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Sam Baker's Pretty World is a study in decay, populated by broken characters hanging on by a thread. Baker, a masterful connoisseur of missed detail, effortlessly arranges the detritae of their lives into brilliantly colored collage. Witness the protagonist of "Sweetly Undone" invoking the Trinity while ogling his lover's breasts, the woman sorting through boxes of dried flowers and old Valentine's cards in "Boxes" and the misfits "waiting around to die" on a beaten down front porch in "Juarez." Baker's thoroughly appropriate vocal delivery falls somewhere between that of the first prize winner at a storytelling competition and a billy goat, patiently trudging over the swells of banjo, guitar, accordion and lap steel that his ace band (featuring Lloyd Maines and Gurf Morlix) lay down before it. Baker's is the kind of hard-luck optimism sorely missing from American music right now; this is gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. - American Songwriter
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.
Dave Marsh
August 2007
- August 2007
Discography
p r e t t y w o r l d
BlueLimeStone Release July 2007
Radio play:
Orphan, Juarez, pretty world, Psychic, Broken Fingers
m e r c y
Independent Release June 2004
Radio play:
Baseball, Pony, Iron. Thursday
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Bio
Singer-songwriter Sam Baker reveals a poetic genius so straightforward and undemanding it evokes wonder.
Rarely do such plain truths do life—or listeners—justice.
Laced with quiet lamentation, Baker’s lyrics lay bare the lies we live in pursuit of dreams. Mercifully, his songs are anything but morose.
Rooted in the belief that each day is beautiful -Baker’s music celebrates equally the ugly and the exquisite, the mundane and the mysterious—giving us all a reason to take another look at ourselves and each other.
Before the sun
Before the heat
Before we untangle
From our sheets
Before this summer day unfurls
Pretty world
Session pros and performing artists from Nashville and Austin are paired with Baker, whose Dylan-like voice is as dusty as a dirt road in a drought. Elegant arrangements and inspired performances are provided by Texas hill country rising star Walt Wilkins and Nashville session pros Tim Lorsch, Mike Daly, Ron de la Vega, and Mickey Grimm. The result is magic.
Pretty world reflects a broad range of influences—from the music of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan to the novels of Jorge Luis Borges and Leo Tolstoy.
“I liked Tolstoy’s idea of working in the field everyday. Showing up. Making history one row at a time,” Baker says. “That history makes people, as much as people make history. Writing a song is like showing up, one row at a time- that’s all.”
One of six children, Sam Baker grew up in Itasca, a small Texas prairie town southwest of Dallas. He listened to his mother play hymns on the organ at the local Presbyterian church and his father play recordings of blues legends Lighting Hopkins, Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry. More often than not, My Fair Lady, Handel’s Messiah and Johnny Cash would be added to the mix.
“One of the first records I remember hearing is Johnny Cash’s Ride This Train,” Baker says. “Even more than the music, I remember the stories.” Recorded in 1960, Ride This Train defined Cash as one of American’s master storytellers. Like the redoubtable Man in Black, Sam Baker’s truest talent may be his ability to tell stories.
“I came back to writing songs after writing short fiction,” Baker says. “Story is everything, at least to me.”
In fact, pretty world, the companion piece to the critically 2004 acclaimed release mercy- is a novella: a tightly structured collection of songs chronicling the lies we go to bed with and the truths we wake up to—without sentimentality or apology—just a searing intensity.
It is 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
Baker’s songs reflect a life lived well and nearly lost—a bomb set off by Peru’s Shining Path killed his seatmates - and left him with the unwavering conviction that every moment counts- and everyday is beautiful.
Marla Williams, Andy Ryan, Lisa Shively
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