“I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.” —Virgil Thomson, an American composer

QUITMAN — For Michael Barr, music and salesmanship runs in his blood.

His grandfather, a jeweler by trade, played the violin and his grandmother played the piano, teaching piano lessons and playing in church.

“They had four boys (and they) all played instruments,” Barr said. “My grandfather was a jeweler and so my dad took over that. The next brother was the professor of jazz at Valdosta State University for years and years. The third uncle was a wholesale jeweler and the fourth uncle was a music teacher in Thomasville. So, it was either jewelry or music and I chose music and now I’m doing sales, which is kind of the same thing.”

But Barr, 31, says he

didn’t realize his love of music until after he graduated from Lowndes High School.

“I started on piano when I was 4 and took it for four years,” he said. “I played trumpet for six years in middle school and high school. When I was 16, my band director gave me a bass and that’s when I started playing bass.”

After graduating from Lowndes High School, Barr went on to Valdosta State University where he was a theater major. During that time, he continued to play bass.

“The second year, I took a year off and moved into a house with a few guys and that was the first time we played and got paid for it,” he said. “That’s when I realized that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, in one way or another.”

After taking a break from college, Barr continued on at VSU on what he calls “the eight-year plan.” It was there that he began playing jazz music.

“That’s where I started playing jazz and it was jazz or classical, so I went the jazz route and had a great time,” he said.” I just loved doing it.”

It was during this time that he met his future wife, Kelly.

“We both went to (high school at) Lowndes,” Barr said. “She was a year behind me. We graduated and I went to school at VSU and she went to Belmont. Her grandparents moved down here from Maryland and she moved back down and started school at VSU to get a master’s in education degree and I was there.”

During that time, Kelly and a childhood friend decided to start a band.

“(He) came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re starting a band. Want to play bass for us? We’ve got a singer and I think you went to high school with her. Her name is Kelly Spencer.’ So we started that band and that’s how we fell in love,” Barr said.

The two married in June of 2005 and eventually moved to Columbia, S.C., where Barr earned his master’s degree in jazz.

“Now I have two useless degrees hanging on my wall,” Barr joked.

After moving back from Columbia, Barr tried to find teaching jobs but nothing panned out for him.

“It was one of the worst years ever to find a job teaching,” he said. “They were laying off music and art teachers and then there were people graduating with actual education degrees that were ahead of me and people that had been doing it and that had been let go or fired. That’s actually how I got started in the insurance business.”

Last July, the Barrs welcomed their first child, a daughter named Dylan.

“It’s really amazing,” he said. “It’s so cliché. You never think you’ll love something as much, but it’s true. It’s very hard work, but one smile makes it all worth it. You get up in the middle of the night and you’re dead tired. You have to change her diaper and you’re feeding her in the dark, but when she smiles back, you’re like, ‘Yeah, totally worth it.’”

Barr and his wife have already began singing and dancing with Dylan.

“Yesterday, I pulled my bass out to play it in front of her and she wasn’t sure what to think,” Barr said. “She just kind of looked at it and listened (to it). She wasn’t scared of it and didn’t cry.”

While Dylan is only 8 months old, he and his wife want to have at least one more.

“We’ve finally gotten to where things are normal and we’re like, ‘Yeah, we could do this again.’ We definitely want one more,” he said.

He believes being a new father has also helped him with his new career as an insurance salesman.

“It was just a job at first, but now it’s kind of like I’ve been able to transfer my love of music into the love of insurance,” he said. “I thought, ‘I can either look at it as a job or look at it as a career.’ It opened up a lot for me and I’m really diving in and reading all of these leadership sale books opposed to music scores.”

Barr works with Angie Crawford at State Farm Insurance, where he handles such accounts as home and auto insurance.

“The reason she hired me is because of the health insurance,” he said. “We do some supplemental health insurance and we do have major medical plans as a well, but being a new father, I know the importance of life insurance now and can explain that. I have two grandmothers in nursing homes, so I know what that long-term care will do, and I have a baby, so I know what life insurance would do. So those are my new passions.”

Being a salesman actually came natural to him, he says, due to the fact that those before him in his family were salesmen.

But while he’s busy being a salesman and a new father, Barr still finds time to practice his love of music. He plans to audition for the upcoming season of the Valdosta Symphony Orchestra.

“I’m a member of the Robert Plummer Band here in town,” he said. “We would play anything, but the only time people hire us is for weddings.”

Barr said the most current music the bands plays is music from the 1960s.

“It’s jazz, tuxes and upright bass,” Barr said. “It allows me to still play music and do what I enjoy doing but still have a job. You’ll starve to death being a musician in Valdosta.”