POM 05/22 No.1: Jim Baumer ME returns

Podcast Open Mic

POM 05/22 No.1: Jim Baumer ME returns

Biddeford-based indie rocker Jim Baumer has released a diverse pastiche of songs on the provocatively titled Living in Some Strange Days. The songs emanate from a space of darkness and deep pain and his music hearkens back to a period of time he calls indie’s “halcyon days,” in the early-to-mid-90s.

Music has been Baumer’s path forward after losing a son, well-known environmental activist and poet, Mark Baumer, killed in 2017. Picking up an old Yamaha acoustic he’d had around the house for 20 years, Baumer says he took it out of the case and started to play. “I’ve been playing it ever since.”

LISSD has solo acoustic material, rooted in 70s music and artists like Arlo Guthrie, Neil Young, Big Star, and others. Then, Baumer’s one-man-band electric songs” are influenced by angular indie bands like Pavement, Polvo, Silkworm, while channeling T. Rex and other influences, too, especially the grittiness of Lou Reed’s solo material.

A child of the 70s, Baumer grew up with music that never shied away from the topics of the day. “TNT (Acoustic Mix)” speaks to freedom and protest and is a paean to Canadian truckers, while sounding like it might have been recorded during Young’s “Tonight’s the Night” sessions.

He performed some of the new tracks from the new release on Podcast Open Mic.

Jim Baumer

Musician/One-Man-Band

Ph: [phone]