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Event
Sam Baker in concert
Sam Baker is a man of few words. Always beautifully chosen, and fully wrought. Words placed like plants and objects in a Zen Garden. His website is stark: white, black, sepia, and shades of gray. Baker turned inward, to relearn the use of his body and brain after a Peruvian train bombing almost killed him in 1986. It's taken years to heal. Time to reconnect. The road back was arduous, but it opened up new vistas in art, poetry, and music.
Mercy, released in 2004, was the first in a trilogy of compelling albums with sparse instrumentation and poetic delivery. It was followed by pretty world in 2007 and cotton in 2009. Each piece is imprinted with a theme: everyone is at the mercy of another one's dreams, how beautiful are these days, and talk about forgiveness.
Baker approaches life with a positive attitude "Life is a gift. I went through a lot of bitterness- a lot of anger. But those things are toxic. Gratitude for what remains is more helpful than resentment for what was lost. Ultimately, I came to understand that these days are wicked short and terribly beautiful. All I've gotno matter what I hold in my hands, drive around in, or put in the bank,- all I've got is this one breath, and if I'm lucky, I get another."
Sam Baker might be the most captivating songwriter in America. You'll probably never catch yourself singing one of his songs in the shower, because his melodies generally tend to be as bare-bones servicable as the raspy scratch of his singing; but by God, you listen to what he has to say, hanging on for every line like a baby bird at feeding time. Sometimes his words come out haltingly, one by one; others tumble out of his mouth in spurts of nursery rhyme cadence ("copper penny for your thoughts/copper jacket full of lead/they wanted little Jimmy Cagney dead ") By the time he sing-speaks them all, he's burned a black-and-white image or sometimes even a whole movie in your mind that lingers long after each song ends. Some, like "Juarez" and "Odessa" from 2007's Pretty World, will haunt you for life. Baker's fourth album, Say Grace, adds several more masterpieces to that gallery, begining with the title track's poignant portrait of a woman weighing the ghosts of her past against the lonely onset of advancing age. In "Migrants," he tells of 14 men who cross the border only to succumb to the elements of the brutal Sonora desert. "Ay mijitos/they looked like dried leaves/scattered in the sun," Baker sings with a sadness underscored by Joel Guzman's keening accordion. "They got 12 lines in a midwestern paper/on the pages with the ads for shoes." But there's true grace here, too, from the sweetly touching but unmawkish "Isn't Love Great" to the surprise sense of humor leavening the blue-collar angst of "Ditch": "My wife God bless her and for what it's worth/thinks she and Taylor Swift/were twins at birth/separated at birth/Earth to wife/wife to earth!" RICHARD SKANSE
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LocationMonterey Court -Courtyard Stage (View)
505 West Miracle Mile
Tucson, AZ 85705
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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