So. Much. Yes.
This song is refreshing in so many ways. Mainly because it's a genuine, modern day folk song amidst today's world of electronic saturation and bass-heavy, anticlimactic drop-riddled house music. Not only are there actual, discernable lyrics (believe), but the evocative, warbling tenor of Baxter's dream-weaving vocals add a realness and wisdom that bring the characters in his wandering story to life.
Mr. Rodriguez may always be a fictional anomaly, but Mr. Rayland Baxter is very much a real, mustachioed, guitar-wielding, wanderlusting stud of a folk singer-songwriter. Born in Nashville, Tennessee into a house of music as the son of musician Bucky Baxter, Rayland has been on the folk-rock scene for a few years now, having debuted his first full length album Feathers & Fishhooks back in 2012 (check out "The Woman For Me"). Which means that somehow the world has been slow to catch the Rayland fever, because his name was news to me until just the other day when Mr. Rodriguez entered my ears and life.
This song comes off his second, recently released album Imaginary Man, which features a collection of eleven similarly constructed melodic, adventure-questing gems of folky goodness that may very well have you quitting your day job to Jack Kerouac across the country. Or at the very least take an electro-lyfe hiatus.
While we may never know the true identity of this mysterious vagabond Mr. Rodriguez, we all probably wouldn't mind taking a walk with him (or the chiseled Rayland) on the wrong side of town every once in a while.
Keep the hits coming, Mr. Baxter.
SIMILAR SONGS
