Sam Baker in Concert

INTERVIEWED by a BBC Radio Ulster presenter in Memphis at the Folk Alliance conference last year, songwriting legend Sam Baker commented: ‘I love Portstewart… the arts centre there is just exquisite’.

The arts centre in question – Flowerfield – is delighted to be welcoming back one of the most interesting songwriters of his or any other generation, for a concert promoted by the Real Music Club on Friday September 13 at 8pm - an evening not to be missed by music fans.

The price for tickets for the show is £15, which includes a complimentary glass of wine or fruit juice at the interval. You can buy tickets from reception at Flowerfield Arts Centre, or over the phone by debit or credit card on (028) 7083 1400. You can also buy tickets online from the Real Music Club ticketsource website at http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/realmusicclub.

Sam is a Texan singer-songwriter whose 2004 debut Mercy brought him an ardent and extensive following in North America and Europe.

He’s a man with an amazing back story - two decades ago, he survived a bomb blast perpetrated by Peru's Shining Path rebels. ‘It was 1986,’ says Sam, ‘and I was in Peru with some friends. We went to Lima and from there to Cuzco to catch the train to Machu Picchu. The bomb was in our train car.’

The bomb killed Sam’s friends, and a German family he was sitting with: ‘A mother, a father, and a boy. It killed them in a particularly terrible fashion.’

The exploding shrapnel cut the femoral artery in Sam’s leg, but he stayed alive in spite of subdural bleeding, cranial bleeding, gangrene, and renal failure. When he was brought back to the States, Baker started round after round of surgery. I think that whole experience made my writing much more empathetic toward people,’ he says. ‘You see quite a bit after weeks when you can’t move, near death. It makes you reflective.’

Sam’s song “Broken Fingers” was written partly in memory of the German boy who died in the explosion: ‘His parents spoke only German, but he knew Spanish and pretty good English, so we talked. The way my hand is now reminds me of that; the shrapnel blew off the top of my left hand. I later had to learn to play the guitar left-handed. There were times when I got frustrated. And then I somehow connected that to the boy. Some things are just done, and death is one of them. Some things don’t heal, some things don’t change.’

He adds: ‘I do listen to some music. I’m deaf on one side and don’t hear very well out of the other, and there’s a very loud ringing, so I’m not sure I get much out of music. And then when I hear birds I don’t know that we are able to do anything much more beautiful than that.

‘Lately my writing has been sporadic, but then I’ve got other projects that are taking a lot of my energy so I block out time to see what comes out. The thing is to find the balance. There are a million shining things and you can’t do them all. Doing nothing is good sometimes, too. I can look at the trees outside and see that something shining and beautiful is hanging from every branch.’

Baker grew up in Itasca, Texas, a small, rural town of about 1,200, on the prairie between Waco and Fort Worth. As a kid, Sam heard his father’s records of Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Johnny Cash, while his mother listened to Broadway albums and played piano and organ in the Presbyterian church. “There’d be Handel’s Messiah, ‘My Fair Lady,’ and Brownie McGhee,” he recalls; “pretty broad tastes.’

After college, Sam worked a day job as a bank examiner, but his restless spirit found him working as a carpenter and a white-water boatman, and just traveling the world—until those travels led him to Peru and the train explosion.

For somebody who’s gone through the pain and trauma he’s gone through, Sam Baker has an amazingly positive outlook on life, as though everything’s a gift at this point. ‘Everything is a gift at this point,’ he declares. ‘But, see, it’s a gift for you at this point. It’s not just me; it’s everybody. I went through the anger and the bitterness—deeply. But that energy didn’t get me anywhere. It’s toxic. And ultimately, I did come to a point where these days are beautiful. Because they are so short and so quick to pass. And that’s all we’ve got—no matter what we hold in our hands, drive around in, put in the bank, or
shower ourselves with.

‘All we’ve got is this one breath,’ he concludes. ‘And then, if we’re lucky, we have the next breath.’