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. 

The first In Collaboration single release, “Dominoes”, with Pony Bradshaw, was the result of months of musical collaboration. “I’d been playing and singing in Bradshaw’s band some, and on his upcoming record, and we’d always talked about writing something together.  So this felt like a natural progression.”  The song hit 100,000 streams on Spotify in it’s first month, and Wide Open Country called it “a gut wrenching tale that catalogs the tension between two people acting on their worst impulses, leading to a domino effect of fallout.”

With a beguiling voice that would feel right at home on classic country radio, Marley Hale delivers a captivating country/folk sound rooted in the refined yet adventurous musicality she’s cultivated almost her entire life. As revealed on her debut EP, By My Own Ways, to be released July 26, 2024, the Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter matches her timeless sensibilities and graceful musicianship with a one-of-a-kind narrative voice, endlessly merging raw truth with mesmerizing storytelling. 

Born in Austin but raised in Northern California, Hale first learned to play guitar from her father at age 10 and soon began writing songs of her own. Although she grew up listening to classic-rock bands like Led Zeppelin and pop visionaries like Kate Bush and David Bowie, she later became fascinated with folk luminaries such as Karen Dalton and Bob Dylan and eventually discovered the artists she now lists among her essential touchstones, including Loretta Lynn and Gillian Welch. 

Co-produced by Hale and Dylan McKinstry at Greenpoint Recording Collective, By My Own Ways presents a collection of lived-in stories capturing moments of danger and desperation and all-consuming longing, setting each track to a sound that’s rich in finespun detail. By My Own Ways encompasses everything from smoldering country-rock to piano-laced honky-tonk—ultimately lending a strangely enthralling power to Hale’s intimate meditations on self-loathing and self-acceptance.