This page contains a brief overview on the album FRED BAILEY: Ain't Comin' Back (This Year). Learn more about the artist and explore the track lists and website. If you find any information that needs to be corrected, please let us know.

 
I grew up on a dirt farm in Northwestern Oklahoma -- almost the Panhandle, but not quite. That's the Dust Bowl end of the Cherokee Strip. Since then I've touched on several foreign lands and more coffeehouses and towns than can be counted. Now I seem to have settled down in Columbus, Ohio.

Always, there was a guitar along. For 37 years now, it's been the same 1948 Martin D-28L that somebody converted back to a right-hand model before it found a way into my life.

I've made my living several different ways, none of which relate to this current project. The rewards of family and career were often foregone to preserve a degree of freedom that "the good life" in the suburbs seemed to preclude. As a precocious reader, I'd guess that back there somewhere Henry David Thoreau scared hell out of me with that crack about "most men leading lives of quiet desperation." Isn't it funny how the choices refused seem to slide through our fingers forever after?

If there's a pattern in here anywhere, it's just that I've always been fascinated by songs telling stories about those forgotten little footnotes of history, or about the lives of ordinary people. Society has organized institutions to document, for better or worse, the larger of our cultural achievements. But just try to imagine, if you will, how easily we could have lost such legendary icons as Casey Jones or Tom Dooley or John Henry. Now try to imagine the one's that actually were lost! In each case, are deeply indebted to some long-forgotten fool standing around and humming snatches of melody under his breath while he reached for an instrument. So finally, I started trying a few myself, and that's what this is all about.

That and the pleasure of working with some good friends who've been after me for years to get it done.

So now it's done.

Check out the artist's website:
http://www.fredbaileymusic.com

Track List:
1. Ain't Comin' Back (This Year)
2. Another Unknown Soldier
3. Windmills
4. Clayton Comes to Town
5. The Dunes of Lisdoonvarna
6. Delaware County Line
7. The Cherokee Kid
8. Sing Me the Sky
9. Who Could Ever Say?
10. Welcome Home
11. Flutter-Bys
12. The Fargo Stable Fire
13. The Widow McDaid
14. Protection

Suggested CDs:

• Rex Allen & Don Edwards
• Tom Lang
• John Phillips

Other Genres:

• FOLK: Modern Folk
• FOLK: Angry
• TYPE: ACOUSTIC