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Saturday, 18 December, 2010 7:32 PM
CMA New Artist Spotlight: 'Rob
Baird'
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Photo
by Eric Ryan Anderson
New
country artist Rob Baird |
| By
Bob Doerschuk |
| ©
2010 CMA Close Up News Service |
To enhance your feel
for rootsy rock with a vast Country spirit, you couldn’t come
up with a better background than that of Rob Baird. He was born
and grew up in Memphis, Tenn., a city whose name alone stirs something
deep in America’s musical consciousness. And now, as a Texas
resident for several years, he places what he’s learned from
his hometown against a backdrop of dusty roads stretching towards
endless horizons.
Though he learned as
a child to play guitar and picked up essential lessons in songwriting
from his sister’s collection of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
records, Baird has honed his stage skills on the club circuit. From
Texas to throughout the Southeast, he learned to present the sometimes
rough edges of his sound and the evocative imagery of his lyrics
in ways that reach out even to crowds that seldom go easy on newcomers.
Evidence of this persuasiveness
permeates Blue Eyed Angels, Baird’s Carnival Recording Company
debut album. Produced by Scott Davis, the album features 11 tracks,
including six written by Baird and three which he co-wrote. One
of his solo compositions, “Could Have Been My Baby,”
functions well as his first single: Easy-going yet rhythmically
insistent, slickened by steel guitar and laced with strong hooks
reminiscent of Mellencamp’s finest, it unfolds through verses
built on nostalgic images of family and church, which tighten to
a punchy, sing-along chorus. Baird sums it up best, of course: “It’s
hateful but happy and dark in a major key.”
We’d go further
than that and say that Baird’s art is all about balance. “Let
Me Down Easy,” another solo write, courses gently from a sweet/sad
steel-and-guitar to an insistent final chorus, with words that contrast
standing on a mountaintop with “fallin’ flat on your
face.” These tracks, like the rest of Blue Eyed Angels, follow
the difficult footsteps of early Neil Young but veer eventually
out on their own, led by songs that are equal parts solid craft
and poet’s soul.
IN HIS OWN WORDS
Q&A
DREAM DUET PARTNER
“Buddy Miller.”
BOOK ON YOUR NIGHTSTAND
“The Gulf Coast
Boys, by Richard Dobson.”
FAVORITE FOOD ON
THE ROAD
“The Home Café
in Lubbock, Texas.”
PHRASE YOU SAY OVER
AND OVER
“That dog ain’t
gonna hunt.”
SECRET WE’D
NEVER GUESS ABOUT YOU
“I won a George
Strait look-alike contest when I was 16 in South Haven, Miss. I
love to cook. And I collect rare or unique guitars.”
On the Web:
www.RobBairdMusic.com
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