Sam Baker

His songs are sparse, unhurried, and precise, built from the same literary impulses as his influences: Faulkner, Hemingway, Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark. Baker came to music by way of survival. In 1986, while traveling by train to Machu Picchu in Peru, a bomb planted by the Shining Path guerrilla group exploded in his compartment. Six people were killed; Baker survived with catastrophic injuries — brain damage, a severed artery, destroyed hearing, hands permanently altered by skin grafts. He endured 17 reconstructive surgeries. As part of his recovery, he taught himself to play guitar left-handed, turned upside down, with gnarled fingers. Writing helped him relearn language he had lost. The first true line he wrote was the first line of his first song. He made a record. Then another. There were glowing reviews, more records, awards in Rolling Stone; sold-out shows in Europe, Canada, and the US; songs in TV shows; and an hour with Terry Gross on Fresh Air. This September will see the release of Survivor — Baker’s eighth album and second in a row produced by Grammy-winning Americana legend Rodney Crowell. Their previous collaboration, 2024’s Win Win, was an unconventional but arresting collection of lengthy spoken-word stories soundtracked by equally haunting instrumentation, hailed by esteemed peers like Terry Allen as “stunning spooky and very beautiful” and Mary Gauthier as “a revelation — storytelling at its finest.” For the equally compelling Survivor, Crowell curated a selection of his personal favorite gems from Baker’s critically acclaimed back pages and had Sam recut them in trio format, casting fresh, stark light on some of his absolute finest songs, including “Waves,” “Thursday,” and “Odessa.”