Robby Baier: Press

By Felix Carroll

First, let’s forgive Robby Baier. Let’s forgive him for being super talented. Let’s forgive him for owning one of the coolest buildings in South County. Let’s forgive him for leading a life that can be described with all those adjectives most of us tip-toed away from years ago: risky, ambitious, free.
Hell, let’s even forgive him for his good looks, which are mysteriously striking in a sort of morning-after-the-big-gig, who’s-got-the-mouthwash kind of way.
Why all this forgiveness?
I choose to take the word of the Buddhist monk he met a few years ago in a juice bar in Florida. The person we think we are, that we project to others, oftentimes doesn’t reflect our true essence. Or something like that.
But maybe for the sake of a good argument, we should just go with what we see for now. The provable facts.
Robby is the proud owner of the old Housatonic Railroad Station, which he bought from a utility company in the late 1990s for practically nothing. He rescued it, really, and in the process helped resuscitate this chimney-topped town at the foot Monument Mountain. For years, the station sat boarded-up and blank-faced, the days long gone when it served passengers heading back and forth to New York City. It was just another set piece amidst Housatonic’s bruised brick and abandoned mills.
The painter Edward Hopper would have had a field day painting this assemblage. This train station. These tracks. The gas pumps at John’s garage across the street. The river swerving wildly on its way out of town. It all screams the themes of loneliness and alienation. In Housatonic, the chaos of commerce has given way to the ghosts of history, and they seem to linger here to the point of loitering.
But, again, appearances can mislead. Housatonic, in many ways these days, is happening. And besides, Robby is a bit too fidgety for still lifes. He quickly renovated the old train station into an embassy of the arts. It’s got a performance space. His wife, the artist Carol Gingles, has her studio there. And Robby converted the 1,000-square-foot basement of dirt and ash into a state-of-the-art recording studio called Sub-Station.
He produces, arranges and records the work of countless musicians, including his own band, Melodrome, which won best pop rock song at the independent music awards in 2004.
This is also home to Robby’s project called Songs for Film, which places music in film and television. Two Melodrome songs have appeared in national beer commercials for Miller and Coors. Robby and Melodrome wrote music for the 2004 Oscar nominated film, “Ferry Tales,” by Katja Esson. Robby has also produced music that has appeared in television shows such as “Touched by an Angel,” Judging Amy,” “The Young and the Restless,” and “Jag.” Not bad for someone who doesn’t watch television.
The other facts?
Robby turns 40 this month. That means it was just more than 34 years ago that his music career began. His parents gave him a ukulele for Christmas. Two years later, he played his first gig, opening a show in his native Germany for an American folk singer. Robby played “Curley Headed Baby.”
Maybe he nailed the song, maybe he didn’t. But it’s the beginning of something — the small, delicate footprints on a new landscape. His compass was set. By the time he was a teen, he had a guitar in hand. He was writing songs. He was plugged in, all emotion and attitude. The adrenaline from attention, the pleasure of creativity, merged large and loud and triumphantly.
He moved to the States with his family and attended Darrow School, then Simon’s Rock. Then, he headed back in Germany to play music. His band, Pearls at Swine, was signed to a major label. Rolling Stone called them the “German Black Crows,” which may or may not have been a compliment, but at least Rolling Stone noticed.
After tours in the United States and Europe, the band split up. Now it’s 1997, and Robby moved back to the states where he launched Soultube Music. His first solo record, “Soultube,” in which he played virtually all the instruments, won him best pop rock song at the 2002 independent music awards.
By that time he had taken a fateful drive down Route 183 into Housatonic. He saw the old train station. He stopped. He peered through slats in the boarded-up windows and envisioned his future.
Two weeks later he inquired about purchasing it. It so happens it had just gone on the market. He made “a very low offer,” and it was accepted.
And now, here he is, the coolest guy around. We can easily forgive him because he at least he knows he’s got it made.
“I walk down the street and think, ‘Oh my God, I get to go to the train station and make music,’” says Robby. “It’s pretty awesome. I’m very thankful that the universe somehow made this happen.”
The train station still has the old, wooden bench where passengers waited. It still has the octagonal-shaped ticket booth, now an office. It still has a train that rumbles past twice a day, though it no longer carries passengers, only freight. Mostly demolition from points south. (What’s with all that demotion, anyway? It’s as if they’re dismantling the entire state of Connecticut and reassembling it up north, maybe Vermont.)
Fortunately, Robby loves trains. He loves most things old — old guitars, old electronic gadgetry, old morotocycles, old clothes.
And old towns. That is to say, he loves Housatonic itself. He and Carol live there. He’s on the board of Housatonic the Beautiful, the not-for-profit group working to preserve and protect Housatonic’s history as well as to jump-start its community spirit.
Robby is also a mentor with the Southern Berkshires Mentoring program, project of the Southern Berkshires Youth Coalition. With his band, he recently went around to high schools in the county and raised money and put recording studios into each of them. Then, he taught the students how to use the equipment.
“I love helping other people with their creativity,” he says.
Other facts? Officially, he’s a “resident alien,” but that may change.
Last month, after he attended the town meeting in Great Barrington and learned he couldn’t vote, he went home and researched on-line what he would have to do to obtain duel-citizenship status.
One requirement is to learn the Pledge of the Allegiance.
“I was saying the Pledge of Allegiance to myself this morning, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a powerful thing.’ I was really moved by this idea of this group of people — America — coming together and declaring they are for liberty and justice for all,” he says. “I got chills thinking about this. We make this promise to each other, and that’s a really cool thing.”
It’s a promise he made to himself long ago. Freedom, that is.
Which is how, after he met that monk in a juice bar in Florida, he took him up on his offer to visit him in Thailand.
He lived with him in a cave for a few weeks and he learned how to meditate — and beg for food. The whole experience taught him how to lead a more satisfying and gentler life — to help others, to re-define what success means.
Still, freedom is a temptress. He sometimes imagines that someday he’ll grab his two most prized possessions — his first guitar and the book “I Am That,” which contains the wisdom of the Indian sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj. Then, he’ll step out the back door of his old railroad station and hop the train.
But in this dream, he returns to his life in Housatonic, maybe after a year.
Why in the world wouldn’t he?

(Excerpts)
On Melodrome's brand new record, "Happens While You Blink," the band decided to de-emphasize the roll and accentuate the rock. After "Play America," their previous politically inclined release, songwriter Robby Baier felt like taking a break from the seriousness.

"One day I picked up my crappy Silvertone guitar, plugged it into a no-name amp I had bought at a tag sale, turned everything up to 11 and started rocking, writing some riffs," said Housatonic's Baier in an e-mail exchange.

The rollicking "What More," the funky and profane "Jagged Love" and the rough-and-tumble "Rumors" all sprang from the Silvertone session.

Drummer Matt Sloan acknowledged the wish to move to a more aggressive approach. "I think we were ready to move in a totally different direction. We always had an edgier side, that I think never really came out on the previous albums. It just felt like the right time to lash out and say "Here's the Rock."

Baier turned his attention away from global affairs for "Happens While You Blink" to the politics of the heart.
"Lyrically I turned back to a time when I was not so lucky in love, a time where I was going through a major break-up," he said. " 'What More,' 'North Dakota,' and 'Jagged Love' all talk about love gone sour and being really pissed about it."

The record includes makeup songs ("Crying Is Done"), straight-out love songs ("The Making Of"), and a song about traveling in time with your lover ("Yesterday"). Other compositions deal with more existential matters.

"There are the songs that are about self-realization and consciousness, like 'All the Same' and 'High Noon Breakdown,' " Baier explained. "These songs offer both sides of the story, one is about the confusion of life, one about being one with everything."

The Berkshires-based band remains committed to social causes and participating in a sustainable future. Their eco-friendly attitude is evidenced by an innovative approach Melodrome took toward packaging the new album. Mystery Train Records donated 250 recycled, 12-inch vinyl album covers to the band, who then had them cut down and sewn together to create jackets for the new CDs.

The band will be releasing the first 1,000 copies with "one-of-a-kind" album artwork where no two jackets will be identical. Said Baier, "Doing this cover is a small thing that we as a band can do to say to folks: 'Check it out. We tried to come up with a different, less harmful way to do what we do."

Sloan talked about the theme behind the CD's title. " 'Happens While You Blink' is a reference to all the subtle things that happen in your life day to day," the drummer said. "One moment everything is beautiful and perfect and the next thing you know everything is going down the drain. In a rock band you experience this stuff pretty regularly!"

Baier added, "For me, the title has more to do with my philosophical approach to life. Life happens while you blink, all the time, non-stop and it is silly to hope for something in the future that is somehow going to make your life better.

"Our brains are constantly searching, looking, judging ... 'Happens While You Blink' reminds me to take a breath and be present to life in every moment, in every word I write, just writing and being."

Dave Madeloni - Berkshire Eagle

Robby Baier - White Soul God on CD

GREAT BARRINGTON The Berkshire Eagle February 14, 2002 by Seth Rogovoy GREAT BARRINGTON, MA
It's as simple as this: Robby Baier's new album, "The Sidewalk Ends," credited to his new band, Melodrome, is more than just a winner. It's a soulful, funky, catchy musical delight that will sit comfortably in collections alongside CDs like U2's "All That You Can't Leave Behind" and Beck's "Midnite Vultures" and well-worn LPs like John Lennon's "Double Fantasy" and Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On."
As a songwriter, singer, producer, arranger and bandleader, Baier displays the natural pop-soul instincts of Prince on "The Sidewalk Ends," an album chock full of radio-ready hits, several of which, like "Love Replaces Love," are as catchily moody as U2's "Walk On" or "Beautiful Day."
Baier is a white-soul god -- a hidden progeny of Mick Jagger (no offense to his real father). With the release of his new CD, the first credited to his band Melodrome, it is only a matter of time before some independent-minded radio programmer or record-company executive discovers the Berkshires' single most-talented recording artist and takes him national.
Retro-soul is one of the brightest trends in contemporary pop, and the feel of Seventies soul infuses much of "The Sidewalk Ends," much as it did on Baier's previous solo CD, "Soultube." The Beatles are also an obvious influence on rock songs like "Sex, Cash and Fuel" and on the British Invasion pop outro that ends the album, whereas "Crush" is propelled by a jaunty bass line right out of the Rolling Stones's "Miss You."
But "The Sidewalk Ends" is as fresh as the latest by Outkast or any hip-hop group of the moment. The disk kicks off with "Genepool," a soulful, state-of-the-art rap tune drenched with funk but eschewing the genre's less attractive aspects (like gratuitous violence and sexism). Instead the song preaches self-respect and intelligence.
Baier utilizes the sonic tools and palette of contemporary hip-hop (industrial beats, samples, scratching, etc.) to make classic-style soul ballads like "Highest Ground" or "Coldfront" sound utterly contemporary, in the vein of Wyclef Jean. "Not to Love You" has a mildly psychedelic feel akin to some of Beck's work, but Baier is a better melodicist and a more sincere vocalist than that arch ironist.
Overall, "The Sidewalk Ends" has the cozy, lazy, sprawling feel of a Sunday afternoon, sitting around with a close friend reading the papers, and occasionally perking up with some coffee, some animated conversation and some romantic interludes.
In addition to Baier, who lives in a converted train station in Housatonic, Melodrome includes bassist Jesko Stahl, guitarist Darren Todd and drummer Matt Sloan. Stahl was a bandmate of Baier's in Pearls at Swine, a major-label German-American rock band Baier led a decade ago. Todd played with Berkshire jam-band Lord Hill, and Sloan, who is currently working on his debut solo CD, toured and recorded with former Virgin recording artist Mark Curry.
In an earlier incarnation, Melodrome went by the name of Genepool, but due to trademark conflicts the name was abandoned. In addition to his work with Pearls at Swine, Baier has warmed up audiences for Creedence Clearwater Revisited, Los Lobos and Suzanne Vega, and was nominated for two Boston Music Awards in 1999 and 2000. His songs have appeared in various movies and TV shows, including "Drowning Mona," "The Brutal Truth," "Judging Amy," "Touched By an Angel" and "Robocop." He is also the widely acknowledged "godfather" of the M. O. B. , a Berkshire musicians collective.

ROBBY BAIER, SoulTube
Somewhere around 1986, the Los Angeles based duo, David + David released their gem, Boomtown. It was a gritty, slice-of-life snapshot of the characters that populate L.A., those going up, those going down, and those going nowhere. For those who know the record and lament D+D's short career, Robby Baier will seem like the second coming.

SoulTube, is a tour-de-force. Baier writes, produces, sings and plays virtually every instrument on the album. Baier's voice actually recalls David Baerwald's with its soulful crack. What made D+D's songs and what makes Baier's songs so listenable is the same: they buoy their tales of the lost and the broken with irresistible pop/rock hooks. "Right On Track" portrays a woman with a "needle...and crooked spoon," and an instantly memorable chorus. "Seriously" has an infectious groove and inventive production. "Weeping Eyes" is a dark portrait of a "Big daddy" and the girls he pimps. "Dead End" might be perceived as the sequel, and as the title implies, it's not a happy ending.

"Room In My Chevy" stomps along propelled by a repeating harmonica phrase that'll get stuck in your brain for a day or two. Actually that can be said for the whole album. There's not a toss-off in the bunch. SoulTube is really a soul bomb. Dig the fallout.

Robby Baier: Musicians doing it for themselves

(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., May 8, 1998) -- While marveling at the high level of talent of many of the performers in last Sunday's showcase of Berkshire musicians at the National Music Foundation in Lenox, someone not unfamiliar with the local scene turned and asked, "Where do all these people come from? Where do they play?"
It was an apt question, probably the most logical response to listening to the parade of creative and professional-quality performers such as Robby Baier, Ben Jamin, Flipper Dave, Bedouins, Adam Rothberg, N.U.D.E., Class D and Evan Rude and the Motors, to name just a handful of standouts in Sunday's showcase.
The answer to "where do they come from" is simple. By definition, they come from all around the Berkshires, often in disguise as teachers, businessmen, students, sales people, day laborers and neighbors.
The question of where they play is a little more complex. Obviously, they play for their friends and family in their own garages and basements and back yards and at private parties. But as the question implied, outside of a few bars and watering holes, there are few public venues that consistently present local bands playing original music. For those not into the bar scene, the opportunities to catch most of these performers in a friendly listening environment such as the one provided by the foundation last Sunday are few and far between.
For the most part, the most dedicated of these musicians have to take things into their own hands, promoting themselves with self- produced recordings and scrounging around for alternative venues at which to perform. For the creative artist in the Berkshires, at least, the mantra is DIY -- do-it-yourself.
Take Robby Baier. A former member of the Germany-based, major-label rock band Pearls at Swine, Baier returned home to the Berkshires a few years ago and starting over again from scratch produced his own CD, "Soul Tube," which he recorded in his home studio and on which he wrote all the songs, played virtually all the instruments and sings all the vocals.
Doing it all by himself, Baier has come up with an amazing debut, a passionate collection of funk, soul and rock ballads that recalls the soulful, introspective side of the Rolling Stones, while making a highly personal statement utterly his own. Boasting both the liquid vocals of a Mick Jagger and the strutting guitar of Keith Richards, Baier is the quintessential one-man band. His solo debut evinces a deep love of '70s soul music while taking advantage of all the advances that '90s technology has to offer.
Baier is even pushing the DIY-factor to the next level. Whereas many musicians produce their own recordings, Baier has gone ahead and purchased a building, the old Housatonic Railroad Station, which he plans to use as a sort of multi-media headquarters -- recording studio, art gallery, performance space -- akin to the famed Paisley Park in Minneapolis. The Berkshires' answer to the artist formerly known as Prince gives his new CD its official launch with a release concert at the train station, at 168 Front St. in Housatonic, tonight from 6 to 10.
Baier will also be a featured performer at the d'Art Party tomorrow night at the Bousquet Ski Area in Pittsfield at 9. D'Art is a series of multi-media, DIY performances and exhibits combining original music, art, poetry, spoken word and dance. Among the other artists scheduled to appear are Noel, CD Nelsen with Rick Leab, Suitcase, Dredi and Bruce Hayes, who has just released his own new CD called "Lunch."
Not every musician or artist is as capable as Prince or Baier at doing things other than just playing music. As much as it is up to musicians and artists to take the reins of their own careers and find ways to get their work before the public, the vast majority still need help. The occasional showcase such as the one last Sunday at the music foundation offers local artists a step up one rung of the ladder. Perhaps the foundation might make use of its newly-renovated Little Theater as a sorely-needed, listener-friendly venue to showcase local performers on a more regular basis.
As for my role in all of this, I always have and still do welcome unsolicited demos by local artists for review consideration, and while I cannot guarantee coverage or reviews, I am happy to help spread the word about local gigs as best as I can. The only thing I ask is that I be given as much advance notice as possible.

[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on May 8, 1998. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1998. All rights reserved.]



Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
music news, interviews, reviews, et al.

What do you do when you play in one of the hottest bands in Berlin, a city with a well nurtured reputation as the symbolic heart of everything decadent in the western world, yet despite much critical acclaim and major press no German label will touch you, unsure as they are about what to do with a band that sounds so 'American?'
If you're Robby Baier and Nicolai Lieven and the band is Pearls At Swine you pack up and head for America, taking your American sound with you. After enduring vaguely appropriate comparisons to the Black Crowes, Aerosmith, and the American cum London r&b of the Rolling Stones for so long, it's only wise to go for the greener pastures of the very country whose appetite for such ragged rock ebbs and flows in five year cycles, but never, never goes away.

With their self-produced album and their six years in the trenches together as Pearls In Swine (never mind the years dating back to their kindergarten days), Baier and Lieven set up shop in the US and proceeded to send the CD to every label they can think of. The gritty, roots-ragged rock and roll is well received all around and after showcasing across the country and touring incessantly, Pearls At Swine sign on with a New York management firm. A contract from Atlantic Records is tendered, read, considered, signed and returned to the label, only to be met by the feet-dragging hesitance of fat bellied, shortsighted, soul-sucking power - lunchers. The deal is ultimately scrapped and the band returns to Berlin to nurse their wounds, ruminate on the leeching fields of America's rock and roll machinery, and consider the next move.

With Lieven in Berlin and Baier in the States, a cross-Atlantic commute begins, with either member joining the other for periods of time, during which shows are played and more albums are recorded. There would be four in all.

In '96 the band would finally sign with German label BMG Ariola and record the final Pearls At Swine record. A tour ensues and the band returns to the States, playing at the ASCAP New Music Seminar/Artist Showcase and stopping at CBGB's, as well as playing a string of dates with the reformed two-thirds of Creedence (Creedence Clearwater Revisited). The band continues to receive fantastic press in both Germany and the States, yet despite these positive developments, the often feared does happen: Their A&R guy suddenly departs from BMG, leaving the band with no mouthpiece at the offices, and no one at the label with any particular stake or interest in the continued development of Pearls At Swine.

So what do you do if you've just spent ten years flirting with the fickle mistress of success, only to find yourself standing pants down with just the breeze to tickle your ego, as her beautiful backside becomes a belly tugging, shrinking figure on the horizon? If you're Robby Baier, you quickly remember the words of some unsung, anonymous genius: "no matter how hot she is, someone, somewhere, is sick of her shit." And you go to America.

With the release of SoulTube, Robby Baier has made a clean break with the past and set off on the next chapter in his life-long story of following his considerable muse and making music that cuts to the heart of rock and roll's malleable faade. Returning to the Berkshires, where his family moved in 1981, and where he has lived in fits and starts when not touring and hustling the highways of life in a well-traveled, hungry rock band, Baier has set up shop in a recently purchased railroad station and completed an album of singular vision and wrenching honesty. "I was at a point where I thought, OK fuck it. I've been making the same kind of music for over ten years, with the same guy - it's time for me to break off and do my own thing. That's when I decided to do this album."

Recorded with his collection of analog tracking equipment, Baier engineered and produced the project and played all the instruments: guitar, bass, banjo, mandolin, sitar, blues harp, keys, percussion, slide guitar, and saw blade. The result is an extraordinary collection of deeply moving aural canvases; playful, somber, earthy, hypnotic, and loaded to the gills with potential crossover fare. (Crossing over the staid radio boundaries of MTV commercial soundtrack-sounding youth drivel, that is.)

After recording the final Pearls At Swine album with the odd, record company choice of Falco (remember "Der Kommisar"?) and not too pleased with the rather '80s sounding result, (everything was done in the specter of the producer's much beloved Synclavier), Baier took a 180 degree turn with SoulTube.

Sitting on an outdoor patio in the shadow of Tower Records, the ceaseless dull hum of the Mass Pike swelling up from the pavement beneath his words, Robby Baier is considering the intangibles of great rock and roll.

"The more guts you have to fuck up, the more original you end up. I'd rather listen to a guy who plays two crappy chords but pours his soul out than some guy who's playing perfect scales. Your mistakes are what make you interesting. Anybody can play something like anybody else, perfect, you know? There's nothing special about it. Basically I think there's two kinds of musician - like Kolja (Nicolai Lieven) he's one of those guys that studies something to the max. I was always the other way, I just dug around in myself... it doesn't make sense to me to look at something outside yourself and then try to make it your own."

The words speak a truth supported by the sounds of SoulTube. Not that the work is sloppy or wantonly ragged; quite the opposite. Baier's playing is first class and expressive; it's the attitude that can't be mistaken. Influences be damned. Technique, go to hell. The sound of the soul is a devastatingly personal lure, and the great ones spring from the soil of the past with nary a debt owed, hardly a clump of dirt to shake. "I never made the connection that the stuff I listen to is what I should play."

Of the making of SoulTube Baier offers, "I'm really happy with it. It's hard working with a band - being the main writer, you bring something in and it gets tweaked and re-arranged. You gotta get into that mindset, you know, it's cool, everybody works on it and everybody has to be happy with it. But I always thought maybe I can do it better." Two of the songs on SoulTube, "Weeping Eyes" and "Dead End", were commissioned for the soundtrack to German filmmaker Wolfgang Wimmer's release Dead End. The other ten tracks were mostly bits and pieces collected over the last five years on a portable Dictaphone; riffs and fragments that accumulated during the last years of Pearls At Swine.

Baier talks of the growth process that led to the changes in his approach to recording. "It took me until this album to realize like, OK, what sound do I want and what sounds do I like... [everybody] was always talking about 'their sound' and I was like, what the fuck is that?" Coming as he does from the self-taught/self-obsessed school of making music your own way, Baier's words are telling. When blessed with the singular pursuit of ones own vision, where words and music spring naturally and nurturing their growth is an all consuming, unconscious process, things like amps, knobs, effects, and 'sound' remain mere disturbances on the periphery of sight. "A real turning point was when I suddenly realized that I had to decide what my amp sounds like. I've always been like, that's an acoustic guitar, it sounds that way, it's not an option. I mean some of my amps at home are tag sale stuff with one knob, or maybe two."

Built in the 1850s, the Housatonic Railroad Station has sat unused for as long as anyone can remember. The small wood shingled building sits quietly, aging gracefully and hosting memories of its long gone serviceable days when passengers and freight swarmed through the area, a byproduct of the burgeoning textile industry that once flourished in the shadows of the Berkshires' rolling hills.

Inside, octagonal ticket booths sit silently, dust collecting on their well-worn counters, underneath a vast ceiling criss-crossed with long wooden Victorian arches. Outside, just behind the building, trains still run; they just don't stop anymore. Robby Baier has bought the building and it's here that he is in the process of setting up his own small project studio. The renovation of the building and installation of all the recording equipment is scheduled to be finished early in October. He plans to use the studio for he and Lieven's work, but also to begin to record and produce some of the talent that he sees and hears in Western MA. Since SoulTube's release on May 8th, outside of a few solo shows, Baier's time has been occupied by the project, leaving the question of what to do with the album on a back burner. "I haven't shopped it myself. Part of me is like,... OK, what can I do on the Internet, what can I do on my own?' I'm not really interested in selling billions of records. Since I can do it all at home. The album cost me 5,000 bucks or something so, to recoup that and live off it somewhat, I have to sell under 10,000 CDs to make it worth it. I'd like to start making connections in Boston, find a small record label here and just deliver them the stuff. That would be great.

"I had a bad experience with BMG - it's not really that cool to be on a big label, I didn't really like it, [but] if someone said 'this is the greatest thing, here's a couple of hundred thousand dollar advance,' that would be the proof for me. You know, OK these guys are serious about it, and even if they're not, that's enough money for me to make great music for the next twenty years. But I'd rather have them come to me. I'd rather go to a small label now."

Robby Baier is discussing the upcoming task of assembling a band to take SoulTube on the road; at least to Boston, for he knows the fine album will languish without the live performances and the recognition they will bring. Languishing and not performing are not options for Baier. His penetrating gaze defers to a warm conspiratorial grin as he speaks of his earliest experiences with the intoxicating response of a crowd. "When I was about 8 or 9 this American contemporary folk artist moved in downstairs from us and we became friends. He used to teach me stuff and I used to play with him. One night he took me to one of his gigs and I knew one song (that) I had written on the ukulele. So I got up and played it. People couldn't get enough and I sang it over and over." Going back even further, as if eight isn't young enough to spot a budding performer, Baier tells of going to the circus in Berlin at the age of four with his family. As the clowns entered the center ring to warm and entertain the crowd and set the stage for the beasts and freaks and daredevils a curious thing happened. A young Robby began to sense and understand that the vast percolating crowd was cheering and stomping for the strange people on the hockey rink floor. Locking onto this revelation and succumbing to the warm dizzying rush of serotonin as it consummates its courtship with a nubile receptor, the small portion of crowd in near proximity to the Baier clan bore witness the rest of the evening to one jubilant, boisterous small child miming and gesturing with his back to the show. And when the crowd roared for the spectacle behind him, the child bowed and accepted the applause with his best puppet-show bows and sweeping of his young arms.

Much of SoulTube, constructed as it is from random pieces of inspiration, is performed on all manners of instrument and in all manner of odd tuning. The process is described like this: tune the chosen instrument on a whim, fiddle until a riff catches the attention, improvise words (ear untrainably tuned to the magical convergence of syllable and sound), settle in on a groove, build up from there. As a result there are many things to be considered in preparation for his working band. "First of all my songs are pretty much in weird tunings so [live] I have to work with a guitar roadie, get a different guitar for every song. For most of the parts, the bass guitar is all tuned to different things. And then there are a lot of funky instruments. I'd like to find people who play more than one instrument... and they've got to sing."

With this in mind and the completion of the train station recording studio days away, Robby Baier is heading into Boston, and New York, and Los Angeles, and anywhere else the road and SoulTube and his own magical drive will take him. From the suburbs of Stuttgart to the red lights of Berlin to the beer and puke sticky stage of CBGB's to the green blue hills of the Berkshires.

"I had a buddy when I moved to the states. I mean we had no neighbors, our driveway was like a half mile long. We were like six. He was gonna be a mercenary soldier and have his own army. He had a tank for a belt buckle. I used to go over to his house and he had a room in the basement and the walls were just... all guns, all kinds of guns." For a moment the grin on Robby's face battles with comprehending and considering the long gone adventures of childhood on the western frontier. What did you do? In an instant the grin wins out. "We used to blow shit up." Welcome to America.