Tim Baker Announces Along The Mountain Road, A Companion EP To 2022’3 Full-Length LP, The Festival For October 20
Almost a year to the day his latest LP, The Festival was released in 2022 – Tim Baker confirms the release of a new companion EP, Along The Mountain Road for October 20, 2023 (on End Times Music). Along The Mountain Road serves as a sonic and scenic guide to the creation of Tim’s last album and stands alone as a supporting EP. The Festival was released on October 21, 2022, also via End Times Music.
Where The Festival explored the existential anxiety and big dreams of pandemic isolation, Along The Mountain Road centres on Tim’s relocation home, from Toronto to Newfoundland, where all these recordings would eventually take place. The EP frames the move as it ultimately felt: like a pilgrimage, reaching back to Tim’s origins, his geographic and spiritual roots, and ultimately to a new beginning. It is within the framework of this personal odyssey that Along the Mountain Road finds its place as a captivating soundtrack and companion to The Festival. It showcases the sweeping sensitivity of a songwriter at the top of his craft. It allows a peek behind the curtain of how the album came to be and ultimately tells its own unique side story to Tim’s creative process.
Tim introduces us to the EP with the expansive, Along The Mountain Road opener, “Twenty Twenty.” Written on a summer’s day shortly after Tim’s homecoming, it reflects the experience of bracing oneself against the storm of COVID-19 at home, by the ocean where so many other storms have been weathered before. It’s a nod to the year it was written, and the palpable uncertainty of that time. The video filmed by Tom Cochrane and edited by Aaron Elliot is one long drone shot as Tim and his small team including Marcus Paquin (producer and bass player) and Liam O’Neill (drums) took refuge in their makeshift studio at the legendary, and stunning, Fogo Island Inn.
The Inn was shuttered in the pandemic and then under strict safety protocols was able to open its doors to Tim and his essential music production team as they began to make the new record and these EP songs. Marcus and Liam set up their gear in the library, and Tim in the great hall of the Inn, at the grand piano. The trio were linked by a live video feed.