Send A Prayer My Way has been in the works for years. Imagine two young musicians playing their first show together at Lincoln Hall, a much-loved venue here in Chicago. It’s January 15, 2016, and bone-chillingly cold outside, especially for a couple of Southerners. When the show is over and they’re shooting the shit, one singer says to the other, “We should make a country album.” This is the origin story, the stuff of legend in the world of country music, and the beginning of a collaboration between two artists already admired for their spare, elegant lyrics as well as the courage to share their struggles with those who love their music. It’s also the beginning of creating a work that, like the most enduring country albums, sustains and inspires, reminding both singer and listener that not one of us is ever totally alone in this world and that music is a steady companion. Why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking,” they sing in “No Desert Flower.” I can take more than a little rain/If the going’s tough I will not cower/And all the passing years won’t wash me away.
Send A Prayer My Way is a damn fine country album, written and sung in the best of the outlaw tradition—defiant, subversive, working class, and determined to wrestle not only with addiction, regret, and bad decisions but also with oppressive systems of power. (In the best outlaw country, The Law is no friend of yours, and neither is The Man; in TORRES and Baker’s music, neither are religious blowhards or mothers who can’t stomach their daughter’s sexuality.) These are songs about wrapping up a long shift and driving home bone tired, just hoping for a little weed and a quiet place to put your feet up, or falling off the wagon (again) and wondering if this time it will finally drag you under the wheels, or thinking that bad decisions are the only decisions you know how to make. Mercifully, this is only the beginning of the stories TORRES and Baker are determined to tell.
