“The better a singer's voice, the harder it is to believe what they're saying.”
- David Byrne/Talking Heads
There's a site on Substack for music nerds called “Song Letter.” Whoever runs it asks some music related questions and dorks like me can respond. If you care about such things, it's fun to see how people answer questions like, “What's a great song that starts with the letter M?” or “What band wouldn't be the same without their BASSIST?” Like I said, for dorks. The other day the question was asked, “What's the farthest you've ever traveled to see a performance?” While I've actually traveled farther, the answer I gave was my most memorable and the one I'm about to describe.
Probably twenty years ago, I heard a song on a non-mainstream radio station by a guy named Sam Baker. The song was called Baseball. It was one of the most outside the box things I'd ever heard. The singer didn't really sing, he more or less spoke. The vocal cadence was halting and odd. There was a stark melancholy acoustic guitar and violin. A female adds some harmonies here and there. The lyrics were sparse and non-linear having to do with soldiers, boys playing and laughing on a baseball field, a pop fly, a father bringing a Coke to a thirsty mother in the stands, a blue sky, a man with a flag, a south wind, Saturday comes and goes, a girl holds a baby in her arms. It was totally disjointed and I was captivated by everything about it. The way this Sam Baker guy, with his odd singing, was able to paint a scene with disparate elements and somehow make it work was beguiling.
I got right on finding out who he was. I learned that in 1986, Sam Baker, a Texas native, was on a train in Peru traveling to visit Machu Picchu when a bomb placed in the luggage rack above his head exploded. It was the work of a guerrilla group known as Shining Path. Seven people were killed. Baker suffered extensive injuries including brain damage, a severed artery and blown-in eardrums. He required 17 different surgeries over several years. The fingers on his left hand were badly injured. He was eventually able to re-learn to play the guitar left-handed.
He released his first album, Mercy in 2004. I became a fan of his unorthodox music not long thereafter, but I'd never had a chance to see him perform. Now, jump forward to 2018. Kendra and I are in Ireland on a jaunt around the country. We started in Dublin but had driven to the far northwest part of the country, County Donegal. Something popped up out of the blue on my phone about Sam Baker. He was playing a show at the Seamus Ennis Performing Arts Center in Naul, Ireland in two days. Naul is slightly north of Dublin. We weren't planning to go back east. We were flying out of Shannon on the west coast. What to do? Why even ask? We drove back across Ireland to Naul, a tiny town out in the boonies.
The Seamus Ennis Center is a shotgun building that seats maybe a hundred. It was sold out but we had purchased tickets on line, so we were good. When the doors opened we found our seats and struck up a conversation with two Irish gentlemen in front of us, one of which was wearing a Memphis Sun Studio t-shirt. We told them we were from Memphis. Well, they turned out to be amateur musicologists. They'd been to Memphis and the Delta on several occasions, researching obscure music sites and poking about. They had even located Mississippi John Hurt's grave in Avalon, Mississippi. True or not, they said they were maybe the first white folks to find it. I believed them. I thought I knew quite a bit about the music of the region, but I was afraid to offer much for fear of revealing my ignorance.
Sam played a wonderful, intimate show, just he and a percussionist. Afterwards we went up and chatted with him along with a group of others. “We're from Memphis.” we told him. “Memphis…what are you doing here?” “We came to see you," we said. A Irishman standing near heard the conversation. “Did I hear you say you were from Memphis. My brother lives there and owns Majectic Grill.” Well sure. Majestic Grill's a favorite downtown restaurant of ours, owned by Patrick Reilly and his wife, Deni. Small world much?
Ireland's not that big and I have traveled farther to see music, but it was the first time I'd traversed a country to do it and never in such a serendipitous way. We had to drive back west to eventually catch our flight home, but it was worth every mile…excuse me, every kilometer.