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His music has reached millions of people. Yet he’s always happy to share a simple evening of songs and stories in an intimate folk club.

He writes songs about children. And criminals. He writes music about golf. And Norman Vincent Peale. He struggled for years, scrapping for gigs (and, in his words, “driving for checks”) only to become the proverbial “overnight sensation” in a field he’d never dreamed of storming.

In the smiling face and renaissance talent of David Barrett, paradox has found a happy home. “It all starts with a guitar in my lap,” says the ever self-effacing Barrett whose solitary musical musings have brought him into the national spotlight. That guitar in that particular lap has yielded hundreds of songs—some of which have ended up in unlikely places.

Barrett recalls, “In 1986, I was visiting a friend in New York City who just happened to write for Sports Illustrated. We were watching the NBA Finals, talking about sports and life and I remembered that I had written this song about sports and achievement, so when I got home I sent it to him. He took it over to CBS without me knowing, and they called me up out of the blue.”

The song, of course was “One Shining Moment”—the paean to endeavor that now crowns the NCAA Basketball Finals, dampening every eye in the arena. The version, sung by the incomparable Luther Vandross, pushes the song’s power to a new height.

That initial coup opened a floodgate of opportunities for Barrett, who now composes regularly for television: the Olympics, the U.S. Tennis Open, ABC, the CBC… but it isn’t all sports events. He recently won a silver medal at the New York Film festival for a hip-hop song in “Don’t Cross that Line”—a short film about gambling and student athletes. And he won an Emmy for scoring a PBS documentary on the writer C.S. Lewis. “I wish I could say it was career planning, but it’s not. It just worked out that way and I’m grateful,” says Barrett.

Yes, this is one folksinger with the ultimate day job. But strip away the scores and TV glitz and major networks on phone, and you’re back to basics: a guy singing provocative, hauntingly beautiful songs, and playing the hell out of that guitar in his lap.

David Barrett: high-power commercial composer, low-tech folk club songwriter… Hey, what’s a little paradox among friends?