The Associated Press recently reported that in 2009, one in every 30 babies born in the U.S. was a twin, a rate that has increased over the one in 53 rate in 1980.

Growing up and attending Quitman Primary, Quitman Elementary and then Brooks County Middle School, there were three sets of twins in my grade that were born in 1980 — an identical set of twin boys, an identical set of twin girls and then a fraternal set of twins that consisted of a boy and girl.  

That fraternal twin girl was Kelly Spencer, now Kelly Barr.

Barr, who has returned to Quitman after living in Nashville, Tenn., and Columbia, S.C., works at Sublime in Downtown Valdosta as a hair stylist.

But doing hair wasn’t always her dream.

As a child, after her parents took her and her brothers to see the Broadway show “Cats” in Tallahassee, she realized theatre was where she wanted to be.

“That’s when I knew I wanted to be on stage,” she said. “I saw that and I wanted to sing.”

After finishing eighth grade at Brooks County Middle, she and her twin brother, Dustin, transferred to Lowndes High School because of Lowndes’ theatre program.

“I wanted to go there because they had a bigger theatre program and, at that time, I thought I wanted to do theatre,” she said.

When she was 14, Barr began taking vocal lessons at Valdosta State University.

“I did that all through high school and that’s how I was trained for (Florida State University),” she said. “I went to Florida

 State University for the first two years and studied vocal performance.”

While at FSU, she trained classically, but her heart belonged to more contemporary music.

After attending Florida State for a few years, she transferred to Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., after falling in love with the town.

“I loved Nashville,” she said. “The only reason I discovered Belmont was because Case, my older brother, went to Vanderbilt, and so we would go visit him and I fell in love with Nashville. My goal was to be a rock star. I love bluegrass, soul, Americana. At that point, I was more into Lucinda Williams, all of these underground grassroots-type people.

At Belmont, Barr studied commercial music, with a minor in music business.

“I think just about everybody at Belmont would go around Broadway to karaoke nights, open mic nights,” she said. “I did songwriter rounds, because I was a songwriter and I played guitar. When I started that, that’s when I decided I wanted to get into music publishing.”

Barr graduated and started working on Music Row at a publishing company where she interned during her last year of college.

“I worked there and then I moved back home to take care of my grandparents during the day and to go to grad school at night, studying music education at Valdosta State,” Barr said.

Something else started calling her name — becoming a hairstylist.

“That all happened because once I got into my grad-school classes, I realized that’s not what I wanted to do and I didn’t have the passion for it. Michael (Barr, her musician husband) was taking it and I saw that Michael had that passion to teach and I didn’t really have that. So I always thought about doing hair, even when I was a freshman in college. I would have rather been doing a friend’s hair in the kitchen than in the practice room practicing music. It didn’t make sense to me until I was older and I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ I love music. It’s great and awesome, but I really wanted to do hair. So I went to cosmetology school and had a blast.”

What’s her favorite part of being a hairstylist?

“I always wanted to do something creative, obviously, and making people feel awesome,” she said. “I’m a people person and giving someone a service that will lift their spirits and their confidence gives me such great joy.”

When Barr graduated from cosmetology school, she and Michael moved to Columbia, S.C., where her husband received his master’s degree. She started working and, after learning they would be parents, they returned home to be closer to family.

The couple’s first child, a daughter named Dylan, was born in July 2010 and, at 18 months, she is talking up a storm.

“She’s really starting to talk,” Barr said. “I feel like every day there’s a new word. Just the other day when Michael was leaving to go to work, she said ‘Bye DaDa,’ so putting those two words together was huge. We were blown away. She’s awesome. She’s so much fun.”

Currently Barr works at Sublime part-time, three days a week, so that she can spend time with Dylan.

“I read an article the other day on Yahoo that mothers who work part-time are happier and I kind of agree with that, because working three days a week is enough for me to get out of the house, feed the soul, have my own life and I miss her and I come home. It’s awesome,” she said. “I appreciate her more.”

When she’s not working at Sublime, Barr has been dabbling in the make-up world.

“I’ve been doing the make-up for Lisa Hannan, the photographer upstairs (from Sublime), so that’s been fun,” she said. “That’s really fun to see my work captured in pictures. Then I’ve been doing the make-up for the Steel’s Jewelry ads.

“Never in a million years would I have imagined doing hair back home in Valdosta,” she said, “but I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”

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