Taken from the Album Salt catch Michael Baker on tour
March 19th The Brunswick Brighton
http://bit.ly/39wJpfG
March 29th The Duke Whitstable
free admission
March 30th The Finsbury London 
http://bit.ly/3awkRUf
April 5th The Loft (Above The Kings) Portsmouth

BIOGRAPHY, by NME’s Andrew Trendell
“I lived in my van for two and a half years to pay for the making of my first record,” casually laughs singer-songwriter Michael Baker. “I moved into the van after a typical period of heartache. I had nowhere to go, but it was pretty good actually!” 

From this, you can gather a lot about the Anglo-French troubadour. Mainly, he takes nothing for granted and lives for his music.  

Spending his childhood near Brighton (where he went to the same school as Rag N’ Bone Man), Michael got his first guitar aged eight after seeing Oasis live and needing to learn ‘Wonderwall’. In his teens, the songs soon started to flow. It wasn’t long before the purity of his voice, the direct rawness of his writing and the sheer scope of his sound found him regular gigs and a devoted fanbase – one that only grew bigger and more in love with the release of his magnificent debut album Dust & Bone. 

A soaring collection of heart-wrenching indie-folk and cinematic sounds, Dust & Bone was recorded with Massive Attack collaborator Dan Brown, and was a staggering first showcase of Baker’s ambition and soulful style. “I’m really proud of the songwriting on that record,” he admits. “I was in such a bad place in my life when I made it, but it got such a great response from the people who heard it.”

Early sessions for Salt started when Baker hit the studio with Dan Brown and Oliver Baldwin, who had recently finished making Aldous Harding’s acclaimed album Party with PJ Harvey collaborator John Parish. While promising Michael says ‘’It felt like I needed more time to experiment than we had scheduled in.” So Baker headed back to record and produce the album with long-time friend Ed Martin. 

After discovering that his childhood home would be empty for a few weeks while his parents were in the process of moving away. He went in and stripped everything away, begged and borrowed all the equipment he needed, crammed the band in, drank a lot of wine, got a little stoned and naturally just flowed through the album – playing all day and all night. The recordings were so impressive, that Baldwin agreed to mix the record at Real World Studios and gave the songs a whole new dimension (as well as inviting Jack White’s pedal steel player Maggie Björklund to play on the album too). 
“I absolutely love artists like Cat Stevens and Bon Iver,” says Baker. Salt is a record that maps Baker’s journey through darkness and vulnerability to something a lot more hopeful. 
Among the key tracks that show Baker’s road to recovery, ‘Baby Books’ was inspired by being in close proximity to someone taking their own life – and totally changing the way he saw the world. Single ‘They Look Just Like They Know’ also deals with how “the mind can be a deadly place” and “feeling trapped in the prison of your own vision”. He’s looking for the sunrise on the horizon, too. Baker’s personal favourite ‘Claire’ celebrates the “the beauty of space in a relationship” and the escapist ecstasy of ‘One Good Damn’ has won over scores of new fans with its feel-good magnetism. 

Salt is a towering accomplishment that will win hearts with its adept handling of love, loss and hope, and there’s more to come. For now though, you’re about to get to know the real Michael Baker. “I feel like I have too much of a personal relationship with anyone who says they like my music,” concludes Baker. “I’ve been getting letters and messages from people saying that my songs have got them through a very hard time, and I don’t know how to reply to them other than as if I’d known them my whole life. That’s the way that I would do it. I hope that my music gives them as much as it’s given me.”

Past the Evening

Michael Baker Music