BIOGRAPHY — THREE VERSIONS
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LONG (300 WORDS)
Sam Baker is a West Texas songwriter, lyric writer, and visual artist whose work is animated by a singular attention to the forgotten people of everyday life — the ditch digger, the Mennonite welder, the widow who keeps returning to the beach. His songs are sparse, unhurried, and precise, built from the same literary impulses as his influences: Faulkner, Hemingway, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark.
Baker came to music by way of survival. In 1986, while traveling by train to Machu Picchu in Peru, a bomb planted by the Shining Path guerrilla group exploded in his compartment. Six people were killed; Baker survived with catastrophic injuries — brain damage, a severed artery, destroyed hearing, hands permanently altered by skin grafts. He endured 17 reconstructive surgeries. As part of his recovery, he taught himself to play guitar left-handed, turned upside down, with gnarled fingers. Writing helped him relearn language he had lost. The first true line he wrote was the first line of his first song.
His debut album Mercy arrived in 2004. Six albums followed, including Say Grace, named by Rolling Stone as one of the top 10 country albums of 2013, and the 2024 collaboration Win Win with Rodney Crowell on Crowell's RC1 label. He has performed with symphony orchestras, in listening rooms in The Netherlands, in art galleries in Santa Fe, and at songwriter retreats for combat veterans. He sat for an hour with Terry Gross on NPR's Fresh Air. The Wall Street Journal called him "The Bard of the Workaday World." Lone Star Music named him "maybe the most captivating songwriter in America." Baker is also a painter. He lives in Austin and writes every day.
MEDIUM (75 WORDS)
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Sam Baker is an West Texas songwriter, lyric writer, and visual artist. His spare, literary songs — shaped by survival, informed by Faulkner and Townes Van Zandt — have earned him an hour on NPR's Fresh Air, a Rolling Stone top-10 album, and a Wall Street Journal headline calling him "The Bard of the Workaday World." His seventh album, Win Win, a collaboration with Rodney Crowell, was released in 2024.
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ONE-LINER
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West Texas songwriter and visual artist; six studio albums; NPR Fresh Air; Rolling Stone Top 10; "The Bard of the Workaday World" — Wall Street Journal.
PRESS QUOTES
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"Maybe the most captivating songwriter in America."
LONE STAR MUSIC
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"The Bard of the Workaday World."
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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"Simultaneously beautiful and broken — an artist worth waiting for."
NPR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
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"Words that, if you were to cut them, they would bleed."
RAY WYLIE HUBBARD
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"Sam isn't a singer so much as a storyteller. That is his charm and his magic."
HELEN MITCHELL, FATEA
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"The personal becomes universal through his keen-eyed writing."
JIM FUSILLI, WALL STREET JOURNAL (ON SAY GRACE)
DISCOGRAPHY
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2026 Survivor September18, 2026 release date with Rodney Crowell RC1/ Truly Handmade
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2024 Win Win (with Rodney Crowell)RC1 / Truly Handmade
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2020 Horses and Stars (Live)
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2017 The Pretty World Trilogy
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A 4-CD set collecting Sam's first three albums — Mercy, Pretty World, and Cotton — plus a CD of his 2014 NPR Fresh Air appearance with Terry Gross. It comes in a fold-out box set with a 48-page booklet containing lyrics to all three records and photos of Sam's artwork. Discogs
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The individual albums came out earlier — Mercy in 2004, Pretty World in 2007, and Cotton in 2009. Amazon The 2017 box set collected all three together for the first time as a physical package.
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2017 Land of Doubt
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2013 Say Grace Rolling Stone Top 10
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2009 Cotton
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2007 Pretty World
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2004 MercyDebut
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NOTABLE MEDIA & RECOGNITION
NPR
Fresh Air with Terry Gross — full hour interview
ROLLING STONE
Top 10 Country Albums of 2013 — Say Grace
WALL STREET JOURNAL
"The Bard of the Workaday World" feature
COLLABORATION
Rodney Crowell · RC1 / Guy Clark LLC
CONTACT & BOOKING
BOOKING
Richard Skanse
GENERAL & PRESS
sambakermusic.com
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also via contact form on site
LABEL
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BlueLimeStone Publishing
all records except Win Win and Survivor
RC1 Records
Truly Handmade / The Orchard
Win Win and Survivor
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DOWNLOADABLE ASSETS
​NOT YET. will have downloadable soon. soon I say.
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Press photos
HI-RES · B&W · 300 DPI
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Album artwork
ALL RELEASES · PRINT QUALITY
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Full EPK PDF
BIO · QUOTES · DISCOGRAPHY