Album
Fields of Simple Things
Album · 13 tracks · May 2025 · by Mike Baker
A quiet country record pays attention to kindness, creative doubt, unfinished chances, natural materials, and the ordinary details that give a life its shape.
The story
Fields of Simple Things stands in the middle of a life already built and asks what still deserves attention. I turned away from spectacle here and went looking for quieter evidence of meaning — a low sky, an empty room, a backstage mirror, the silence after the sound, red clay, wood grain, and the air held between notes.
Some of the images in here feel personal, and I'm not going to claim which moments came directly from my life. The narrators include a performer dealing with doubt, a traveler past the edge of the map, a person counting up every near miss, and someone who chose kindness as a way to move through the world. What they share is wanting to live with more attention.
This Isn't the Start opens in the middle. The past is still active, and the person speaking has history, consequences, and commitments. Low Sky, High Hopes puts hard conditions next to a willingness to keep looking ahead. Simple Isn't Easy is about the discipline it takes to cut the noise, tell the truth, and stay close to what matters.
Left My Name in the Room and Lights on a Backstage Mirror bring creative identity into focus. A room remembers whatever presence you tried to leave in it. The mirror sees the private doubt behind whatever confidence made it out to the audience. Together they sit in the distance between being seen and feeling known.
Tell the Silence I'm Listening slows things down further. Listening takes enough quiet to hear grief, intuition, memory, and the other person in the room. Came Here to Be Kind turns that attention into purpose. Kindness becomes a daily practice, and it has consequences for how you lead, love, create, and repair harm.
All These Almosts gives the unfinished possibilities their proper weight without letting regret own the future. Red Clay and Reverence ties respect to a physical place and to inherited labor. Air Between the Notes finds meaning in restraint. Music depends on space as much as it depends on sound.
Miles from the Map leaves the familiar plans behind. What the Wood Remembers goes back to a material shaped by time, touch, weather, and use. The title track gathers all of it into one field of ordinary experience. You don't need a dramatic life to have a meaningful one. It grows out of attention to the people, places, choices, and objects already in front of you.
This one carries on what Everyday Magic taught me and widens it. That album paid attention to Kellie. This one asks what happens when I bring the same care to creative work, landscape, silence, and the way I walk into a room.
If you only have a few minutes
Start here
01Simple Isn't Easy
The song recognizes how much discipline sits behind a life with less noise, clearer priorities, and closer attention to what matters.
02Lights on a Backstage Mirror
Private uncertainty appears behind the visible performance, giving the album a useful account of creative identity and self-doubt.
03Came Here to Be Kind
Kindness becomes a chosen purpose with practical consequences for relationships, leadership, creativity, and the treatment of strangers.
04What the Wood Remembers
An ordinary material holds the marks of time and touch, bringing the album's attention to craft, memory, and physical life into one image.
Tracks
- 01This Isn't the Start
- 02Low Sky, High Hopes
- 03Simple Isn't Easy
- 04Left My Name in the Room
- 05Lights on a Backstage Mirror
- 06Tell the Silence I'm Listening
- 07Came Here to Be Kind
- 08All These Almosts
- 09Red Clay and Reverence
- 10Air Between the Notes
- 11Miles from the Map
- 12What the Wood Remembers
- 13Fields of Simple Things
Track by track
01This Isn't the Start
The record begins inside a life already underway, where the speaker must work with history rather than imagine a clean beginning.
02Low Sky, High Hopes
The horizon feels close and heavy while the narrator protects enough hope to keep moving through uncertain conditions.
03Simple Isn't Easy
Clarity requires repeated choices about attention, possessions, ambition, and the noise a person is willing to release.
04Left My Name in the Room
Creative presence lingers after departure as the narrator wonders whether the work revealed a person or only a public identity.
05Lights on a Backstage Mirror
The private face behind a performance confronts doubt, expectation, and the difference between visibility and confidence.
06Tell the Silence I'm Listening
Quiet becomes an active form of attention, making room for feelings and truths that were difficult to hear amid constant sound.
07Came Here to Be Kind
Kindness is chosen as a guiding purpose that shapes how the narrator enters relationships, conflict, work, and ordinary encounters.
08All These Almosts
Unfinished relationships and missed possibilities receive honest attention without becoming the only story available to the future.
09Red Clay and Reverence
Physical ground carries labor, history, and belonging, giving respect a location that a person is able to touch.
10Air Between the Notes
Restraint gives music its shape as silence and space become part of what allows a feeling to reach the listener.
11Miles from the Map
The traveler moves beyond familiar plans and discovers what remains reliable when the expected route no longer applies.
12What the Wood Remembers
Grain, wear, and touch hold a record of use, turning a simple material into evidence of lives that passed through it.
13Fields of Simple Things
The title track gathers kindness, memory, place, craft, and attention into a closing statement about the substance of an ordinary life.
Where it leads
Fields of Simple Things ended with quiet attention to ordinary life. Two days later, Penalty Box Confessions carried Mike back into the rink, where hockey, goaltending, teammates, scars, and late-night ice gave that attention a louder physical setting.