Sam Baker

A week or so back, I solicited your help finding new music. You were great, as usual. Spent a few hours checking out as many recommendations as I could. A few I'd heard... Thackery, Wilco, Eagles. Some I'd heard of, but hadnt heard... Son Volt, Slobberbone. One stuck out...Sam Baker's CD, Mercy.

I'm a sucker for a simple, true lyric. Baker's words are evocative. Every one means something. On the first tune of the CD, Waves, he's writing about a husband burying his wife of 50 years:

"He walks down to the ocean
Bends to touch the water, kneels to pray
He writes her name in the sand
Waves wash it away"

Another, called Change:

"Those same little girls went to work in those stores/Those same little boys went away to wars/But when they came home/All the jobs had gone away/Back to those places where they fought so far away."

Kitchen:

"Fighting door to door/At Jerusalem's Gate/Millionaires play baseball/Oprah talks about fate;
Skinny boys with rifles/Flying off to war/Skinny boys with rifles/Fighting door to door"

Baker himself was in the middle of a terrorist attack. He was riding a train to Macchu Pichu when a bomb blew up in the passenger compartment. That's why his voice sounds funny, and why, as a righthander, he plays the guitar lefthanded:

"Sitting on a train to Macchu Pichu/The passenger car explodes/Not enough time to say goodbye/Not enough time to know/Looking back at the world as one who is leaving/In a dream come right out of hell/Smoke rises through a hole in the roof/The dead say fare the well.''

And so forth. This isn't music for everyone, and certainly not for every occasion. But it's haunting and beautiful and makes you think. Matt the Poster, thanks for the recommendation.

Live big, skinny boys with rifles, fighting door to door. Godspeed.