Rob Baird [late addition]

One Liner: Classic-sounding Americana/country music with good lyrics

Wikipedia Genre: Americana
Home: Austin, Texas (but originally from Memphis)

Poster Position: late addition

Both Weekends.

Thoughts:  Has anyone ever moved from Tennessee to Austin?  Has that ever actually happened?  I thought the pipeline of country artists was forever tipped the other direction, but cool to hear about a guy who [reads his bio] lives in Austin but still goes back to Nashville to record his new album.  What the heck, dude?

I kid.  Ol' Rob moved from Memphis to funky town Fort Worth to attend TCU.  While there, he recorded his first album, produced by my man Scott Davis and featuring some of the musicians from Hayes Carll's band (who Scott also used to play with).  That first album, Blue Eyed Angels, included one of his best tunes, like a young Pat Green playing something righteous.  "Fade Away."  922k streams.

Good stuff right there.  That's actually the closest comparison I can think of with this first album.  Pat Green.  His Wikipedia says that his second album, I Swear It's The Truth was ranked by SPIN in its top twenty albums of the year.  Which is kind of insane, right?  You look at the usual SPIN top albums list and its like all of the weirdest music around collected into one place.  Lots of, like, experimental electronic music played in 11/8 time by an Icelandic prison choir who was inspired by Quiet Riot.  So to choose a dude like this seems odd.  But they aren't wrong, its a very good country album.  Oh, wait, I just actually looked it up, and this was awarded their #3 spot in the "Spin's 20 Best Country Albums of 2012."  Wikipedia trying to pull one over on me around here!

He's been used a bunch on TV shows and whatnot, with spots on Nashville, Army Wives, something called Hart of Dixie on the CW, and The Ranch.  Other than that last one, which I only survived through about 1.5 episodes, I've never seen any of those.

"Run of Good Luck," from his third album, is his top track on Spotify with 5.7 million streams.

Very pretty tune.  I have never heard this dude's name before, but I have fully enjoyed listening to his tunes all day.  It's honestly good stuff.  Pretty basic on the underlying music - usually acoustic guitar, a little pedal steel, some basic drums.  But it works.

I'd go watch this.