ThisIsTexasMusic.com
July 2007
By Patrick Nichols
Devastatingly beautiful. That's the best
way to describe Sam Baker's Pretty
World. And the superlatives don't end
there. "Odessa" just may be one of the
finest songs I've ever heard, intricately
interweaving the traditional "Hard Times
Come Again No More" with the tale of
an oil baron whose besotted self-
indulgence takes the life of his young
love. It's a loss he never can shake,
despite growing riches from the ever-
flowing West Texas crude. And it's a
rich novella, told in under 6 minutes. As
on his 2004 debut Mercy, Baker
celebrates humanity in all of our sacred-
and-profane intricacies. "Pretty World"
and especially "Sweetly Undone" border
on the artfully erotic:
Remember New Year's Eve? And no
it's not a test
At the top of the stairs you slowly
undressed…
Oh father oh son, slowly undress
Sweetly undone
Yet darkness lurks in the sadistic
taskmaster of "Psychic" and particularly
the haunting memories of "Broken
Fingers":
How long ago? Sixteen years
Every day, of course I know…
Forget his face? Of course I don't
Etched like a crystal vase
These broken fingers, some things
don't heal
I can't wake up from a dream when
the dream is real…
There are blue eyes, a silhouette
There is a debt, a debt I don't forget
Baker was seriously injured in a train
attacked by Peruvian guerrillas in 1986,
and in the years following he worked on
recovery both physical and spiritual. He
refined his storytelling, learned to play
guitar with his left hand, and, through
vocals irreparably altered by the
bombing, began to share his wonder at
the beautiful complexity of life. His songs
are meticulously crafted and almost
Cormac McCarthy-ian in their restraint.
There are no wasted syllables; there is
no wall of sound. Instead, we simply
hear a man with an acoustic guitar and a
scraggly voice, backed by occasional
guitars, strings, and drums. The music is
absorbing, the lyrics moving. Forget
concentrating on anything else while the
album plays. Pretty World has
dominated my listening for nearly two
months now, each session embedding it
a little deeper into my soul. Let it into
yours, too.
July 2007
By Patrick Nichols
Devastatingly beautiful. That's the best
way to describe Sam Baker's Pretty
World. And the superlatives don't end
there. "Odessa" just may be one of the
finest songs I've ever heard, intricately
interweaving the traditional "Hard Times
Come Again No More" with the tale of
an oil baron whose besotted self-
indulgence takes the life of his young
love. It's a loss he never can shake,
despite growing riches from the ever-
flowing West Texas crude. And it's a
rich novella, told in under 6 minutes. As
on his 2004 debut Mercy, Baker
celebrates humanity in all of our sacred-
and-profane intricacies. "Pretty World"
and especially "Sweetly Undone" border
on the artfully erotic:
Remember New Year's Eve? And no
it's not a test
At the top of the stairs you slowly
undressed…
Oh father oh son, slowly undress
Sweetly undone
Yet darkness lurks in the sadistic
taskmaster of "Psychic" and particularly
the haunting memories of "Broken
Fingers":
How long ago? Sixteen years
Every day, of course I know…
Forget his face? Of course I don't
Etched like a crystal vase
These broken fingers, some things
don't heal
I can't wake up from a dream when
the dream is real…
There are blue eyes, a silhouette
There is a debt, a debt I don't forget
Baker was seriously injured in a train
attacked by Peruvian guerrillas in 1986,
and in the years following he worked on
recovery both physical and spiritual. He
refined his storytelling, learned to play
guitar with his left hand, and, through
vocals irreparably altered by the
bombing, began to share his wonder at
the beautiful complexity of life. His songs
are meticulously crafted and almost
Cormac McCarthy-ian in their restraint.
There are no wasted syllables; there is
no wall of sound. Instead, we simply
hear a man with an acoustic guitar and a
scraggly voice, backed by occasional
guitars, strings, and drums. The music is
absorbing, the lyrics moving. Forget
concentrating on anything else while the
album plays. Pretty World has
dominated my listening for nearly two
months now, each session embedding it
a little deeper into my soul. Let it into
yours, too.
Folk & Acoustic Music
Exchange
by Bob Gottlieb
This Texas songwriter is not a singer
with a pretty voice, he more thrusts the
words out of his mouth in his husky
gravelly voice than sings, but it is those
words that are important here; the way
he puts those words together and they
stories they form.. This is a spare but
beautiful disc in many ways; Walt
Wilkins and Tim Lorsch produce it and
they fully utilize the talents of the
musicians of Nashville and Austin to
showoff these story songs in the best
light. They enlisted the gifts of people
such as Joel Guzman, accordion, Lloyd
Maines, resophonic guitar and pedal
steel, Gurf Morlix, voice and electric
guitar and Marcia Ramirez's voice,
among many others.
.
Baker's stories have the minute details
that display that he knows what he is
writing of. It is this combination of detail
and knowledge that give his stories the
ring of truth of experience. For example,
in Psychic, he sings:
He uses whips on his horses
He is that kind of man
You pretend he whispers so you don't
take a stand
But there are scares on the flanks
They look like fans
The horses are scared
Their eyes roll white
Not sure his voice or delivery are for
everyone, but the songs sure are worth
the listening. The musicians, both in his
band and the guests, leave plenty of
room for his songs to make their
statement, and their inner beauty to shine
through. There is much to be gained
from his outlook for all who will take the
time to listen.
Edited by: David N. Pyles
Exchange
by Bob Gottlieb
This Texas songwriter is not a singer
with a pretty voice, he more thrusts the
words out of his mouth in his husky
gravelly voice than sings, but it is those
words that are important here; the way
he puts those words together and they
stories they form.. This is a spare but
beautiful disc in many ways; Walt
Wilkins and Tim Lorsch produce it and
they fully utilize the talents of the
musicians of Nashville and Austin to
showoff these story songs in the best
light. They enlisted the gifts of people
such as Joel Guzman, accordion, Lloyd
Maines, resophonic guitar and pedal
steel, Gurf Morlix, voice and electric
guitar and Marcia Ramirez's voice,
among many others.
.
Baker's stories have the minute details
that display that he knows what he is
writing of. It is this combination of detail
and knowledge that give his stories the
ring of truth of experience. For example,
in Psychic, he sings:
He uses whips on his horses
He is that kind of man
You pretend he whispers so you don't
take a stand
But there are scares on the flanks
They look like fans
The horses are scared
Their eyes roll white
Not sure his voice or delivery are for
everyone, but the songs sure are worth
the listening. The musicians, both in his
band and the guests, leave plenty of
room for his songs to make their
statement, and their inner beauty to shine
through. There is much to be gained
from his outlook for all who will take the
time to listen.
Edited by: David N. Pyles
Paste Magazine
August 2007
By Geoffrey Himes
Few songwriters can write verses
evocative enough that they need no
explaining in the chorus. Fewer still can
resist explaining things anyway for
listeners who aren’t willing to draw their
own conclusions. Townes Van Zandt
could resist that temptation, and so could
the later Joni Mitchell and the later John
Prine. And on his new album, “Pretty
World,” Sam Baker writes verses so
sharply observed—so taut with tension
between the life his characters want and
the life they actually have—that nothing
more need be said. The few times that
Baker does use a chorus, it's to add not
an explanation but yet another striking
image.
There’s no reason you should have
heard of Baker. This is the second album
the Austin artist has released on his own
label with almost no promotion, but
industry insiders such as Lucinda
Williams’ ex-producer Gurf Morlix and
Steve Earle’s former manager John
Lomax recognized his 2004 debut,
“Mercy," as one of the best singer-
songwriter discs of the decade, and
“Pretty World” is nearly as good. Like
his role models Prine and Van Zandt,
Baker doesn’t have much of a voice, but
he husbands his vocal resources
skillfully, hanging them on simple but
catchy melodies and allowing his
producer Walt Wilkins to flesh out the
songs with tasteful chamber-pop
arrangements.
In the opening song, “Juarez," a Texas
frat boy in “a blue suede cowboy hat”
sits in a Mexican whorehouse; the
woman in his lap with “eyes painted like
clay except colder” bitches about getting
old as the frat boy sings Van Zandt’s
“Waiting Around To Die." “Slots”
conjures up a woman in a Reno casino,
a roll of quarters in one hand and a gin
and tonic in the other, singing the gospel
hymns of her long-gone youth as she
drops one coin after another into the
slot. “Odessa” describes a West Texas
kid who inherited his daddy’s oil fortune
but not his daddy’s sense of purpose;
now he sits alone on his daddy’s porch,
thinking of “the girl who was penned in
the ‘Vette,… her face was blood and
diamonds; he remembers her that way."
Baker doesn’t make it easy on the
listener—there are no explanations and
no comforting reassurances. But the
songs do offer the startling recognition of
lives that are as messy and disappointing
as those in the real world—lives that
rarely make it through the simplifying
process of pop culture. What victories
there are—the beautiful woman
sunbathing in “Sweetly Undone” or the
home-made Christmas meal offered in
“Days”—are small victories but all the
more valuable for being within our grasp.
August 2007
By Geoffrey Himes
Few songwriters can write verses
evocative enough that they need no
explaining in the chorus. Fewer still can
resist explaining things anyway for
listeners who aren’t willing to draw their
own conclusions. Townes Van Zandt
could resist that temptation, and so could
the later Joni Mitchell and the later John
Prine. And on his new album, “Pretty
World,” Sam Baker writes verses so
sharply observed—so taut with tension
between the life his characters want and
the life they actually have—that nothing
more need be said. The few times that
Baker does use a chorus, it's to add not
an explanation but yet another striking
image.
There’s no reason you should have
heard of Baker. This is the second album
the Austin artist has released on his own
label with almost no promotion, but
industry insiders such as Lucinda
Williams’ ex-producer Gurf Morlix and
Steve Earle’s former manager John
Lomax recognized his 2004 debut,
“Mercy," as one of the best singer-
songwriter discs of the decade, and
“Pretty World” is nearly as good. Like
his role models Prine and Van Zandt,
Baker doesn’t have much of a voice, but
he husbands his vocal resources
skillfully, hanging them on simple but
catchy melodies and allowing his
producer Walt Wilkins to flesh out the
songs with tasteful chamber-pop
arrangements.
In the opening song, “Juarez," a Texas
frat boy in “a blue suede cowboy hat”
sits in a Mexican whorehouse; the
woman in his lap with “eyes painted like
clay except colder” bitches about getting
old as the frat boy sings Van Zandt’s
“Waiting Around To Die." “Slots”
conjures up a woman in a Reno casino,
a roll of quarters in one hand and a gin
and tonic in the other, singing the gospel
hymns of her long-gone youth as she
drops one coin after another into the
slot. “Odessa” describes a West Texas
kid who inherited his daddy’s oil fortune
but not his daddy’s sense of purpose;
now he sits alone on his daddy’s porch,
thinking of “the girl who was penned in
the ‘Vette,… her face was blood and
diamonds; he remembers her that way."
Baker doesn’t make it easy on the
listener—there are no explanations and
no comforting reassurances. But the
songs do offer the startling recognition of
lives that are as messy and disappointing
as those in the real world—lives that
rarely make it through the simplifying
process of pop culture. What victories
there are—the beautiful woman
sunbathing in “Sweetly Undone” or the
home-made Christmas meal offered in
“Days”—are small victories but all the
more valuable for being within our grasp.
Folkwax
Arthur Wood
July 18, 2007
Real-Deal, Cut-To-The-Chase,
Pretty World is Itasca, Texas-born, Sam
Baker's sophomore solo album. It
comes three years after he self-released
his twelve-track debut Mercy. As far as
Baker is concerned, I feel like something
of a Johnny-come-lately. A friend sent
me a CDR copy of the latter recording
complete with artwork about a year
back and I faintly recall that I gave it a
cursory hearing at the time. It was during
a breakfast conversation with a
Texas-born friend at Kerrville's
International House of Pancakes during
my recent Folk festival trip that Baker's
name came up, followed by a must-buy
Mercy recommendation. Well my usual
Austin haunts were clean out of Mercy,
but a day later I came up trumps at
Sundance Records in San Marcos. Well,
truth to tell, the new front cover artwork,
relative to the CDR version, threw me
for a minute. Once inserted, the Mercy
disc remained in the CD player alive and
rotating till I handed back that hire car at
Bergstrom Airport in Austin many days
later. As an original song collection it is
truly that good, so go get yourself some
Mercy today.
On Pretty World, in support of Baker's
songs, album producers Walt Wilkins
and Tim Lorsch reprise their roles - once
again impeccably and with aplomb -
while the main support players Watkins
(vocal, acoustic guitar), Lorsch (violin,
octave violin, and mandolin), Mike Daly
(pedal steel guitar, resophonic guitar),
Ron De La Vega (bass, cello), and
Mickey Grimm (drums, percussion) are
augmented on this occasion by Rick
Plant (electric guitar). Where the twelve
song titles on Mercy each consisted of
an economic single word, Baker has
been considerably more adventurous on
Pretty World and among his second
dozen creations three of them feature a
generous two-word title while two cuts
are instrumentals - albeit that the longer
of the latter features the chorus from the
album title song. As before, Baker
supplies vocal, acoustic guitar, and
harmonica, while the coterie of
supplementary players on this occasion
includes Joel Guzman (accordion), Fats
Kaplan (accordion), Lloyd Maines
(pedal steel guitar, resophonic guitar),
and Gurf Morlix (vocal, electric guitar).
The main venue for the recording
sessions was once again Nashville's Dog
Den Studio, plus some additional
recording took place in Austin - Sam's
current base - at Ray Benson's (Asleep
At The Wheel) Bismeaux Studio.
As I noted earlier, the song titles are
mostly single words, except that in the
liner booklet the opening track appears
as "Juarez (A Song To Himself)." Set in
a borderland whorehouse the repeated
hook in each verse pretty much runs to
"He sings an old song/A song to
himself/He sings waiting round to die."
Anyone with a modicum of knowledge
of the songs of Townes Van Zandt will
recognise the final four words in the
foregoing quote as a song title that
graced the late Texan's eponymous
debut album For The Sake Of The Song
in 1968. I guess you may have to be
mature in years to truly get Baker's
vignette. In the fourth verse "A beautiful
woman/Wraps around his shoulder"
utters the astute summation "hell of a
deal, ain't it - getting older." The main
character in "Orphan" is abandoned by
her mother and subsequently raised in a
children's home where she wasn't exactly
loved - "A straight haired kid in a house
full of curls." As the song draws to a
close, now a grown woman, we learn
that she has deserted one fiancé, two
husbands, and is currently living with a
fourth man. In "Slots" an old woman
who resides in a trailer park sits
gambling in a Reno casino.
"Pretty World" includes some poignant
only-in-the-moment reflections that
make our existence on this planet rather
special. Baker's musician sister, Chris,
opens "Odessa" by singing the opening
verse from Stephen Foster's "Hard
Times Come Again No More," following
which Baker picks up the saga of a
family who pulled black gold from below
the Texas earth and of their errant young
male offspring - "He was an Odessa boy
with a daddy in the money" who "killed a
girl when he rolled the Corvette/Daddy's
money made her lawyers go away."
Now grown old and living alone in his
"dead daddy's place," still a bachelor,
the former Odessa boy will depart this
plane leaving no tangible genetic
footprint. In the closing verse, Baker
remarks that the course of our lives can
be irrevocably changed by a single
event, "See he loved the girl who was
penned in the Vette," and as the track
closes Chris reprises "Hard Times...,"
this time as counterpoint to her brother's
vocal.
Across a mere two hundred seconds in
"Sweetly Undone," Baker has penned
the most exquisitely beautiful and
sensuous love song I've heard in many a
year. It's a hot summer's afternoon as a
couple lie by the pool in St. Augustine,
Florida. He has a copy of Twain and she
a book on Africa. Nearby there are
cardinals and roses. He reflects that
there's been lots of rain and that her top
is undone. Then he recalls that New
Year's Eve when "Oh father, oh son" he
saw her slowly undress for the first time.
Baker cranks up the pace for the
lyrically edgy and dark "Psychic," the
pivotal line being that in this life "You
gotta choose truth, or you gotta choose
lies." In Baker's "Boxes" a woman uses
such receptacles for storing her
mementoes, photographs, trophies,
ribbons, Valentine cards, and more. As
for 'more'...for many American families,
in recent decades, there has been a
letter, one whose receipt "Came on a
day that turned black/A grateful nation
informs you/Your first lieutenant is not
coming home."
"Prelude" is a thirty-second-long
instrumental played on accordion and it's
followed by the sombre "Broken
Fingers," which if put to the test I'd guess
is a remembrance in the vein of "Steel"
(on Mercy) - "Some things don't heal/I
can't wake up from a dream/When the
dream is real/These broken fingers" - of
the 1986 explosion in Peru in which
Baker was a victim. "Days" is sung in
Spanish, while the lyric appears in
English in the liner booklet. Set in
December it portrays a family scene,
hectic and joyous as the evening meal is
prepared. Baker closes with the simple
invitation to communion - "Dinner is
ready they say/Come to the
table/Come." As I mentioned in the
second paragraph of this review toward
the close of the atmospheric second
instrumental, "Pretty World
Recessional," the chorus from the album
title song is reprised by Sam Baker and
Marcia Ramirez.
In recent times the name of many
musicians have been bandied around in
an attempt to describe Baker's music,
including that of John Prine. The only
connection I perceive that relates Baker
and Prine is that they both write songs,
while in the mould of real-deal,
cut-to-the-chase Texas scribes Guy
Clark and Terry Allen, Sam Baker is a
true song poet. It's all down to an
economy with words...something about
painting the whole picture, telling the
whole story.
Arthur Wood is a founding editor of
FolkWax
Arthur Wood
July 18, 2007
Real-Deal, Cut-To-The-Chase,
Pretty World is Itasca, Texas-born, Sam
Baker's sophomore solo album. It
comes three years after he self-released
his twelve-track debut Mercy. As far as
Baker is concerned, I feel like something
of a Johnny-come-lately. A friend sent
me a CDR copy of the latter recording
complete with artwork about a year
back and I faintly recall that I gave it a
cursory hearing at the time. It was during
a breakfast conversation with a
Texas-born friend at Kerrville's
International House of Pancakes during
my recent Folk festival trip that Baker's
name came up, followed by a must-buy
Mercy recommendation. Well my usual
Austin haunts were clean out of Mercy,
but a day later I came up trumps at
Sundance Records in San Marcos. Well,
truth to tell, the new front cover artwork,
relative to the CDR version, threw me
for a minute. Once inserted, the Mercy
disc remained in the CD player alive and
rotating till I handed back that hire car at
Bergstrom Airport in Austin many days
later. As an original song collection it is
truly that good, so go get yourself some
Mercy today.
On Pretty World, in support of Baker's
songs, album producers Walt Wilkins
and Tim Lorsch reprise their roles - once
again impeccably and with aplomb -
while the main support players Watkins
(vocal, acoustic guitar), Lorsch (violin,
octave violin, and mandolin), Mike Daly
(pedal steel guitar, resophonic guitar),
Ron De La Vega (bass, cello), and
Mickey Grimm (drums, percussion) are
augmented on this occasion by Rick
Plant (electric guitar). Where the twelve
song titles on Mercy each consisted of
an economic single word, Baker has
been considerably more adventurous on
Pretty World and among his second
dozen creations three of them feature a
generous two-word title while two cuts
are instrumentals - albeit that the longer
of the latter features the chorus from the
album title song. As before, Baker
supplies vocal, acoustic guitar, and
harmonica, while the coterie of
supplementary players on this occasion
includes Joel Guzman (accordion), Fats
Kaplan (accordion), Lloyd Maines
(pedal steel guitar, resophonic guitar),
and Gurf Morlix (vocal, electric guitar).
The main venue for the recording
sessions was once again Nashville's Dog
Den Studio, plus some additional
recording took place in Austin - Sam's
current base - at Ray Benson's (Asleep
At The Wheel) Bismeaux Studio.
As I noted earlier, the song titles are
mostly single words, except that in the
liner booklet the opening track appears
as "Juarez (A Song To Himself)." Set in
a borderland whorehouse the repeated
hook in each verse pretty much runs to
"He sings an old song/A song to
himself/He sings waiting round to die."
Anyone with a modicum of knowledge
of the songs of Townes Van Zandt will
recognise the final four words in the
foregoing quote as a song title that
graced the late Texan's eponymous
debut album For The Sake Of The Song
in 1968. I guess you may have to be
mature in years to truly get Baker's
vignette. In the fourth verse "A beautiful
woman/Wraps around his shoulder"
utters the astute summation "hell of a
deal, ain't it - getting older." The main
character in "Orphan" is abandoned by
her mother and subsequently raised in a
children's home where she wasn't exactly
loved - "A straight haired kid in a house
full of curls." As the song draws to a
close, now a grown woman, we learn
that she has deserted one fiancé, two
husbands, and is currently living with a
fourth man. In "Slots" an old woman
who resides in a trailer park sits
gambling in a Reno casino.
"Pretty World" includes some poignant
only-in-the-moment reflections that
make our existence on this planet rather
special. Baker's musician sister, Chris,
opens "Odessa" by singing the opening
verse from Stephen Foster's "Hard
Times Come Again No More," following
which Baker picks up the saga of a
family who pulled black gold from below
the Texas earth and of their errant young
male offspring - "He was an Odessa boy
with a daddy in the money" who "killed a
girl when he rolled the Corvette/Daddy's
money made her lawyers go away."
Now grown old and living alone in his
"dead daddy's place," still a bachelor,
the former Odessa boy will depart this
plane leaving no tangible genetic
footprint. In the closing verse, Baker
remarks that the course of our lives can
be irrevocably changed by a single
event, "See he loved the girl who was
penned in the Vette," and as the track
closes Chris reprises "Hard Times...,"
this time as counterpoint to her brother's
vocal.
Across a mere two hundred seconds in
"Sweetly Undone," Baker has penned
the most exquisitely beautiful and
sensuous love song I've heard in many a
year. It's a hot summer's afternoon as a
couple lie by the pool in St. Augustine,
Florida. He has a copy of Twain and she
a book on Africa. Nearby there are
cardinals and roses. He reflects that
there's been lots of rain and that her top
is undone. Then he recalls that New
Year's Eve when "Oh father, oh son" he
saw her slowly undress for the first time.
Baker cranks up the pace for the
lyrically edgy and dark "Psychic," the
pivotal line being that in this life "You
gotta choose truth, or you gotta choose
lies." In Baker's "Boxes" a woman uses
such receptacles for storing her
mementoes, photographs, trophies,
ribbons, Valentine cards, and more. As
for 'more'...for many American families,
in recent decades, there has been a
letter, one whose receipt "Came on a
day that turned black/A grateful nation
informs you/Your first lieutenant is not
coming home."
"Prelude" is a thirty-second-long
instrumental played on accordion and it's
followed by the sombre "Broken
Fingers," which if put to the test I'd guess
is a remembrance in the vein of "Steel"
(on Mercy) - "Some things don't heal/I
can't wake up from a dream/When the
dream is real/These broken fingers" - of
the 1986 explosion in Peru in which
Baker was a victim. "Days" is sung in
Spanish, while the lyric appears in
English in the liner booklet. Set in
December it portrays a family scene,
hectic and joyous as the evening meal is
prepared. Baker closes with the simple
invitation to communion - "Dinner is
ready they say/Come to the
table/Come." As I mentioned in the
second paragraph of this review toward
the close of the atmospheric second
instrumental, "Pretty World
Recessional," the chorus from the album
title song is reprised by Sam Baker and
Marcia Ramirez.
In recent times the name of many
musicians have been bandied around in
an attempt to describe Baker's music,
including that of John Prine. The only
connection I perceive that relates Baker
and Prine is that they both write songs,
while in the mould of real-deal,
cut-to-the-chase Texas scribes Guy
Clark and Terry Allen, Sam Baker is a
true song poet. It's all down to an
economy with words...something about
painting the whole picture, telling the
whole story.
Arthur Wood is a founding editor of
FolkWax
Houston Press
By William Michael Smith
Published: August 16, 2007
Sam Baker: Organic, windswept
Americana.
Some artists — Sam Baker, for instance
— don't let limited vocal ability keep
them from making amazing records.
Baker sings about the same way he talks,
in a halting stutter like he's not always
sure he's saying the right word. But like
any true artist, Baker makes the most of
his gifts. His songs are so organic, and
the damaged people in them so ordinary,
they could have just sprouted right
through the dust of some windswept, half-
forgotten West Texas town like Wink,
Seminole or Dumas. The surreal
"Juarez" and chilling "Odessa"
demonstrate Baker's gift for minimalist
yet gritty storytelling, while tunes like
"Sweetly Undone," "Days" and "Broken
Fingers" show an exacting eye for the
small details that glue families and lovers
together. Like the lyrics, the
arrangements are sparse yet
complicated, and producers Walt Wilkins
and Tim Lorsch have done a stellar job of
keeping the racket down and letting the
songs stand out. Pretty World should be
sitting pretty when the best-of lists roll
out in December, because for
Americana, this is as good as it gets.
http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-08-
16/music/sam-baker/
By William Michael Smith
Published: August 16, 2007
Sam Baker: Organic, windswept
Americana.
Some artists — Sam Baker, for instance
— don't let limited vocal ability keep
them from making amazing records.
Baker sings about the same way he talks,
in a halting stutter like he's not always
sure he's saying the right word. But like
any true artist, Baker makes the most of
his gifts. His songs are so organic, and
the damaged people in them so ordinary,
they could have just sprouted right
through the dust of some windswept, half-
forgotten West Texas town like Wink,
Seminole or Dumas. The surreal
"Juarez" and chilling "Odessa"
demonstrate Baker's gift for minimalist
yet gritty storytelling, while tunes like
"Sweetly Undone," "Days" and "Broken
Fingers" show an exacting eye for the
small details that glue families and lovers
together. Like the lyrics, the
arrangements are sparse yet
complicated, and producers Walt Wilkins
and Tim Lorsch have done a stellar job of
keeping the racket down and letting the
songs stand out. Pretty World should be
sitting pretty when the best-of lists roll
out in December, because for
Americana, this is as good as it gets.
http://www.houstonpress.com/2007-08-
16/music/sam-baker/
Dave Marsh
August 2007
Pretty World, Sam Baker (An
Independent Release)—Being on a
Peruvian train that got bombed left
Baker with a singing voice that resembles
Todd Snider and John Prine, an acquired
taste. But his delicious narratives also
resemble Prine and Snider’s, especially
in their deadpan, matter of fact
incorporation of oddball facts. Several
songs here are set in a whorehouse, but
it’s no Springsteen nightmare nor a
Kinky sportin’ house, mainly a place
where folks live and work amidst a
certain strangeness. In this context, it
makes perfect sense to open “Odessa,” a
song about a rich West Texas kid who
resembles so much as a slightly more
benign (no high office) version of George
W. Bush: “He killed a girl when he
rolled the Corvette / Daddy’s money
made her lawyers go away / His mother
bought vodka with all that cash / She
kind of knew / She kind of knew.” In the
end, as beautiful as it is strange, and vice
versa.
August 2007
Pretty World, Sam Baker (An
Independent Release)—Being on a
Peruvian train that got bombed left
Baker with a singing voice that resembles
Todd Snider and John Prine, an acquired
taste. But his delicious narratives also
resemble Prine and Snider’s, especially
in their deadpan, matter of fact
incorporation of oddball facts. Several
songs here are set in a whorehouse, but
it’s no Springsteen nightmare nor a
Kinky sportin’ house, mainly a place
where folks live and work amidst a
certain strangeness. In this context, it
makes perfect sense to open “Odessa,” a
song about a rich West Texas kid who
resembles so much as a slightly more
benign (no high office) version of George
W. Bush: “He killed a girl when he
rolled the Corvette / Daddy’s money
made her lawyers go away / His mother
bought vodka with all that cash / She
kind of knew / She kind of knew.” In the
end, as beautiful as it is strange, and vice
versa.
Bill Bentley
Studio City Sun
He lost some of his body and part of his
hearing from a time bomb on a train in
Peru in 1986. Coming out on the other
side of that kind of disaster has given
Sam Baker the chance to become
someone whose music exists outside
time, walking that fine line of eternity
where it’s hard to tell what’s in this
world and what has crossed on to the
spirit side. His songs have the striking
edge of a sharp knife, and cut as deep as
music can. Some, like “Sweetly
Undone” and especially “Broken
Fingers,” make the heart beat fast and
the back of the throat throb with
tightness, while the eyes fight back tears
and both hands sweat with a damp fear.
Music like this comes from the great
beyond, where Baker must have an
account paid in full that lets him go there
at will and make withdrawals in his
dreams. This kind of greatness can’t be
compared, but if Townes Van Zandt
was still with us, he would be sitting
alone in the corner listening to Sam
Baker, a warm half-pint of vodka stuck
down the front of his pants and an old
fringed jacket hanging on that elegant
frame, chuckling at how strange life
sometimes works out. Count on it.
Studio City Sun
He lost some of his body and part of his
hearing from a time bomb on a train in
Peru in 1986. Coming out on the other
side of that kind of disaster has given
Sam Baker the chance to become
someone whose music exists outside
time, walking that fine line of eternity
where it’s hard to tell what’s in this
world and what has crossed on to the
spirit side. His songs have the striking
edge of a sharp knife, and cut as deep as
music can. Some, like “Sweetly
Undone” and especially “Broken
Fingers,” make the heart beat fast and
the back of the throat throb with
tightness, while the eyes fight back tears
and both hands sweat with a damp fear.
Music like this comes from the great
beyond, where Baker must have an
account paid in full that lets him go there
at will and make withdrawals in his
dreams. This kind of greatness can’t be
compared, but if Townes Van Zandt
was still with us, he would be sitting
alone in the corner listening to Sam
Baker, a warm half-pint of vodka stuck
down the front of his pants and an old
fringed jacket hanging on that elegant
frame, chuckling at how strange life
sometimes works out. Count on it.
| What victories there are—the beautiful woman sunbathing in “Sweetly Undone” or the home- made Christmas meal offered in “Days”—are small victories but all the more valuable for being within our grasp. Geoffrey Himes |
