***Like Woody Guthrie, TIM BARRY (AVAIL) says he simply writes about what he knows, and what he knows is the American south, in particular, his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, a blue collar NASCAR city rapidly going upscale. As a solo songwriter Barry’s becoming more of a storyteller, describing the lives and deaths of people on the margins. The characters in his songs are, for the most part, beset by bad luck. They’re ex-con drifters dwelling in vans; working folks struggling to live from paycheck to paycheck; hobos riding the rails with no particular destination in mind; people asking for answers in the wake of tragedy. In the spirit of Bruce Springsteen, Barry relates their tales without whitewashing their flaws or descending into rhetoric—and that, arguably, is Laurel Street’s greatest triumph.