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...