Lucky Few

This week I’ve taken an abbreviated tour of the decades, and today, we’re up to the current one.

The first song I listened to today from the 2020s on Apple Music random play was “Lucky Few,” by indie/folk-rock singer, songwriter and musician Tim Baker of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada.

Hearing the opening bars of the track instantly took me back to its performance at a show Baker gave this past November at Winnipeg, Canada’s Park Theatre, a gig I attended with one of our lads (a fellow Baker fan). He and I have been followers since hearing the 2006 single “Lions for Scottie,” which I discovered after serendipitously picking up one of those iTunes single-of-the-week cards Starbucks gave out in their stores until about ten years ago. The song was by Baker’s former band Hey Rosetta!, whom we saw together a half-dozen times before they went on hiatus in 2017.

As soon as I learned of the recent show (through a poster I literally walked on as it had blown onto a sidewalk near Sweety’s and my home), I texted my lad and we bought tickets. And Baker did not disappoint; it was an unforgettable evening of music enjoyed in a smaller venue, so the setting was more intimate than an arena-style show; it felt like listening to an old friend playing some music for us.

To me, “Lucky Few” is a poignant invitation to lean in, get closer, and share the present moment together.

“It’s too bright for too late at night
my eyes are tired, all I would like
is to close them with you
and see the things that you do

I miss you, I miss everyone
If I haven’t met you yet, well then I miss you most of all,
I want your heat & your sweat & your hand in my back at the festival

Picture a room full of people all feeling the same way,
it’s hard to explain
crying or laughing, you try understand it and you can’t

Are we meant just to try, try, try to overlap?

I miss you, all of you, I miss my life before
we are the lucky few, I know it’s true, but God my eyes are sore
I want to close them with you and see the same things that you do

Rain on the bay, terror in the streets
yeah but nothing in the way of the sunlight through the trees
and your hand on my hand across enemy lands and sea”

“Lucky Few,” by Tim Baker.
Official lyrics retrieved from the YouTube video notes.

Baker released his first solo album, Forever Overhead, in 2019, following it up with the EP Survivors the next year. In 2021, he performed his original composition “Songbirds” at the investiture ceremony for Mary Simon, Governor General for Canada.

“Lucky Few” is the opening track from the album The Festival (2022). Baker’s website says the album is, “…a sonic embrace, a call in for love, and a cry out for connection. Baker wants us to bring our pain and suffering, and align it all with melody. The Festival is a kaleidoscopic view in these complicated times.”

Now you know a little about why this is my Song of the Day for Today. Thanks for joining me here. Please enjoy the official video from Tim Baker’s YouTube channel.

If you like the song, please give the video a thumb’s up, and subscribe if you want to hear more from Baker. And, as Guy Garvey, Elbow’s lead singer and the host of BBC 6 Music’s Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour would say, buy the record so Tim can afford to make more!

With my best wishes,

Steve