‘An Evening with Sam Baker’ May 17 at Sondheim center

The final Fairfest at the Sondheim concert will feature Sam Baker sharing his stories and songs at 7:30 p.m. May 17 at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center's Stephen Sondheim Center for the Performing Arts.

Heralded as among America's finest songwriters since his debut in 2004, Baker is a stone-cold original. Hailing from Itasca, Texas, Baker's voice, dry as a caliche road, is the perfect instrument for these spare portraits of simple people living, loving and facing life's storms.

Sometimes a songwriter finds the music and, well, sometimes the music finds the songwriter. As a young man Baker was living his dream: working some as a river guide and traveling the world the rest of the time. He had grown up watching his mother playing the organ in church and listening to his dad's impressive record collection, mostly country and blues. He loved music, but it remained in the periphery of a well-lived life until one hard day in Peru when a single act of terror forever changed his destiny and ultimately made him into a songwriter. Baker's story includes surviving devastating injuries from a terrorist bomb on a train bound for Machu Picchu, Peru in 1986.

Thirty-one year old Sam Baker was on a train traveling to Machu Picchu when a bomb exploded in the overhead luggage rack, placed there by members of the notorious Shining Path. A family of three, seated around him, and four others were killed. For Baker, it was the beginning of a torturous series of physical and emotional challenges. Life-threatening injuries included a severed artery in his leg, traumatic brain damage, kidney failure, gangrene, severe hearing loss and a crushed hand. Peruvian medical care was hit or miss and a long and difficult recovery added drama to a journey that will forever haunt and inspire him. Seventeen reconstructive surgeries and many years later, he still endures tinnitus and permanent hearing loss, memory problems and a permanently disfigured left hand.

It's said near death changes everyone, and as Baker kept rising to meet the challenges of his recovery, the music found him. First, the sounds, then the songs, then the words. 'Melodies would come and they would be like a cardinal, a very bright red bird that flies against the window, saying, ‘Pay attention to me. Pay attention to the melody. Look at my red wings, listen to the melody.' I don't think I could ignore it,” he said.

Baker had played a little guitar before the accident, but with a crushed left hand he had to learn it all over again, but backward, his good right hand shaping the chords, the other left to strumming the strings.

Baker released his first record, Mercy, in 2004, the first in a trilogy of song paintings with sparse instrumentation and poetic delivery. It was followed by Pretty World in 2007, and Cotton in 2009. His 2013 release, ‘say grace,' was named one of the Top Ten Country Albums of 2013 by Rolling Stone Magazine. His latest release, Land of Doubt (June 2017) is well on its way to similar attention and praise. A recent review published nationwide by Scott Stroud of the Associated Press says that Land of Doubt is 'utterly evocative ...”

'Life is a gift,” Baker said. 'Gratitude for what remains is more helpful than resentment for what was lost. Ultimately, I came to understand that these days are wicked short and terribly beautiful. All I've got is this one breath, and if I'm lucky, I get another.”

In some way, all of Sam Baker's music is drawn from some deep well in Peru. At first blush it might seem arid, even a little bleak, but a few more listens reveal the quiet joy that is his real message. Snapshots of the days and trials of our lives. Sadness, of course, but in its place in the natural cycles of hope, love and the business of 'carrying on.” He achieves a beautiful balance of dark and light that will leave you with smiles and tears in equal measure.

Before Baker takes the stage, Fairfield's Society of Broken Souls will perform. Society of Broken Souls is the Folk Noir duo of songwriters and multi-instrumentalists Dennis James and Lauryn Shapter. From stripped down, bare-bones acoustic arrangements to a denser and edgier electric sound, their songs confront shared, raw humanity all while celebrating the beautiful mosaic of the human experience.

Tickets for 'An Evening with Sam Baker” are $25 Zone 1, $20 Zone 2, $15 Zone 3, Zone 4 and youth/students and are available at the Fairfield Arts & Convention Center ticket office and www.FairfieldACC.com.