“Everything’s a gift at this point,” Sam Baker said.
And he knows what he’s talking about.
The Austin-based country/folk musician — set to perform at the Treehouse Café at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, April 10 — had his latest record named as one of Rolling Stone’s top 10 country albums of the year in 2013, and was chosen as one of 20 essential Texas singer/songwriters by Acoustic Guitar Magazine.
But he very nearly didn’t live long enough to do any of that. Baker came back from the brink of death and wrote songs he heard there.
In 1986 he was on a train in Peru, en route to Machu Picchu, when a bomb planted by the Peruvian terrorist group Shining Path exploded in the luggage rack above him.
The people he was sitting with were killed. Baker’s body was torn apart.
He had a brain injury and severe hearing loss, and required more than 15 reconstructive surgeries.
Eventually, during his long recovery, songs started coming to him. Several of them are related directly to the attack and his near-death experience, while others are more like short stories written in the voices of characters, real relatable people.
With a raspy, almost spoken word vocal style and literate, poignant and carefully observed songs that grapple with the beauties, complexities and little tragedies of this world, Baker is a great spirit with a big heart, a genuine original.
“I think that my job is to reveal as much as I know and hope that it’s helpful to somebody,” he told Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross in an interview about the bombing and the faith he gained in humanity.
Baker grew up in Itasca, Texas, a prairie town southwest of Dallas. He was exposed to a wide array of music as a child, not the least of which was his father’s collection of country/blues artists. His mother was a church organist who loved Broadway albums.
He released his first record, “Mercy,” in 2004, the first in a trilogy of song paintings with sparse instrumentation and poetic delivery. It was followed by “Pretty World” in 2007 and “Cotton” in 2009. All three albums are subtitled, “Everyone is at the Mercy of Another One’s Dreams,” “How Beautiful are These Days” and “Talk About Forgiveness,” respectively.
Tickets for the 21-and-over show are on sale now; the cost is $20. Visit www.treehousebainbridge.com for details.
