Tim Baker returns to us announcing a new five-track EP, brandishing the multi-purpose title: Survivors. It will be available digitally and as a 10" EP on July 10 via Arts & Crafts and is led by the title-track single. To understand how we got here, it is imperative to go back, both for the original intent of the track and literally, what it means in our world now. Pre-order Survivors here.
Survivors follows Tim's acclaimed debut solo album, Forever Overhead, released just over a year ago - an album earned distinctive year-end 'best of' billing and landed Tim aloft within the "Songwriter of the Year" nominee category for the 2020 Juno Awards and seven East Coast Music Award nominations.
Touring the album took Tim most recently to the UK and Europe where he joined Nico Paulo on a solo tour before reuniting on stage to open for his 2019 and early 2020 touring contemporaries Half Moon Run - wrapping triumphantly at the Round House in London, UK on March 13.
And then everything came to a screeching halt. Tim likened the airplane ride home from abroad, with its last minute re-route home to Toronto instead of to Saskatoon, where he was meant to directly join in Juno Awards festivities, as "one long, 8-hour Indiana Jones-style slide under a closing door." Then, like the world, Tim immediately went into two weeks behind closed doors. Which turned into two months.
Survivors started with Tim marveling at the almost inconceivable amount of generational resilience and luck it requires to get a person to 'now'. "Just by being alive, you really are this incredibly unlikely success. I kept imagining how I got to be here, alive, and all of the ancestors that came before me."
Aided by the fortunate fact that Tim further clarifies about his songwriting, "I've always made twenty songs to keep ten, and the Forever Overhead sessions were no different. You've maybe heard some of the songs that didn't make it, on the Side Door Sessions. Or you've maybe heard some other survivors at a live show. Well, some seemed so relevant to the current moment that they basically stood up and demanded to be let out. Being no tyrant, I dusted them off, smoothed their lapels, and resolved to send them on their way, on this new EP."
Tim will play these songs and others from his collective career during two select, upcoming ticketed online concerts May 29 & 30 via Side Door. The shows will be be capped at 1000 persons per show. Each ticket purchased receives a digital download of the Survivors EP. Winnipeg Folk Festival will present the shows and Plus1.org will donate $1 from each ticket sold to - www.portage.ca/ontario - for their bunkhouse initiative. Purchase tickets and get more details - May 29 / May 30.
