Rachel Baiman

Common Nation of Sorrow, Baiman’s 2023 LP,  was called one of “The Best Albums of the Year (So Far)” by The Boston Globe, awarded 4 stars from American Songwriter, and deemed a “Tremendously and remarkable record” by The Amp.  On the heels of an album release year that saw her play move than 130 shows across the globe, Baiman has made 2024 her “Year of collaboration” with a series of A Side/B Side projects featuring some of her favorite songwriters including Pony Bradshaw, Caroline Spence, Nicholas Jamerson, and Kaia Kater. If Common Nation of Sorrow was a novel, this year’s releases feel more like short stories, just long enough to make you want more. 

Raised in Chicago, Baiman made her way to Nashville at 18 with the dream of being a professional fiddle player and has since released two solo records and an EP, alongside session and side-person work with Kacey Musgraves, Kevin Morby, and Molly Tuttle among many others. As a songwriter, she has garnered a reputation for her specific brand of political and personal lyricism, which Vice’s Noisey described as ‘Flipping off Authority one note at a time”. 

In contrast with her previous work, (Watchouse’s Andrew Marlin produced her debut album, Shame), Baiman was the sole producer of Common Nation of Sorrow. After recording for twelve days in Nashville with Grammy-Award-winning engineer Sean Sullivan, Baiman traveled to Portland, OR, where she spent two weeks mixing the record with famed engineer and producer Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket/The Decemberists/First Aid Kit). For her new collaborative singles, she turned to friend and indie-pop writer and producer Clare Reynolds, known professionally as Lollies.  “One thing I learned from producing my own record is that I love producing, as long as it’s not my own parts”, she laughs.  “I thought it would be great to have another kind of collaboration included in these new songs, on the production side.