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Rachel Baiman

Rachel Baiman

http://rachelbaiman.com

A fiddle/banjo player, singer, and songwriter based out of Nashville, TN. Specialising in Old Time, Bluegrass, Scottish, and Folk music, her interests are diverse and range from the oldest fiddle traditions to the most innovative of collaborations.

A departure from her stripped-down duo work with 10 String Symphony, her new album “Shame” is lush and varied in instrumentation and musical texture. Inspired in equal parts by John Hartford and Courtney Barnett, Baiman’s influences span a wide range, but years spent playing traditional music on the fiddle shine through in the albums firmly rooted sound, which is at once infectiously familiar and unexpected.

For the recording and production of the album, Baiman turned to the talents of Mandolin Orange’s Andrew Marlin. “I’ve always been in love with the music of the South, and around the time that I was writing a lot of the music for this record, I was listening to all North Carolina made albums– including the album Andrew produced for Josh Oliver (Oliver plays and sings all over
Baiman’s record). Andrew is such an incredible songwriter, and from the moment we started doing pre-production, I felt that he completely understood the feeling of each song. We worked really collaboratively in the studio, and those were some of the most inspiring days I’ve ever spent making music”.
In many ways, “Shame”, the new album from 26-year-old songwriter and instrumentalist Rachel Baiman, is an exploration of growing up female in America. “I wasn’t necessarily trying to write songs that would be easy to listen to”, Baiman says of the project, “I wanted to write about reality, in all of it’s terror and beauty”. From the title track about abortion politics, to love, sex and abuse in relationships, to classism and inequality in her re-write of Andy Irvine’s working class anthem “Never Tire of the Road” the album is ambitious in its scope, yet remains cohesive through Baiman’s personal perspective. Despite the serious subject matter, the overall feeling of the album remains light, with the tongue-in-cheek “Gettin’ Ready to Start (Gettin’ Ready) and feel good “Let them Go To Heaven”. Baiman’s background as a fiddle and banjo player is obvious in the groovy, thought-out, and largely acoustic arrangements.
“If I wanted to rebel against my parents I could have become a finance banker or a corporate lawyer” says Baiman of her childhood. Raised in Chicago by a radical economist and a social worker, Baiman was surrounded by social justice issues her entire life. “Activism runs deep in my family. My brother is a union organizer, my sister is a math teacher at a Title 1 school, and my 87 year old Grandmother still travels the world by herself to attend environmental walks and rallies. She is a true inspiration”
Baiman’s parents were folk music fans, and Rachel grew up playing old time and bluegrass fiddle, traveling around rural Illinois to jam and play at fiddle contests and county fairs. “I had a bit of a double life, on the one hand going to public school on the west side of Chicago, where my friends and I danced to hip-hop and Top 40 R-and-B, and then secretly running off on the weekends to play old-time and bluegrass in the cornfields of the midwest.”
As a teenager, Baiman found music to be a welcome escape from worrying about global politics. “I often found the constant discussion of seemingly unsolvable problems to be intense and overwhelming, and when I moved to Nashville to pursue music it felt like something positive, beautiful and productive that I could put into the world.”
“Now that I’ve had some years to devote to music,”–Baiman has been recording and touring internationally for the past 4 years as part of the progressive bluegrass duo 10 String Symphony, and has played in the bands of numerous other artists including Kacey Musgraves– “I find it hard to escape from the values that I grew up with, and I feel compelled to write politically, to speak out about things that I’ve experienced or seen. I love doing that through songwriting, because it avails a more emotional vehicle for discussion. I love the political tradition of folk music, from Woody Guthrie to Macklemore, and I hope to add another perspective and voice to that tradition.”

“a goose-bump-instigating talent that reminded me of a young Gillian Welch or Joy Williams (Civil Wars).”- Z. N. Lupetin, The Bluegrass Situation

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