FRED BAILEY: Ain't Comin' Back (This Year)

Fred Bailey

Ain't Comin' Back (This Year)

© 2002 Bailey Entertainment Enterprises (756432030220)

CD IN STOCK. ORDER NOW. Will ship immediately.

Not just another gol durn singer/songwriter, but a world-traveled storyteller with deep roots in Northwest Oklahoma who uses his music to look at an unpredictable, sometimes insane world with a wry eye, humor, and a sense of pathos.

tracks

1 Ain't Comin' Back (This Year)
2 Another Unknown Soldier
3 Windmills
4 Clayton Comes to Town
5 The Dunes of Lisdoonvarna
6 Delaware County Line
7 The Cherokee Kid
8 Sing Me the Sky
9 Who Could Ever Say?
10 Welcome Home
11 Flutter-Bys
12 The Fargo Stable Fire
13 The Widow McDaid
14 Protection

notes

I grew up on a dirt farm in Northwestern Oklahoma -- almost the Panhandle, but not quite. That's the Dust Bowl end of the Cherokee Strip. Since then I've touched on several foreign lands and more coffeehouses and towns than can be counted. Now I seem to have settled down in Columbus, Ohio.

Always, there was a guitar along. For 37 years now, it's been the same 1948 Martin D-28L that somebody converted back to a right-hand model before it found a way into my life.

I've made my living several different ways, none of which relate to this current project. The rewards of family and career were often foregone to preserve a degree of freedom that "the good life" in the suburbs seemed to preclude. As a precocious reader, I'd guess that back there somewhere Henry David Thoreau scared hell out of me with that crack about "most men leading lives of quiet desperation." Isn't it funny how the choices refused seem to slide through our fingers forever after?

If there's a pattern in here anywhere, it's just that I've always been fascinated by songs telling stories about those forgotten little footnotes of history, or about the lives of ordinary people. Society has organized institutions to document, for better or worse, the larger of our cultural achievements. But just try to imagine, if you will, how easily we could have lost such legendary icons as Casey Jones or Tom Dooley or John Henry. Now try to imagine the one's that actually were lost! In each case, are deeply indebted to some long-forgotten fool standing around and humming snatches of melody under his breath while he reached for an instrument. So finally, I started trying a few myself, and that's what this is all about.

That and the pleasure of working with some good friends who've been after me for years to get it done.

So now it's done.

reviews

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  • As good as it gets
    author: CM Custis

    When Howard Carter broke the last seal on Tut's tomb, he was asked, "What do you see?" Carter's reply: "Wonderful things." Break the seal on this album and you'll find the same. Bailey is an extraordinary musical storyteller; these songs let you stand on a hot, dusty rise on the Great Plains, in a Midwest backyard, a street in Northern Ireland, a chilly beach in the west of Ireland. No wispy sentimentalism here. This is folk music of the highest order, the kind that illuminates the importance of individual lives. There is the lilting tragedy of the widow McDaid, the roaring independence of Clayton as he comes to town and a tongue-in-cheek cautionary tale for all. (Take the "Explicit Lyrics" warning with a grain of salt. The "language" used is milder than what you'll hear on commercial radio.) Some of the music is simply Fred and his guitar; on much of it there are lovely background vocals and vibrant instrumentals by local friends. So. Sit down. Just...listen.

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