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Article published Nov 16, 2007 In songwriter mode, Erick Baker bares his soul
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
It’s been roughly a year since Erick Baker ripped open his chest and put his heart on display.
It was a terrifying prospect for a guy who grew up in rural West Tennessee, sheltered from the sort of soul-baring singer-songwriters he eventually found himself emulating. But it’s paid off — fans have found something in Baker’s lyrics that speak to them, and he’s found himself in demand on the local scene.
It’s an emotional process, but it’s rewarding — which is why Baker continues to return to the stage, as he’ll do tonight at World Grotto in downtown Knoxville, with just an acoustic guitar and that heart of his, full of scars and hope and a belief that love is still the ultimate inspiration in a songwriter’s musical arsenal.
“I love rock music — the energy, the crowd and feeding off of that, but with the solo stuff, it’s about the connection with the song,” Baker told The Daily Times this week. “I’m so minimal in what I do; it’s just me and an acoustic guitar. The connection is through passion and emotion and connecting with those emotions.
“The biggest compliment I’ve ever gotten is when a girl came up to me after a show and said, ‘I’ve been going through the exact same thing you sang about in one of your songs, but I’ve never been able to express it. Hearing that song tonight gave words to feelings I’ve never been able to articulate.’ That’s the biggest compliment, as a songwriter, I could ever get, because my songs are very personal. They’re pages-out-of-my-diary type of songs.
“It can be terrifying, playing that for people, but knowing that the pain and the love and the hope that I go through is able to pick people up or make them say, ‘Hey; I’m not alone in this hurt,’ that’s what the solo stuff is all about,” he added.
Baker grew up in the small town of Halls, Tenn., about 70 miles north of Memphis. He was, he said, a product of rural America — farmland and backroads and eyeing the big city with longing. After high school, he moved to Murfreesboro to attend college at Middle Tennessee State University, and the higher educational environment opened his eyes to the wider world beyond the MTV he’d fed upon as a teen.
“I was introduced to Ben Harper my freshman year, and it just opened my senses and just woke me up,” Baker said. “I listened for another year or so, and then in my sophomore year, I started teaching myself to play, learning Ben Harper songs.”
His junior year, he moved to Knoxville to attend the University of Tennessee, and after more playing around, he met fellow musician Matt Brewster. The two put together Matt and Erick, a duo that still plays occasionally and soon made a name traipsing up and down the Cumberland Avenue “Strip.” Those early years are still something Baker wrestles with because of the stigma attached to a college project that relied heavily on covers.
“I battle with acknowledging that and trying to almost hide it, because a lot of people look at that whole time and look down on us because we played covers,” he said. “Really, it was just two guys who loved music and wanted to play.”
After having his heart broken, Baker turned to songwriting as a means of therapy. He found he had a knack for it, and the next five years were spent churning out one love song after another, he said.
“I look back on the last five years, and when Matt and I played our first gig, and I just jumped into it,” he said. “I couldn’t play an F chord, I couldn’t play bar chords; I barely knew how to play guitar. I really developed as a musician and as a songwriter on the stage, essentially.”
Two years ago, the pair added another guitarist, and eventually a drummer and bass player, and formed the rock band Down From Up. Over the next two years, the band would hold its own in the local scene, and Baker found that it offered a way to feed off the energy and passion of hard-rock performances that left him feeling physically drained from his onstage exuberance but emotionally stunted.
That’s where his solo career comes into play. About a year ago, he played his first gig, and it took off. Over the past year, he’s opened for John Legend at The Tennessee Theatre and Dave Barnes at The Bijou, and every time, he’s found more and more fans who identify with his heartfelt honesty.
“Really, the John Legend show was the first time I saw it, and every gig since, I’ve connected with people more and more,” he said. “It doesn’t matter about age or race or sex — I’ve had mothers in their 50s and daughters in their teens both come up and tell me how much they love the music and connect to it and understand it.
“It’s been a universal connection, which has been so amazing. I write a lot of love songs, because that’s just who I am — I can sit down and try to write about anything, but it usually turns into a love song. It’s about making myself available and showing the vulnerabilities I have. Everybody is vulnerable in one way or another, but not many people want to connect with that. They bottle it up, and I like to think that I can help people find that and find the words to express it.
“It’s been incredibly rewarding, because I just want every song to be real,” he added. “I don’t want it to be that I just wrote a nice song and now I’m going to sing it to you and it’s going to sound nice. I want to feel the song.”