Browse by Artist: BAIRD, MEG

Artist:	BAIRD, MEG
Title:	Dear Companion
Label:	DRAG CITY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DC 340CD

"There was a time when traditional music was just folk -- a time when folk wasn't hyphened up with words like psych and rock and pop. It was just there on its lonesome, like a lone girl and guitar. That's what you hear on Meg Baird's Dear Companion. Her lyrical singing and songwriting imbues the sound of the psych-folk group (see, there we go again) Espers, but this is Meg's solo debut. Traditional songs are of such great age that it is not known where they began. They are lost to time, for a world to pick on and interpret. With songs like 'The Cruelty of Barbary Allen,' 'Willie O' Winsbury,' and the title track, Meg interprets the old airs with voice and fingerstyle picking. Mixing traditional songs with her original compositions lends the album its variety. She further mixes it up by reaching for some deep cuts from a few records most of us haven't yet heard. Sure, there's a Jimmy Webb song, we're good with that -- but we've got Meg to thank for all our future listens to Fraser & DeBolt (whose delightful 'The Waltze Of the Tennis Players' is covered) and Chris Thompson. And her cover of The New Riders of the Purple Sage song 'All I Ever Wanted' will make your heart explode in a way the NRPS version never did -- gently."

Artist:	BAIRD, MEG
Title:	Waltz of the Tennis Players b/w Dear Companion
Label:	TEQUILA SUNRISE RECORDS
Format:	7"
Price:	$5.50
Catalog #:	TS 7001EP

"The first recordings by Meg Baird under her own name. Meg has been singing and performing since she was a kid with her sister Laura as a charter member of the traditional folk duo the Baird Sisters, though she is currently best known as one of the 'female larynxes' of the communal Philadelphia band Espers. Or we should say, best known as the siren-voiced singer for same. Or, perhaps, we could let Nick Carraway describe the quality of her voice for us: 'The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain. I had to follow the sound of it for a moment, up and down, with my ear alone before any words came through. We asked Meg to record something with a country-waltz flavor, and she courteously obliged us with a graceful and bittersweet cover of 'Waltz of the Tennis Players' by the under-appreciated '60s folksters Fraser and Debolt. The mushrooms are growing in every new boot print, my, my, my.' For the B-side, she recorded an alternate version of 'Dear Companion,' a track from her forthcoming LP. It's an ancient melody, an aching lament sung 'in the style of the chapel,' with Meg whisper-singing right into your ear, or maybe just to herself as she folds the laundry and does the dishes. You can see things more clearly when you shut your eyes."

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