This is the first interview I have ever done, where the opening question actually came from the artist and was, 'So, Helen, tell me about you...'
Talking To...Sam Baker
There May Be Chickens
Music found Sam Baker as a way for him to make sense of the day he got caught in someone else’s war when a bomb went off on a train in South America. He was a passenger, those next to him were killed, including a young boy whose face he says he will never forget. He survived, but was altered, mentally and physically, by the experience.
Fatea had the chance to talk to Sam, and what unfolded was a fascinating, thought provoking, even moving, discussion about music, writing, Texas, forgiveness and even chickens...
Afterwards I was left with one certainty, if more people were like Sam Baker, in choosing to let go of hatred and anger and pursue love and forgiveness, the world would be a much better place.
SB: Sam Baker HM: Helen Mitchell
HM: Hi Sam, it’s so great to meet you.
SB: Hey!
At this point we had a conversation about coffee, which led to the following:
HM: – you know, I just got back from Texas.
SB: Oh, really, where?
HM: Houston and San Antonio.
SB: What for?
HM: Holiday. I noticed a new phenomenon this trip – Drive Thru Starbucks! I’ve seen it all now!
SB: Yeah, they’re everywhere! It was hot there, wasn’t it?
HM: Very. It was 107 the day before we left!
SB: What do you think about that, about the heat? Are you from here in Newcastle?
HM: Yeah, well, just up the road. I love the heat. Houston wasn’t a great heat, very uncomfortable, but San Antonio is a very dry heat, which I like. Other than the day we got the bus to the airport for a helicopter flight and I misjudged the distance – we had to walk a mile in 107 degree heat!
SB: Yeah, your concept of public transportation and our concept of it are very different. Ours gets you in a general vicinity.
HM: Usually it feels like about 30 blocks...
SB: (Laughs) Yeah, I’d say about 30 blocks...and yours generally gets you door to door, or near enough. I think the big cities, New York, DC, Chicago, have done a pretty good job of, not door to door, but close. The towns in the West and Midwest Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, we spread ourselves so far that we haven’t figured out an efficient way to use public transportation. Ther is so much land, the easiest way was always to use cars, horses, wagons, whatever. Austin is getting better. We’re not there yet and we don’t have a lot of taxi cabs either. In most big cities you can hold your arm up for not a long time but, you know, in Austin, I think you could hold your arm up for a day, or maybe three days...
HM: (laughs) By which time you’ve already died from heat exhaustion...
SB: (laughs) You could wear out, or run out of water! I think Austin is trying. You know we’re late, we started as a bandit city, not like New York, or even London. Newcastle goes way back, Brsitol, Bath, your country has had more time to grow. Newcastle was coal and shipbuilding, right? Austin has trolley buses. We spread out, sometimes like we want to live as far away from each other as possible I guess, but I would imagine if you were dropped a mile from an airport that would be a shock. I love the heat, I’m very fond of the relentless heat.
HM: It’s better than our weather.
SB: You know, your weather has been very kind to me this tour, it’s been perfect, bright and sunny and hasn’t rained. I know your nose is wrinkling...but it really has been beautiful. I know, I know it can be cold and wet and the clouds don’t lift, but here it has just been beautiful every day.
HM: It’s pulled out all the stops for you, clearly!
SB: Clearly! Clearly it’s been lovely. The tour’s been great, the instruments haven’t broken. Everybody’s been wonderful, the crowds have been great.
HM: Do instruments break often, Sam?
SB: They can break, it can be a source of...concern, but for the most part everything is fixable. If you lose things, you can borrow from other players, everything is fixable in the everyday, for the most part. If not, they can usually be resolved another way. The problems that I mostly face day to day on the road can be resolved.
HM: I guess it’s only a problem if you make it a problem?
SB: Yeah, I think part of it is how I view it. If I view it as an awful, terrible thing, then it becomes an awful, terrible thing. If I view it as something that doesn’t deserve a lot of energy, but deserves enough focus to fix it...then...like today, I thought I’d left my electronics in Nottingham or Bristol, then I remembered – I know exactly where they are, they’re in my hotel room, here, so all I have to do is go back, Helen and get them.
So, anyway, Helen, tell me about you!
HM: Me? What do you want to know?!
SB: Okay, well, you’re a writer...
HM: Well, technically, no. I work with EBD children by day and I do this as a hobby. I just fell into it by chance, having always loved music and live music, and I love it. There’s a bit of me in there though that loves the writing part and would probably love to pursue it one day...
SB: I would say there is, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. I believe it means that somewhere you have a story that you want to tell. Not always, but that is generally what it means. Somewhere there is a story that you’ve got, that offers enough energy that you will pursue at least part of the writing process.
HM: I don’t know, I mean, I don’t do creative writing...
SB: Now, I think that all writing in some ways is creative. I’d be careful about putting what you do in a box. I’d be careful about saying what it is or what it isn’t, just let it be. Writing will be what it wants to be, even if you are writing technical stuff, writing has a way of directing the writer, I think I would be sure of it.
HM: What I have learned from writing gig reviews is that I can’t...some people can plan it all out first, I can’t, I have to just sit at the computer and let it happen.
SB: You know, even some of the finest writers of the South – do you know Flannery O’Connor?
HM: Yes, she is an amazing writer!
SB: She never knew what she was going to write about. She died of Lupus at 39, but later in life she would paint portraits of her, Flannery, with chickens.
HM: Really?
SB: Yeah, wonderful.
HM: You wouldn’t expect such a prolific writer to be painting chickens...
SB: Ah, well, once again, I think maybe your putting writers and writing in a box...
HM: I think it’s very intriguing that painting chickens inspired her next piece of writing. I guess they’re all forms of self expression, interlinked.
SB: Well, I think the writing will guide the writer and if chickens are your muse, then so be it. So, you know, I think you’re well on your path and it may be chickens, it may be something else.
HM: (laughs) I don’t think it’s chickens!
SB: I also think I would call this article, It May Be Chickens.
HM: Okay.
SB: Helen, really, it may be one of many things, but it may be chickens.
HM: We’re talking about writing there, can I pick that up in relation to your writing, Sam?
SB: Sure.
HM: Great. I’m going to ask a random question first.
SB: Go for it.
HM: is it intentional that so many of your songs have such short, often one word, titles?
SB: Well, that’s intentional. I really try to get by with less if it’s possible. If it’s possible I do with as little as I need.
HM: Less is more?
SB: I believe so. You know, I think some artists are wonderful that they can write a lot of stuff and it’s stays coherent. I don’t really write like that. I write a bit shorter, more direct, then I cut out anything I don’t need. If you look at that building out there, i don’t think we need to describe every nuance; I think one or two words can get us a pretty clear indication of what it’s like. So if one or two words can describe the window sash then...
HM: Go with it...
SB: Yeah, I mean, you could turn the window sash into a hundred thousand words of art, you know, the Russians, Tolstoy, those guys, would make the story in tens of thousands of words and that’s translated but...
HM: That could also be hard reading...
SB: Well, for some people it is, for some it isn’t. I mean, I think we’re drawn to what we’re drawn to. I mean I’ve gone through phases, from the Russians, like Tolstoy, to the short, clipped writing of Hemingway, then the guys from America, Garcia Marquez...
HM: Marquez is amazing! Paul Coelho?
SB: I don’t know that name.
HM: If you love Marquez, you’d love Coelho – start with The Alchemist!
SB: Yeah? I think we’re drawn to what we’re drawn to for a reason.
HM: I think we’re drawn to certain things; books, music, whatever, at certain times in our life, too.
SB: Yeah, we’re speculating, but I think you’re right. I think reading and listening aren’t that different, really. They may appear to be but...
HM: They’re two parts of one process, really, I guess.
SB: I think that’s right. I mean, listening is in the same derivation...I mean, not derivation, the same camp I guess, as reading. I think before I can empty a glass of beer (looking at my glass)
HM: I’m afraid that’s just coke...
SB: Well, okay, before I can empty a glass of coca cola, I have to put coca cola in the glass.
HM: I’ve always loved books, from being little and I’ve always loved words and listening to music, and I think I love the kind of music I love, because I love to read, because it’s all about the words, you know?
SB: Yeah, absolutely. Helen, I really think you’ve got a story somewhere you want to tell. That would be my guess. Really, think about it.
HM: You think? It might be chickens!
SB: It might be chickens!
HM: Moving on, would you agree that you’re a storyteller?
SB: Sure.
HM: Is that the way you’ve always written?
SB: I’ve not always written. I didn’t really start to write seriously until about 2000. I just chose to start writing better. I’d written before that but I hadn’t really focussed on it. I think I made a conscious effort to be more clear, more exact with words.
HM: It’s occurred to me more than once and I have heard other people make the same comment, that there is something in your style, lyrics, delivery, that is reminiscent of Mary Gauthier.
SB: I don’t know, but I love Mary so I’m flattered. I love her spirit, I love what she writes, I love that she struggles with her art, it doesn’t come easily to her.
HM: What made you release the CDs as a trilogy? Was that your intention from the beginning?
SB: No, that was never my intention. In fact, Mercy wasn’t intended to be what it was but I was pleased with how it turned out. Then Bob Harris became a fan and...
HM: It always comes back to Bob Harris!
SB: I think for most of us it does! Anyway, after that, it started doing pretty well, so....with Pretty World....you know I don’t know how much you know, but I was in South America and I got caught in the middle of someone else’s war. It killed the people I was sitting with and it nearly killed me. In Mercy, there’s a statement about the point of impact when the bomb went off. But you know, the world is and can be a beautiful place. Then there’s another world of trying to live with and accept a changed body. I think I had so sift through what was left after that blast and be grateful for what is there not bitter about what is gone.
HM: Something like that has got to change your perspective really...
SB: I think so. You struggle but you cope and it’s a miracle. It was a pretty dark place. The record ends that the streets are quiet...they are, they make no judgement.
HM: That’s an ironic conversation when tomorrow is September 11th.
SB: Yeah..it is...you know, the concept of war, where we are able to kill so many people....we all struggle with things in our lives...but...
HM: Don’t you think though, in some way, it’s those struggles which unite us as people.....we all experience different things, obviously, but they, somehow, unite us.
SB: I think they can. I mean, Cotton, I dedicated for the sake of community, for the sake of us. No, you know, not one of us is alone in the fact that we suffer as people.
HM: Right.
SB: My favourite song is ‘Signs’
HM: Signs – you were in San Antonio – I don’t know if it’s the same as in Austin – but you’ve been to Austin..we don’t call them beggars...the one who inspired the song had a sign that her husband had left and help and her sign was upside down...
HM: That’s actually in the song, isn’t it.
SB (smiles) Right, right. I gave her some money and I thought, I tried to say her life might go better if her sign was the right way up, but I couldn’t. Maybe it wouldn’t, but at least then people could read it...the sign.
HM: I love the harmony on that song...
SB/ HM: (at same time) Meet me in St. Louis...
SB: Right. You know, the point of that song is to say if I had a way out...
(At this point we are interrupted by a man asking Sam to sign a CD for his daughter who was away and was sad to be missing the gig, Sam asked if he could sign it ‘We miss you...’ which he did. I just thought that was lovely.)
SB: Most people if they had a choice, wouldn’t be in that place –“ if I had a horse, if I had not lost my crown” if I could go I would...I think we forget that.
HM: There but for the Grace of God...
SB: Yeah
HM: Why St Louis?
SB: I don’t know why songs come to me, sometimes they come to me and they make sense and other times they don’t.
HM: I love that quote in the CD box – ‘let’s talk about forgiveness.’
SB: Yeah and I think it’s about...something I need to leave behind, something I need to give up...that I need to forgive..
HM: Yeah, I work with children who’ve had tough times and I wish I could help them to forgive and to let it go.
SB: Yeah, but you know, I still struggle with it and there are days I realise I’m holding on to the lack of forgiveness....there are times it feels good to be bitter but it’s corrosive.
I’m sorry I need to go, I have to go collect the lead...
HM: No problem.
SB: Helen, thankyou so so much.
HM: No, thankyou, that was really interesting.
SB: See you at the show?
HM: Yeah for sure!
SB: Ok, thanks, take care, see you soon!
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