Rachel Baiman stands out in the contemporary folk and Americana scenes with her voice, songwriting and musicianship. Raised in Chicago, Baiman made her way to Nashville at 18 with the dream of being a professional fiddle player and has since released multiple solo records, alongside session and side-person work with Kacey Musgraves, Kevin Morby, and Molly Tuttle among many others. Her 2023 album Common Nation Of Sorrow only confirmed what many people already knew after his earlier records: Rachel Baiman is one to watch closely. A couple of months ago, she stopped by my place and since it was too cold outside, we filmed three songs in front of the book case: Loudon Wainwright’s The Swimming Song, Gillian Welch’s One More Dollar and Throw Away The Moon – a co-write with Caroline Spence.

‘Loudon Wainwright III’s writing had been with me for a while.’

“I think The Swimming Song by Loudon Wainwright III attached to me so quickly because it’s a pop song that takes an old time format… It’s a series of verses over the same melody, with a repeated verse at the end, exactly how one would play and sing an old song like The Cuckoo with the fiddle and banjo.  However, the writing has this distinctive style that is both humorous and conversational. 10 String Symphony recorded a Loudon song called New Paint on our first record, and it was always one of my absolute favorites to play and sing, so I think his writing has been with me for a while.”

‘I may have really learned to sing ‘with’ Gillian Welch’s Soul Journey.’

“For as long as I have been singing people have been saying: ‘You remind me of Gillian Welch’, which is obviously a huge compliment.  But I always found it confusing because I had no intention to imitate her and musically, I don’t pursue a similar sonic space to her records except for maybe one or two songs, like Bitter. But, upon reflection, I do remember about 18 months when I was 22 years old, and driving my first car around Nashville (which had the airbags blown out and duck taped back in- don’t tell my mom), that I had a burned copy of Soul Journey in the CD player pretty much exclusively. I would practice singing harmonies to these songs all the time, and this was right when I was starting to sing.” 

“So, I think I may have really learned to sing ‘with’ that record, meaning that I probably did take a ton of influence from it vocally. To me, it was just normal singing though… like here’s your normal voice, sing the words. There’s not a lot of decoration or virtuosity about it, which is also very reminiscent of old time music, so I think to me, it just made sense and I didn’t feel like I was singing ‘like’ Gillian Welch. That being said, she is one of the GOATs and what a writer! Good lord.” 

‘Caroline Spence is one of my first teachers in song.’

“Although this is an original, it’s an appropriate one to play for The Influences because my co-writer Caroline Spence was such a big part of my learning to write songs. We were roommates for several years in my early years in Nashville, and it was during that time that I was transitioning from being exclusively a fiddle player to the song obsessed individual I am now. Some of my first songs were co-writes with Caroline in our living room, and she had such a strong understanding of structure and craftsmanship that I do think of her as one of my first teachers in song.”

Photos

Keep watching

Thank you for watching and enjoying this session. You’ll probably like some other sessions from The Influences’ archive too, like these earlier ones we filmed.