Lebanon native finds success on West Coast with Blink-182 tribute band

A former Lebanon County resident has spent the past decade or so on the West Coast playing and touring with tribute bands paying homage to some of the biggest hitmakers of the post-grunge era.

Shawn Barry, 47, originally from Lebanon, graduated from Lebanon High School in 1996. He graduated from East Stroudsburg University with a degree in communications, then moved to California in 2006. He relocated to southern California in 2011.  

“My ex-wife’s family was from San Diego, so I visited once – my first time ever on the West Coast – and I just thought it was beautiful,” he said. “So that was part of the plan, to somehow figure out how to get to California.”

During the day, he works for a printing company “doing some graphic stuff,” including blueprints and city plans, which he also then delivers to clients.

But by night, Barry sings and plays bass in Blink-180True, a tribute band to Blink-182, of course, along with AJ Bartholomew on guitar and vocals and Chris Bartholomew on drums. He’s played with them for 11 years now and has hit over 30 states on tour.

Barry said he was about 15 when he started playing guitar.

“I have two older brothers and a younger sister, and my next closest brother who’s like six years older than me had a guitar he borrowed from a friend,” Barry said in a phone interview. 

“I’ve always loved music, and whenever he wasn’t at home, I would sneak into his room and start playing guitar and taught myself how to play,” he said. “I can’t read music, so I wasn’t sure how to go about it.

“Growing up in the ’90s, before the internet, there were these guitar magazines that would show you where to put your fingers and stuff like that. So I’d go buy those magazines in my music store and that’s how I taught myself how to play.”

He said he bought his first instruments and amps at Marty’s Music Store “when it was located in downtown Lebanon.” 

“I still have some of that equipment,” he said.

And he noted he played “at the very first and second Lebanon City New Year’s Eve Bologna Drops – I think it was 1998 and 1999” with his covers/original band at the time, Cactus Rose.

As most ’90s music fans know, Blink-182 blasted out of the San Diego area in 1992 with a catchy pop-punk style. Led by bassist and singer Mark Hoppus, guitarist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker (who’s married to Kourtney Kardashian, by the way), the band racked up successful albums like 1999’s “Enema of the State” and 2001’s “Take Off Your Pants and Jacket” and hit songs like “”All the Small Things” and “What’s My Age Again?”

Lineup changes plagued the band as time went on; their most recent album was 2023’s “One More Time.”

So why a tribute band in the first place? Barry says it came about after years of doing original music on a small scale through the early 2000s.

“I was fortunate enough to play CBGB’s in New York – I was trying to get the record deal,” he said. “We would play local shows in bars around the Poconos and then take that money and go record album stuff, make t-shirts, all that promo stuff to take to New York City and Philly to try and get a record deal.

“When I moved to California, I went into the music scene, and this was 2006, so things were starting to happen as far as the internet. And I saw a lot of tribute bands that were playing and they were playing cool places. It wasn’t just a corner bar; they were playing House of Blues and they were playing big clubs and outdoors and summer concerts and that kind of stuff.”

He started with a Stone Temple Pilots tribute band, then a booking agent suggested branching out. 

“The booking agent reached out to me and said, ‘Hey, I really would like to get a tribute to the Offspring or Blink-182,’” he said. “So I called a friend and I was like, you wanna do a Blink-182 tribute, and they said ‘yeah let’s do it,’ and that’s how it got started,” he added.

And then why this particular band?

“The music’s all upbeat, it’s fun, (it’s in) major keys,” he said. “Everyone who goes to the shows has a good time, and even if people don’t know the songs, the fact that it’s upbeat and (in) major keys helps them a lot. People who just like music will enjoy our show.

“It’s just a fun band – they’re well known, which is great, so when we play, it’s an easy promotion. They know what to expect.” 

Barry says his favorite Blink song to play is “Man Overboard.”

“The thing with Blink is the vocalists sing back and forth, half and half,” he said. “That song specifically, we both share the lead vocals. There’s harmonies and I really love singing harmonies. It’s just a fun, upbeat song.”

And why Blink, too, considering they are still active?

“We started Blink-180True at a time when they were kind of on hiatus – they didn’t officially announce a breakup, all the members were alive, but they weren’t doing anything in 2014,” he said. “Then they came back in maybe 2016, 2017, so that part was kind of weird.

“But there’s so many bands that are playing and the real bands are still around. It’s just a matter of if people like the music, they like the music. We don’t take ourselves too seriously – we’re playing someone else’s music and that’s the truth, (so) let’s just go have some fun.”

He further elaborated on that point.

“My joke is always like, ok, you can pay $150 to see the real band, or you can pay $15 and see 90 percent of the same show,” he said. “You go to see the band today and they’re like, ok, this one’s off our new album, or here’s some weird deep cut that no one really knows but the band wants to play it.

“For us, we are just entertainment. So we’re gonna play all the songs that people grew up with and really want to hear because that’s our job. We’re going to play a great show, we’re going to play all the hits. (And) 90 minutes later, people are like, that was great, they played every song that I knew. That’s what’s fun about it.”

Barry spoke about the band on Adam Carolla’s popular podcast a few years ago. He also still plays in several other tribute bands, including Core (Stone Temple Pilots), a Social Distortion tribute band, a Rancid tribute band, and the Jagerbombs (who cover a variety of music from the ’90s to the present).

While Blink-180True has played at local spots like Tellus 360 in Lancaster, XL Live in Harrisburg, and Hog’s Hollow in Berwick – Barry’s parents still live in Lebanon, too – Barry says they have no immediate plans to come back to the area.

“There’s nothing booked at the moment,” he said.

But regardless, it’s the traveling with the band that Barry loves most.

“I get to travel all over the country and play songs and see cities and states that I never would have seen in my regular life through music,” he said. “It’s really been a blessing to be able to see these places and obviously get to meet a lot of great people, whether it’s Blink fans or people at the venues. It’s really wonderful to be able to do it.”   

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article misspelled the band’s name. It should be stylized as Blink-180True. We sincerely regret the error.