Cotton

While traveling in the Peruvian city of Cuzco at age 32, Sam Baker took a train ride that would change his life. On a clear cool morning in the summer of 1986, Sam boarded a passenger train that was blown up minutes later by terrorists. Initially, seven died. The dead included a German boy and his parents who were sitting with Baker in the car. Baker survived, but with lasting damage- deafness, a mangled hand, a mangled leg, and brain damage affecting speech and memory. At 55, words are still occasionally unremembered, requiring extensive search. However, during these searches, he finds other words. From these other words, he finds other stories. And with these stories come characters from other places and times.

Baker's music is authenticated by experience. Seldom in modern music is the listener able to hear a unique voice with an uncommon story. As told through Sam's voice himself:

"Life is beautiful, difficult, terrible, and transcendent. Each of us is part and parcel of one great community, one great p r e t t y w o r l d that reaches back to a time before recall and reaches forward beyond imagination. We are love. We are hope. We are stories."

"Baker doesn't make it easy on the listener - there are no explanations and no comforting reassurances. But the songs do offer the startling recognition of lives that are as messy and disappointing as those in the real world-lives that rarely make it through the simplifying process of pop culture."
- Geoffrey Himes, Paste

"Baker demonstrates a true gift for narrative songwriting, particularly telling stories in which the American Dream has gotten a little tarnished."
- Michael Berick, All Music Guide