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SAM BAKER
In 2004, Sam Baker played a few songs in a Texas Hill Country bar and afterwards handed a copy of his just finished CD Mercy to a local DJ. The DJ started spinning mercy the next day and over the next three years it slowly but surely spun its way around the world. All word of mouth. No record label, no publicity machine. Nothing but one listener handing the cd to another listener. Mercy is still traveling. Still spinning.
It started in a small plastered room in a small stucco house on a Texas hillside where the wind always blows. Baker said “I want to do one piece of good art.” And good art it was. The self release of Mercy led to shows across the US, Italy and Canada and fans all over the world. Producer and man of taste Gurf Morlix (Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier) heard mercy and proclaimed it "one of my favorite albums of the last five years."
It's been three years since his first release. In 2007 Sam Baker returns with the second part of the story — Pretty World.
“Pretty World is timeless” — Gurf Morlix
Once again spare lyrics lay bare the honest truths and simple details we call life. His music celebrates equally the ugly and the exquisite, the mundane and the mysterious. The light:
Before the sun
Before the heat
Before we untangle from our sheets
Before this summer day unfurls
Pretty world
And the dark:
It's not your husband’s move or his hired hand
He uses whips on the horses he is that kind of man
You pretend he whispers so you don’t take a stand
But there are scars on the flanks
They look like fans
One moment transformed Baker's life. It was 1986, he was 31, a carpenter and a traveler and on a train to Machu Picchu, Peru. His seatmates were three other tourists — a German couple and their son — all sitting in tight quarters, their knees nearly touching. Terrorists guerillas had stowed a bomb in a luggage rack across from him. When a red backpack exploded, the family was killed. Deafened and gravely injured, Baker spent the better part of the next decade working on both a physical and spiritual recovery. He turned to writing to try to make sense of a sometimes senseless world.
Guest vocalists and musicians — including amongst others Morlix, Lloyd Maines and Joel Guzman — are paired with Baker, whose Dylan-like voice is as dusty as a dirt road in a drought. Elegant arrangements and inspired performances are once again provided by mercy’s production team of Walt Wilkins and Tim Lorsch and a collection of Nashville and Austin session pros and gifted performing artists.
Pretty World may lay bare the harsh realities of hard worn lives, but it also celebrates the moments large and small that frame our lives. Baker's songs reflect a life lived well and nearly lost with the unwavering conviction that every minute counts — and every day is beautiful.
So cold outside but inside...
A celebration
Dinner is ready they say
Come to the table
Come
These days
How beautiful…
Profile courtesy of The Press Network.