Kevin Barker’s film The Family Jams documents a 2004 U.S. tour by Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom and Vetiver before each of the acts garnered greater critical acclaim and popularity. The 81-minute documentary finds the musicians playing tiny art galleries and modest rock clubs as well as jamming with like-minded artists on the road including Espers, Jonny Corndawg and Antony and the Johnsons. A musician who has toured and recorded as Currituck County, Barker has crafted a movie as homegrown and idiosyncratic as Banhart, Newsom and Vetiver’s music. The Family Jams just wrapped up a brief run at Brooklyn’s reRun Gastropub Theater. Meanwhile, Barker is doing post-production work on his first feature film titled Last Kind Words, which stars Oscar-nominated actor Brad Dourif of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest fame.

What prompted you to film this tour?

I had become friends with Devendra. I met him through my friend Brooke Stietinsons, who plays in Espers. This is when Devendra lived in Brooklyn. I thought he was incredibly talented and really had a magnetic presence onstage and offstage. I thought he’d make a good subject of a film, and I told him that. I really didn’t push it at the time. When this tour began coming together with all these three groups, Devendra asked me if I wanted to come and film it. I guess he realized that since it was going to be all three of these bands touring together that it would be something more interesting than an ordinary tour. So I immediately jumped on it.

After the tour in The Family Jams, Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom broke through to a larger audience. Did it feel like they were on the verge of something bigger as the tour progressed?

It really did. This was Joanna’s first U.S. tour. She’d only done like a week of shows or something before that. It was really interesting to see how the response to her grew throughout the tour. By the end of the tour, it seemed like people were coming out to see her as much as they were coming out to see Devendra even though Devendra had had albums out for longer and seemed like he was the bigger draw. People were really starting to pick up on Joanna and become interested in her. It definitely felt at the time that all three of these bands were going to have careers that were going to take them places. It was interesting for me to try and put the film together and to decide on how to do it, because in many ways when I first shot it, my plan was never to shoot it, edit it and then put it out right away. I always had the feeling that it would be something that would be more interesting to people down the road after everyone had gone on to other things.

Your movie is titled The Family Jams. Explain what that is?

In some ways, it’s a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke. It comes from Charles Manson. The Manson Family made songs, and those songs were jokingly called “The Family Jams.” It was a little bit of Devendra’s joke that when everybody got together onstage and played together he called that “The Family Jams.” It’s a little bit of a dark joke. I think it’s an interesting one too, because in some ways, he [Devendra] seems like the sort of opposite of Manson because he was extremely giving and brought lots and lots of different artists together. He had a real tendency to try and deflect attention onto other people. He would try and use whatever interest was being pointed at him, and he would always try and funnel it to people that he thought was interesting. That’s sort of the opposite of the megalomaniac Manson Family thing.

Do you think Devendra, Joanna and Vetiver will ever tour together again?

I would say that it’s pretty unlikely just because of where everyone is at. Their projects are so different. Someone like Joanna, she has a very strong vision for what her show is now. She is playing Carnegie Hall or playing orchestral shows. Stuff like that doesn’t really work as part of a tour package. Her shows are events in their own right.

Have Devendra, Joanna and the members of Vetiver seen the film? If so, what did they say about it?

Everyone has seen the film, and they all gave it their OK. I didn’t get anyone to sign the release forms until after I’d already finished the movie. Usually the way you do it when you make a documentary is that you have everyone sign the release forms immediately, so if they get cold feet, you have the legal thing that says you can make the movie. I didn’t feel like that was really the right thing for me to do even though it is the smartest thing to do. I felt that ultimately if I made a movie and I showed it to them, and they didn’t like it or didn’t feel comfortable with it then I had no business putting it out anyway. The whole point of the movie was that it should be a really positive thing that everybody feels good about. I showed it to them after I finished it, so everyone signed off on it. I don’t think any of them enjoyed watching themselves onscreen. None of them really have any interest in that. I think some of them enjoy the nostalgic aspect of watching it, but no one feels really comfortable watching themselves onscreen.

What’s up next for the film?

It’s getting some various one-offs around the U.S. It’s showing this week in Wilmington, Delaware and then in Peterborough, New Hampshire. It’s got a couple of film festival things still coming in, like it’s going to show in the Vancouver International Film Festival this fall. It’s going to definitely get a DVD release. This company Factory 25 – which is a Brooklyn-based really, really cool label – is going to release it on DVD.