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Sam Baker @ The Blue Lamp, Fri 10 Sept


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interesting music promotions and Vocoustics Promotions presents

SAM BAKER (playing 2 sets)

Friday 10th September

The Blue Lamp (121 Gallowgate, Aberdeen, AB25 1BU, 01224 647 472)

Doors 8pm

Tickets 10 in advance from One-Up (01224 642 662) or from ticketweb.co.uk or 12 on door

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Sam Baker

www.sambakermusic.com

www.myspace.com/sambakermusic

Sam Baker is fast becoming one of the biggest underground Americana success stories of recent years with songs and stories of splendor, struggle, wounded beauty and aching spirit.

The defining moment in Baker's life came in 1986 when he was traveling on a train to visit Machu Picchu in Peru.

A terrorist bomb exploded on the train, killing his 3 seatmates, and Baker was gravely injured, losing most of his hearing and suffering serious injuries to his left arm. He had 18 corrective surgeries performed on him over the next decade and the consequent physical, emotional, and spiritual journey Baker experienced helped him form his quiet and passionate view of the world.

Baker had to completely relearn how to play the guitar with his mangled left hand, and singing was extremely difficult for him because of his severe hearing loss, but he overcame these obstacles to develop his uniquely hushed and quietly powerful performance style.

Sam Baker's vocal style is unique, and the delicate phrasing of his intelligent lyrics is supported by a sparse and beautiful backdrop of music. At times Baker almost talks through the songs, with his gravel tones inflecting deep humanity into the stories he tells. With this raspy spoken vocal style and his literate, poignant, and carefully observed songs which grapple with the beauties, complexities, and little tragedies of this (pretty) world.

Sam Baker has much in common with other Texan songwriters like Robert Earl Keen, James McMurtry, Townes Van Zandt, and Guy Clark, although his approach to narrative probably comes closest to an artist like John Prine.

Baker has self-released three critically acclaimed albums, Mercy, Cotton and Pretty World which move quietly through terror, love, and beauty; invoking gratitude, obligation, forgiveness and absence.

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  • 2 weeks later...

next weekend...

some words said about Mr Baker...

a major artist.... 'Pretty World is magnificent - one of the great albums of the year." (Bob Harris, Radio 2)

a deceptive simplicity and an insouciance that at times recall John Prine simple on the surface, poetry underneath, hence Townes Van Zandt comparisons... this is understated, affecting music (MOJO)

Stark, sad realism... ambling skeletons for the meat and flesh of the living (Malcolm Holcombe)

Baker is a hard-hewn grace, transcendentally wrought with grit, brutally shaded by a weary deliverance sought in common lives (Austin Chronicle)

Baker demonstrates a true gift for narrative songwriting...telling stories in which the American Dream has gotten a little tarnished. (All Music Guide)

you are drawn in to these tightly sketched song-dramas by the imagery, the broken vocal and most importantly for the initial listens the sympathetic musical backing. (AmericanaUK.com)

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