Photo Credit: Rachael Cassells
Meg Baird
Like many other working musicians, Meg Baird needs to tour in at least two senses: she needs to feel directly how her music affects her audience, and she also needs to earn a substantial portion of her artistic income from live performance.
So of course, she’s glad to be touring again after the worst stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s been a lot of stress and a lot of time off, but I’m still here,” Baird said during a recent interview. “It’s a horrendously exaggerated version of ‘you don’t miss your water ‘til the well runs dry.’ I don’t think I have anything particularly unique to say about it.”
Nevertheless, the folk and rock artiste has found more to say through her music: Furling, her fourth album under just her own name, will be out in January 2023, and it reflects the creative flowering that can happen in isolation.
“I explored the ‘band’ idea more than I have in previous works,” Baird said. “I performed a lot of it myself with a lot of multitracking. I pulled in some of my other instrumental abilities, like piano and drums, and Charlie Saufley was my creative partner.”
Saufley and Baird previously shared space in Heron Oblivion, a psychedelic-rock band that put out a self-titled full-length in 2016. Furling connects her drumming in that band to her guitar playing in the Philadelphia folk-rock band Espers, and its lushly simple arrangements expand on earlier solo albums like 2011’s Seasons on Earth.
A Strange Life?
“The record has had quite a strange life,” Baird said. “It feels very good to put it back out in the world and to basically strike up a whole new relationship with it.”
Onstage, Baird will continue her relationship with Saufley as part of a group that also includes Tortoise bassist Douglas McCombs, art-rock guitarist Chris Forsyth, and drummer Ryan Jewell.
“Part of this is somewhat selfish,” Baird said. “I’m grateful for being around that kind of musical energy and looking forward to a sort of therapeutic facet.”
Baird has a knack for collaboration: her most recent album before Furling, 2018’s Ghost Forests, intertwined her with harpist Mary Lattimore, and she’s contributed her gorgeously powerful voice to works by Sharon Van Etten and Will Oldham, among others. She hopes to develop that knack in a different way on her latest tour.
“I have a collaborative style even when I’m working by myself,” she said. “Transposing a studio project into a live performance just really opens things up, and it becomes more of a conversation than a speech.”
Meg Baird will play the Cactus Club on Wednesday, Nov. 2, at 7:30 p.m. Chris Forsyth will open. Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 day of show at cactusclubmilwaukee.com.
