Tag Archives: Mark Baumer

Loading Them Road Cases

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Since moving to Lynchburg, I’ve been making a musical transition. Oh, I’m still making and playing music, but my journey has diverged from the path where it began seven years go. Back then, I was just hanging on, struggling with the loss of a son, and my guitar became a means of finding some way forward after a devestating and seemingly senseless tragedy.

I initially thought I wanted to see if I could work-up a setlist that would allow me to get booked into clubs and other venues on the “cover circuit.” Every state and region has one.

What I learned is that if you have enough drive, and you can get on the phone and/or craft a compelling booking pitch, you can play regularly. Or, at least that was my experience in Maine. Before I knew it, I’d moved into playing some clubs in Boston, thanks to making a connection with a small booking agency. My first few years of playing live music, I’d play 60 to 70 gigs a year. That changed when COVID hit.

Then, my wife and I made a monumental decision. Real estate was at its peak in New England. We realized that this was our time for a new adventure and no more winters in the northeast. Off to points south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Lynchburg had affordable housing and it wasn’t a dump like some places that are affordable. But Lynchburg also has been a very hard nut to crack in terms of trying to book shows. I’m not going to belabor the reality that I was initially bitter and then, disappointed in the lack of places to play original music in the city and nearby.

Lynchburg, Virginia, USA downtown skyline.

What that initial experience provided, however, was the chance to really work on my songwriting craft. I’ve been putting out material on a regular basis. Then, putting it out on various streaming platforms, the central one being Spotify.

What has happened over the past two years is that my streams on Spotify have slowly ticked upward. Unlike many of the local musicians who get all the gigs, but have less than 100 monthly streams, my numbers have shot beyond 1,600 monthly streams and continue hitting upward. I attribute this to being willing to “feed the algorithm,” or the “Al Gore Rhythm,” as one of my songs on my new release, Some Singles+ talks about. Continue reading →

February Is a Tough Month (for Love)/RPM 2024

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This year’s RPM Challenge was a walk in the park for me. Maybe, if I’d decided to push it and make a full-length and not an EP, it might have been a bit harder. But for some reason, the song ideas were flowing and I even have my next single in the can from this creative exercise.

My latest release

With this release, I embraced a bit of genre-shifting, or at least, I diverged somewhat from my usual indie rock. Granted, the first two tracks align with most of my previous input, save that the overall quality of recording has improved.

On the opening track, “Al Gore Rhythm,” I wanted to tackle the notion that to succeed in music these days, it really does come down to “feeding the beast,” which are the social media algorithms (or, Al Gore Rhythms) that seem to drive everything, talent or songwriting prowess be damned.

The second song on the new release, is an update in my musical narrative that really began with the death of my son, Mark Baumer. January was the 7th anniversary of his death and music has allowed me a space to find some healing of sorts. “100 Days (7 years later)” is an update on the story about Mark, and also serves as the single on this release.

The next track is probably one of the peppiest numbers I’ve done (at least in terms of music and melody, if not lyrics). Breaking out of my usual 115 BPM, “Rocket Store” could certainly fit the bill as a single. On this one, I really embrace Auto-Tune on my vocals.

During the making of FIATMFL, I’ve been playing around a bit with synth loops and other effects. That exploration delivers the fourth track, “Synth Wave Sweep,” which uses a synth loop to create a bit of “space” on the record between songs.

In 2008, I wrote my first Moxie book, Moxietown, which detailed how Moxie and my hometown of LIsbon Falls became epicenter of the Moxie universe. The central figure in that narrative was Frank Anicetti, “the Moxie man,” or better, “the Mayor of Moxietown.” This track, a simple acoustic number is my paean to one of the more interesting characters I’ve met in my lifetime. Glad I took the time to pay attention his stories.

The final track is me, my electric guitar, and a pedal board. Decided to have some fun, crafting a song, “Future Gaze,” best described as shoegaze, with lots of delay, distortion, and compression.

If you use Spotify, please add me to your playlists and give the new single a spin or two when it drops on Friday.

JimBaumerMe Featured in Bangor Daily News (Dec. 28)

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JimBaumerMe, above the fold (Bangor Daily News, 12/28)

BIDDEFORD, Maine — All things considered, it’s been a decent year for Jim Baumer. The artist wrote a few dozen songs, put out his first EP and networked his way to 45 gigs at pubs and other stages across New England.

But it wasn’t that long ago that Baumer, a writer, didn’t play music at all. Although he’d always wanted to, it wasn’t until his son’s death that he began to devote time to it.

Mark Baumer was a writer and climate activist who died in January 2017 at age 33. He was struck by a car and killed in Florida while walking across the U.S. to raise awareness about climate change, and to raise funds for a friend’s environmental organization. He was reportedly wearing a high-visibility vest at the time he was struck and walking against traffic in accordance with safety guidelines. His death was a national story.

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Rock and Roll Church-Easter Sunday Edition

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I find that most people seem fixated on performers they’ll never meet or know. But they are “famous” and I am not.

Not going to make any comparisons between JimBaumerMe–who has only been working with any diligence at his lo-fi rock and roll craft for slightly less than three years–and let’s say Bruce Springsteen (faux populist), Bob Dylan (always been a fraud) and John Prine (who seems to be everyone’s favorite these days). But sometimes, to read all the hagiographic bullshit posted about artists that you probably don’t even own a fucking record by is really maddening (and hypocritical, too). Playing live music, live or even streaming, is much harder than most of you who can’t even form one cowboy chord, realize. But I’m sounding angry and bitter (my perpetual state).

Anyways, I’ve got another Sunday Morning Rock and Roll Church episode (the Easter 2021 edition) up on the platforms. I have an MP4 also, if anyone tries to de-platform me for my “mealy-mouthed millennial blasts” and railing against TPTB (like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the other tech elites that are trying to shut down any reasoned dialogue).

And, oh, btw: this isn’t scripted. The emotions you see—the anger, and then, the very real tears from a father with a broken heart who lost his only son—those are real. And for those who walked away when things got too hard, there’s a song for you, too.

Lastly—where are all of Mark Baumer’s friends/fans these days? Just curious. His commitment is still worth considering in an age where everyone’s a bumper-sticker/front-lawn sign activist. Jesus certainly wasn’t.

For those who prefer to stream music on your phone or other device (in your car??) rather than watch video, I uploaded the audio track to SoundCloud. “Bumped” the mix a bit, too and took out the gaps and pauses.

John Prine Didn’t Do Lo-fi

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America is an atomized and disconnected space. I’ve felt that disconnection in a visceral way since January 21, 2017. That’s the night my wife and I learned that our only son had been killed: walking along an isolated stretch of highway in Florida. Mark had just turned 33.

In my case, loneliness feels exacerbated by social media. To be truthful, there are moments when it seems like it might be part of sinister plan concocted by our overlords to keep us as divided and disconnected as never before. Why even make the effort to remain connected when you can push a button on your screen?

I don’t know a lot about Ben Sasse, senator from Nebraska. I’ve heard him speak on news shows and I know he has a book called Them: Why We Hate Each Other—and How To Heal. Personally, I have little hope that we’ll stop hating each other—that’s not my point, here. But in reading something over the weekend about Sasse and his book, I was reminded again about my opening point: our isolation (and how I cope daily with my own).

Sasse’s book addresses elements like an “evaporation of social capital,” which is the “glue that binds us together,” as I’ve written about before. This one item struck me just like someone had slapped me in the face. “Loneliness—not obesity, cancer or heart disease—is the nation’s number one health crisis.” Sasse writes that “persistent loneliness reduces average longevity more than twice as much as does heavy drinking and more than three times as much as obesity, which often is a consequence of loneliness.” Or, you could be so fucking lonely that you just end it for good and kill yourself. To feel isolated day after day takes a toll. Continue reading →

I Started a Bandcamp

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Most people rarely follow their hearts/dreams. It’s so much easier to simply wish upon a star.

Back in the late 1990s, I decided I wanted to be a writer. Then, Stephen King told me that being a writer wasn’t simply wishing you wanted to be a writer. “Oh,” I thought. I guess there’s some work involved. You have to write. Indeed.

I learned my lesson about writing. But what about music?

Playing the guitar is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve had a guitar and I’ve had seasons when I played it quite a bit. But inevitably, it would always end up back in the case, with the case building up a sheen of dust. Hard lessons don’t always stay with us.

My son was killed in 2017. Life came to a standstill for me, or pretty damn close. I could barely function for months. Then, one afternoon, my guitar came out of the case and it’s stayed out ever since.

I wrote “Walking Down the Road” last summer, in August, right after we moved to Biddeford. It’s about Mark’s final walk, as told in his voice, if he could still speak to us. I even have the first lo-fi recording of it made on my phone, in my clothes closet. I thought that would make for a great makeshift studio. I’ve since migrated to my basement, “my bunker” as my wife calls it. She actually decorated it a week ago, and now I have Christmas lights down there.

Having a Bandcamp page is something I’ve thought about. But for some reason, I held off setting one up. I guess I needed more time in the “woodshed.”

JimBaumerME on the Bandcamp

I’ve written 15 songs over the past year. I have an album’s worth of material. I’m starting to create some stark home recordings of my songs. Others like Guided by Voices, Swearing at Motorists, and Daniel Johnston have done similar things. They are certainly artists worth modeling myself after, but at the same time, I’m not really looking to be just like them–they’re guideposts for sure–but I have my own sense of where I want to go as a musician.

So, if you are inclined, bookmark my Bandcamp page. I’ll continue to post new songs and before long, there will be a full-length album.

 

A Guitar Saved My Life

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The governor has shut me down. Just when I was starting to slide into a groove of sorts with my guitar-playing and getting out to various open mics, the governor in what seems like simply a random dictate—has snatched away these weekly chances for me to take my music from the basement bunker onto a stage. It’s become a way to push myself to become better, which only comes when you perform. Song lyrics and chords that you nail flawlessly when it’s just you alone in a practice space suddenly disappear when nerves hit prior to going on before strangers.

Mark was killed in January 21, 2017. During the second year of living through grief and loss, things seemed to get worse, if that was even possible. The summer of 2018, I became deeply depressed. I contemplated ways to kill myself. The loss of Mark and the isolation of being alone all day in a large house with no one calling or even emailing me made life seem untenable. As much as I loved Mary and didn’t want to inflict even more pain on her than she was already carrying around, I just couldn’t see any options.

On the darkest day of my life other than the night we learned Mark was killed, I was moving towards a final decision. But, for some reason, I walked towards the corner office I had in our house we were renting in Brunswick. To this day, I still don’t know why. Maybe to buy some time before making an irreversible choice.

Sitting in the corner was my guitar case holding the Yamaha acoustic I bought back in 1989 at Buckdancer’s Choice in Portland. Just recently, Mary found the original sales slip. I paid $140 for an instrument that has brought me joy, along with frustration for 30 years. I say “frustration” because at that point in my life, I’d never managed to push through that “wall” that all guitar players have to pass through on the journey towards being proficient on their instrument. I read a book earlier this year and the author said something to the effect that “the guitar is an easy instrument to learn: it’s a difficult instrument to master.”

Until 2018, I never committed to mastering the guitar. Oh, I’d have periods that would last a few months to a year when I’d play enough so that I built callouses on my fretting hand. I’d learn Christmas songs for the holidays, or in 2001, while attending a Vineyard Church in Lewiston, I became the small group worship leader, the guy who played simple songs on my guitar and led us in worship songs each week. That’s how I learned about Michael Pritzl and The Violet Burning, a band I now cover.

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My Own Terms

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We are in that transitional time between late summer, segueing into early fall. I have felt a sense of being adrift. Six months into Covid, with little abatement in sight, the looming darkness and colder days don’t bode well for anyone preferring light and summer breezes. Simply, summer has offered some respite from Covid lockdown. What’s coming, I’m afraid, is a dank, Dickensian dystopia to be endured over the course of the winter.

Last week, a well-known local musician touched down on Facebook about his bookings drying up as the summer places began shutting down for the season. A drive along East and West Grand in Maine’s premier tourist Mecca, OOB, on Sunday revealed summer’s dying embers. Many of the places that had outside entertainment like the Sunset Deck and Myst have closed until next May. Others are open for another three weeks at best. Who knows if The Brunswick will have indoor entertainment come late October.

For the past 44 months I’ve been journeying through the loneliness that apparently is endemic in those relegated to living with the loss and associated grief that accompanies the death of someone deeply loved. During my sojourn, former associates have disappeared. Not sure why. I’m guessing that surface relationships can’t come to terms with darkness of death, subsequent depression it delivers, and all the associated fall-out from an event inflicted on someone.

On days like today, my first inclination used to be to sit down and write a blog post. Given that Mondays don’t require me to check-in at Whitey’s Farm until later in the morning, I went down the stairs to my bunker and picked up my acoustic. As I’ve intimated before, I’m not certain I’d still be here if on that dark day in August of 2018, I hadn’t opened the dust-covered guitar case housing my Yamaha guitar, rather than seeking the alternative hidden in the closet upstairs. Continue reading →

Wisdom Out the Window

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Back in 1985, I’d recently walked away from fundamentalist religion. I’d been a student at a school run by a Baptist megalomaniac named, Jack Hyles. I’ve written many posts about Hyles across the footprint of my blogging that dates back to 1993. Of course, in 2020, blogging is as anachronism, just as outdated as a rotary dial phone. Doesn’t mean it’s bad—it’s just not the way the ignorant masses roll these days, especially the impressionable kids.

I was just an impressionable kid myself back in the mid-1980s when Ray-Bans were all the rage. But, I had determined to dry the wetness behind my own two ears. I figured broadening my understanding was the way to go. Moving beyond mere Bible verses and jeremiads offered in daily chapel services at Hyles-Anderson College seemed like a step in a new direction.

Mark was two-years-old and Mary was working the breakfast shift at the local Wendy’s. I was working the afternoon shift keeping the prisoners at Westville Correctional Center healthy and medicated (I was a medical assistant employed by the Indiana Department of Corrections).

With my morning free save for childcare, I decided to take my three semesters of credit at the University of Maine and see if I could ramp up my hopes of success in higher ed. Purdue University had a satellite campus about 20 miles away from where we were living and just up the road from the prison where I was working in Westville. Not sure why at the time, but I enrolled in Philosophy 101. It was probably a morning time slot thing.

Thinking college was the way to go (Purdue satellite)

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Holding More Than One Idea (The Err of Caution)

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What week of lockdown is this? I’ve lost track.

I hope everyone’s holding up, well. I’m guessing many are not. Actually, I know many aren’t.

My daytime job involves taking calls in a healthcare setting. Since early March, I’ve listened to people cry, melt down, and I’ve experienced and uncomfortable level of fear being projected my way for the past weeks and now, months. This has got to stop!

As a parent coping with the loss of a son, I’ve been struggling with the feeling of sliding back into that “deep dark hole” that’s taken me months to get to the lip of, and then, up into the light of living again. Why has this pandemic triggered these former emotions that were more painful than any human should be forced to endure? I’ve asked the question “why me?” so many times I can’t even come up with a reasonable guess.

I’m not sure why, but often following Mark’s death, I was so fucking angry. I simply wanted to hit someone or worse. Rather than acting out on this urge, I simply turned inward. I remember a former radio psychologist, Dr. Joy Brown, saying that depression was “anger turned inward.” I’d concur. I was so depressed that I contemplated suicide.

Picking up the guitar saved me nearly two years ago. I’ve played my old acoustic (or my newer electric) nearly every single day since August 2018. I’m amazed that two guitars (and a Vox amp) could have made such a difference, but they have. Still, the past 8 to 10 weeks have been difficult as hell, even playing and writing songs and performing via the interwebs. There’s only so much shit that even my guitars can deflect away.

When the Covid-19 outbreak ramped up, there were conflicting reports of its severity. Initially, some said that it wasn’t any worse than the common flu and that “people were overreacting.” Then, protocols were established as cases exploded, especially in the large, urban population centers like Boston, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

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