waller, the work of Mancini and Mercer and Michel LeGrande.

• We also love classic country! We were amazed at how many classic Americana tunes have their roots elsewhere – France, Mexico, Britain and Ireland – so, we created “OuiHaw!” Who knew Let it be Me was originally a French song?

• I compose music, and many of the tunes that I write are based around ideas of atmosphere. They’re often influenced by visual art, including Sheralyn’s work. In music I consider much of my creativity as trying to follow in the footsteps of the tonalist painters. Poetry, of the same ilk, also influences my writing. Sheralyn introduced me to the work of tonalist painter George Inness, and the Irish poet Seumas O’Sullivan. http://www.georgeinness.org/

• And, we love weird indie-pop from the 1980s, hippie bluegrass from the 1970s, latin music, Irish trad. The list goes on and on.

The upshot is, rather than try to have several identities based on separate styles, we have finally decided to use our own names in concert performances. We don’t have a genre, we are our own genre. Every show is now Café Melange, swing, OuiHaw!, Tonalism, and indie/trad all rolled together.