There’s something almost counterintuitive about the way Barry G.K. Thomson makes music. He’s a Scotsman who picked up the guitar in Montana at an age when most people are winding down, not starting over. He records in a studio he built in his garden. He releases songs in pairs, steadily, without a lot of noise. And yet, the music keeps finding its audience.
On March 2, Thomson, who records under the name Ker, puts out two new singles: “Big Boots and Wide Brimmed Hats” and “Time Traveler.” They sit at opposite ends of his range, and together they make a decent case for why people have been paying attention.
“Big Boots and Wide Brimmed Hats” is a country-flavored track built around the warmth Ker encountered when he first walked into a music store in Kalispell, Montana back in 2014, the trip that started all of this. The song is straightforward in the best sense. Open-road energy, a chorus that sticks, and a running time of 2 minutes and 43 seconds that doesn’t overstay its welcome. The production is clean and confident, mastered at 320kbps in full stereo, and belongs on a long drive with the window down. It’s the most immediately accessible thing he’s put out so far.
“Time Traveler” is a different animal. At 3 minutes and 23 seconds, it’s slower and more internal, a song about luck and timing and the strange way good things tend to arrive unannounced. The lyric lets the idea sit. The arrangement gives it room, and the same mastering standard that runs across the Ker catalog keeps it sounding polished without losing any warmth.
Ker works closely with producer Jamie Graham and multi-instrumentalist Pete Fairbairn, who has handled keys and bass across the catalog since Ker’s debut single “Wōndering on Giants” came out in December 2025. The collaboration has given the project a consistent sonic identity. Melodic, well-produced, and built around lyrics that deal in universal feelings.
The January 2026 releases, “There Are No Words” and “Lofty Thoughts,” drew coverage from New York FM Digital, The Sun Bulletin, and more, and the response from listeners has been solid enough to keep the momentum going. Six singles in and heading toward a full album called “Converging Paths” later this year, Ker is shaping up to be one of those projects that rewards the people who find it early.
Ker’s influences run from the Beatles, he was there at Edinburgh Airport in 1964 when they landed, through Dylan, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, and Yes. That’s a wide net, and it shows up less as a direct sound than as a general sensibility: songs that mean what they say, and don’t mistake noise for energy.
Ker started making music later in life, in a town he didn’t grow up in, on an instrument he’d only just picked up. At this rate, the most interesting part of the story might still be ahead.
