Album
Front Porch Tales & Twangy Trails
Album · 4 tracks · April 2024 · by Mike Baker
Four country experiments from the first week, where borrowed musical language began making room for my own life.
The story
Front Porch Tales & Twangy Trails came from the beginning of my experiment with making music.
I was five days into the catalog. I had no established sound and no plan for becoming a recording artist. I was learning what the tools could do and what I might be able to say through them. Country gave me an easy place to tell stories, then I started pulling in rock, R&B, indie, familiar song references, fast arrangements, and anything else that made me curious.
Some of these tracks feel like musical sketches now because that is what they were. I was learning by finishing things.
I had also begun working out how much of myself belonged in the songs. That question runs across the four tracks. Friends Forever carries love, television references, and SHMILY, the private phrase Kellie and I use to mean See How Much I Love You. Beneath the Brave reaches toward endometriosis and the people living with pain that others fail to see. The remaining tracks are looser experiments built from genres, cultural memory, and music that was already part of my life.
There are choices here I would handle differently now. Some references sit closer to their source material than I would want in newer work. The writing occasionally reaches for a big line before earning it. My understanding of songwriting, attribution, and AI-assisted music has grown since April 2024.
Keeping the release available lets that growth remain visible. I was discovering a path into music that began with words and direction. Describing the sound, testing versions, making decisions, and continuing until the song carried the feeling I wanted became my way into the form.
That discovery changed my creative life.
Front Porch Tales also contains an early sign of where the work would eventually go. Beneath the Brave placed invisible pain and women's health inside the music. Friends Forever and SHMILY pulled my marriage into it. Those subjects would become central later, after I learned to rely less on broad language and pay closer attention to lived detail.
The record is playful, uneven, sincere, and curious. It comes from the period when I was still asking what would happen if I tried another style, another reference, or another kind of story.
I kept trying. The catalog grew because I allowed the early work to be early.
If you only have a few minutes
Start here
01Friends Forever
This is the most personal doorway into the EP. The song borrows language from Friends, including the idea of someone being your lobster, while placing SHMILY inside the music. Even during the first week, the songs were beginning to carry language from my marriage and home.
02Beneath the Brave: A Warrior's Hymn
This track points most clearly toward the advocacy work that followed. It focuses on people, especially women with endometriosis, whose pain remains hidden behind an appearance that tells everyone else they are fine. Its early language carries an instinct that remains mine: pay attention and believe people when they say they hurt.
03Empire Dreams & Country Roads
This song is the clearest record of my early experimentation. Country, rock, reggae, soul, and pop references collide because I wanted to see whether they could share one song. SHMILY appears here too, leaving something personal inside an intentionally messy musical collage.
Tracks
- 01Friends Forever
- 02Whiskey Jams: Back in Low Places
- 03Beneath the Brave: A Warrior's Hymn
- 04Empire Dreams & Country Roads
Track by track
01Friends Forever
A playful love song built from Friends references and the deeper idea of having one person who is both partner and best friend. SHMILY gives the experiment a piece of my real life.
02Whiskey Jams: Back in Low Places
Country, rock, R&B, bars, highways, and familiar musical references all land in one early mashup. It captures the period when I was testing combinations simply to hear what happened.
03Beneath the Brave: A Warrior's Hymn
An early song about invisible illness and the strength required to live with pain other people do not see. It anticipates the endometriosis advocacy that later became a major part of my work.
04Empire Dreams & Country Roads
A collage of musical memory that moves across genres and familiar ideas. Its roughness makes it a useful snapshot of how I learned to begin.
Where it leads
Front Porch Tales brought personal language and advocacy into the catalog. Two days later, SHMILY Vibes made marriage and long-term love the center of an entire release.