Erick Baker

Following an appearance at Bonnaroo, singer/songwriter Baker had a busy week with a June 16 slot on WDVX’s Blue Plate Special before appearing on WBIR’s Live At Five June 18, topped off with a performance at Sundown in the City June 19. Having started out performing cover songs around the Cumberland Avenue Strip as part of the duo Erick and Matt, Baker eventually began penning his own tunes, fronting Down From Up. He recently released an EP’s worth of songs, It’s Getting Too Late to Say It’s Early, and is set to release a full length CD soon. Red Hickey summed up Baker’s songs when she introduced him at the Blue Plate: “He’s a happy kind of guy, but his songs are, not really sad, but desperately… well, I guess they are sad.”


Ryan Adams
“Come Pick Me Up”
from Heartbreaker (2000)
EB: (immediately) Yeah. This song, I’ve said so many times, “Why couldn’t I have written this song?” This whole album. It’s great.
KV: What do you think of some of his other albums, particularly later ones?
EB:  A lot of the Grateful Dead influences that crept in there on 29 didn’t grab me at all. Certainly, I don’t want an artist to put the same record out over and over. Cold Roses, that double CD — amazing. I guess 29 is the only one that hasn’t connected with me. But Heartbreaker is one of those albums when I heard it, I thought “I want to do this.”
KV: I know he’s a big influence on you, but you even seem to have similar-sounding voices, especially on this song.
EB: Oh, that’s a huge compliment. He really has been an influence, almost in a “What Would Ryan Adams Do?” way.

Bob Dylan
“Farewell, Angelina”
from Bootleg Series, Volume 2 (1964)
EB: I actually don’t know what tune this is. I know it’s Bobby D. My internal rhythms are… it’s that 6/8 swing, what’s the tune?
KV: “Farewell, Angelina,” an outtake from 1964.
EB: When I first started writing I would write six-minute songs without that whole pop, hook element. But when you’re not Bob Dylan it’s hard to keep people interested for six minutes. That’s cool, man, I like this.

The Everybodyfields
“Medicine Girl”
from half-way there: electricity and the South (2005)
EB: I’ve had the comparisons of styles with them. Her voice has a component to it, when you talk about emotion — and I focus so much on the emotion of singing — there’s a component to her voice that’s coming from somewhere down deep. It’s subtle but it’s great.
KV: And his voice is a bit unusual, but they work so well together.
EB: Yeah, I love his voice. His voice is one of those that almost has a love-it-or-hate-it component. But the more I listen to them, the more I think they’re great.

Palace Brothers
“You Will Miss Me When I Burn”
from Days in the Wake (1994)
EB: This is totally new to me. But the production elements… sounds like a live recording, like he’s on the stool next to me. Who is this?
KV: Palace Brothers. Will Oldham.
EB: Once again, it’s that 6/8 swing. I think my heart beats in that time.  Anything with this raw, stripped-down element I’m immediately drawn to. It’s a simple song with so much depth. Eddie van Halen wouldn’t sound right in this song. Emotion and the intimacy of people opening their hearts I’ll usually take over superior technique. “When you have no one, no one can hurt you,” that’s just one of those lines… again, I wish I’d written it.
KV: And this is from 1994. You wonder why it took someone so long to put that line in a song.
EB: Exactly! You can say everything’s already been written, but it hasn’t. There’s always new ways of saying the same things people have been saying for thousands of years.

Britney Spears
“Hit Me Baby One More Time”
from …Baby One More Time (1998)
EB: (recognizes it immediately, laughs) I’ll be honest, that [hums intro], that’s a great melodic hook! I used to cover this song.
KV: Yeah, I heard it was a crowd pleaser. I was reading about this song and I was shocked by how many people have covered it. Bands like Mr. Bungle and Marilyn Manson and Type O Negative and Dweezil Zappa.
EB: “My loneliness is killing me…” If this song was played like the Palace Brother song, who knows, it may really grab me. Take those lyrics and play it in a certain style, who knows? Where the stripped-down rawness connects to me, there’s someone who hears every word of this song the way it’s sang and produced and thinks, “Hey, someone’s singing my song.”
KV: When’s the last time you played this live?
EB: It’s been a long, long time. When I graduated college I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I’d just started playing guitar, and I was playing cover music. It’s something that at times in my life I didn’t tell people that I did. But it’s come full circle now, it’s all part of the journey and I wouldn’t be where I am right now and have all these wonderful things happen to me if I hadn’t started playing a Britney Spears song. It helped me learn how to write songs and come into my own as a performer.