Live long enough and move in the right indie rock circles and you will have run into more people with Bill Baird stories than should be feasible. They’ll make up a new demographic and you’ll refer to them often because they will be the source of such camaraderie that you won’t need any other demographics. Vicariously, you’ll live through your stories and those stories of others about and involving the one and only, bigger than life Bill Baird. We personally love that he’s so berserk in a productive and fascinating way, a mighty genius packed away in a glove box-sized package, behind cheap plastic sunglasses and countless awkward nods, glances and facial contortions. There is always a good deal going on behind those flighty eyes and dirty blonde bangs, but you’re never the wiser to what it might actually be. We’ve spent more time with Baird than anyone else we’ve encountered since be began this site just over a year ago – here with SOUND Team last August, again for this session and for an entire week on their turf in Austin in March – but here’s a story that is typical Bill. On the day that he recorded this December 20 th session, Baird began the morning in Chicago. He awoke around 5 a.m. to make the 3-hour drive to our studio for the 8 a.m. session that he informed us needed to be wrapped up by no later than 9 a.m. He told us that he had a show that night, but didn’t mention where until we were unplugging microphones and tidying up around the place. He was playing Tulsa, Oklahoma that night. The drive ahead was ungodly and he was doing every second of it alone, with no co-pilots. This was certifiably a bad idea. We filled him full of sprinkled doughnuts, provided gratis by one of our artists – Ryan Flynn – and wished him a bon voyage and safe travels. Found out later that he got there – to the taco house (no fucking joke) he was playing that night – five minutes before his set. He downed two shots of tequila and went on. This might even be a Bill Baird story he tells frequently. – Sean Moeller
 

First song
Life is Rad, Just Say Yes (Bill Baird) [3.59MB] [1064 downloads]


— unreleased
Song came in a flash and disappeared just as quickly. Came back to it after a few years and realized the first verse was about a man whose wife had cheated on him. Weird sometimes how things pop out in a blaze and only later can you really hear the words. I always imagined pitching this song to Neil Young circa 1971.

Second song
Civil War (Bill Baird) [2.31MB] [984 downloads]


– unreleased
I once took a class on Mark Twain and came away thinking him the consummate American personality — literary, and yet defying literary convention and thumbing his nose at the establishment (check his Ralph Waldo Emerson speech… he really stuck it to them Brahmins), carefree, living large in the pre-freeway American West, his brother an early head of the Nevada territory. He torched a forest at Lake Tahoe, survived to tell about it, nearly struck it rich on a gold mine, financed an early typesetter machine, found financial ruin; always pressing forward, pushing further, at each stage making folks laugh and take their troubles a little lighter. I guess the world is a serious enough place as it is, why add any more weight to that burden? Lighten the load, my friends. Get off your high horse or high chair or leather couch or 18-wheeler or whatever’s separating you from the world and take a long deep breath of this pure American air. We can laugh at ourselves here. This is the New World! At least, that’s what I took out of it. Reading further, I realized the true tragic soul of humor — those who make jokes are usually doing so to point out something absurd or out of place, addressing the world’s shortcomings, but using humor to deflate these problems. To be forced to see the world in terms of its deficiencies! I could certainly relate. And the idea that the humorist is actually the saddest one of all… well, that’s an old cliche (Smokey Robinson nailed it on “Tears of a Clown”) but I’d never ever considered it true ‘til that moment. I read further and came upon Twain’s final, unfinished book, The Mysterious Stranger.  Satan visits Earth and reveals his intentions and tricks. This acknowledgment of the dark realities of this world hit me hard. I was really coming from the same place, trying to laugh in the face of a world that probably doesn’t care too much about you. Acknowledging the darkness around us all, and somehow not getting too affected by it. In a bit of a stretch perhaps, I wrote a final paper for the class on the “Conflicted Soul of Mark Twain.” The professor, a celebrated Mark Twain critic who had written the comically controversial bestseller Was Huck Black? and had been interviewed in most major newspapers, magazines, and TV stations, seemed none too amused. Perhaps she felt I was exploring my own psyche through Twain, and perhaps she was right. But dammit, I felt it and I still feel it. Twain had that conflicted soul. He had tapped into the essential element of good humor: facing up to life’s absurd inequalities and tragedies, and then laughing them into submission. Anyone aiming at the heart of humor feels that conflict.

Third song
Half a Man, Half a Man (Bill Baird) [2.66MB] [973 downloads]


– original version appears on Sunset
Performing can be a conflicting exercise as well. You gotta balance the need to constantly push forward and explore your craft with the fact that sometimes audiences aren’t ready for what you want to tell them, aren’t ready to hear about being lonely or sad, and would rather drink away their sorrows, cuz that’s probably why they are there watching you in the first place… just finished a long day at the office cubicle cage what-have-you and just drinking and living that old relaxation ritual that surely must’ve happened all around the Great Pyramids at Giza and Cheops… people shutting off their minds to the drudgery of their day, drinking it down and smiling at those of the opposite sex. And that’s a beautiful thing, fine and good, but sometimes music that really moves me doesn’t justify itself through happiness or any other way, really; you enter the writer’s mind, you feel where he’s at. There’s not a group ritual element to the song. Personal exploration might not make for raucous parties. So the song goes down that road, from the point of view of one who feels the basic human conflict of spirit vs. flesh (although they’re really the same thing in my opinion and such a dichotomy is a ridiculous simplification, although it’s useful to help put things in perspective sometimes), heart vs. brain, emotions vs. reason. These are, again, all ridiculous simplifications, but help folks along as they sift these chaotic days we live. And I look at that stuff and try to make myself chuckle thinking about it, because that’s really the most powerful thing you can do against an invisible force that pretty much hewn into the heart of this universe. Or may not actually be there. Mainly, it’s a song about feeling bummed out, alone, wishing for company, surrounded by people who you don’t really know, and I always felt that I’d rather be completely alone than alone in a crowd, because loneliness in a crowd is double-loneliness — you’re acutely aware of your lack of personal connection, you want to reach out and can’t. Whereas being alone in a forest or stream or in front of your TV set or in your apartment, you adjust and find comfort and familiarity in things besides normal human contact and connection. In my own life, that’s been the heart of loneliness — being surrounded by folks with whom I share and feel nothing.

Fourth song
Death Suite (Bill Baird) [9.10MB] [993 downloads]


– unreleased
Well, the proper title would be: Death Suite: I) As the Sun Will Rise This Dream Recedes; II) Faraway, Beyond the Starry Skies; and III) Death tells you “Bye,” Spirit tells you “Hi.” “As the Sun Will Rise” and “Faraway” are actually two different songs, written separately. I decided to connect them that very day we recorded… I was hoping that playing the songs in a slightly unfamiliar way would draw out a better performance. Since they were in the same key, I started with a keyboard drone, keyboard courtesy of Pat Stolley. Had a key taped down, messing about with various filters til it felt right, then walked over to the acoustic guitar setup. The drone section is that funnily named third part of the suite. “Sun Will Rise” came about in a flash, on a plane, scribbled on cocktail napkins. It really comes out of a lot of dialogues I’d written. The back and forth…my overly clever responses to matters that are really quite simple and only require good intention and an honest heart. The angel laughing off this overly clever college kid who’s trying to think his way out of very simple matters, and is probably only complicating things. I feel like we are all living our lives preparing to die. Hey that sounds kind of grim, but it’s the truth dammit. We live fully so we can die without regrets, without hesitation, without fear. Again, another simplification. Because to me “death” occurs on subtle levels pretty much every second you’re alive. And the possibility for rebirth, for awakening, for rejuvenation, I think that’s always there. Really, I think us humans are facing down death every moment of our lives! Mainly, a reminder to myself to live everything fully with a clean heart, and don’t waste your time thinking about death cause then you’re probably not living your life! “Faraway” is an adaptation of an old folk tune I’d first heard by the Watson Family on their Songs of the Southern Mountains. I rewrote the words when a close family member died at a young age of cancer. I came up with this tune to play for his parents, but never got the chance to play the tune for them. If JD’s ghost is hanging around somewhere, maybe he’ll hear the tune; if ghosts can surf the web, maybe he’s reading what I’m writing right now. In which case, I hereby say, “JD, you were a good man.”