So. Folk music. In a rather small world I had a rather small presence. You might have heard me if you're one of these people. Or seen me over your beer, pounding my acoustic guitar alone on stage at the Iron Horse in central Massachusetts, working my way through the opening set for whichever famous folksinger you paid good money to see. Or that might have been me you saw as part of the group Camp Hoboken, somewhere in Georgia or Oklahoma or Texas. If you've really been paying attention and been around awhile, you might even remember me as that kid who asked too many questions and introduced the acts at Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, way back in the late 1980s. But that wasn't a gig, that was school--the wood shed. The others were gigs, and for most of the 1990s--even while in the army, when I could--that's what I tried to do: gig. Life is two words: write and travel. Scribble and drive. Not blessed with what you might call a beautiful voice, and although competent not God's-gift to guitar pickers, I did have one particular talent that maybe set me apart from some of the hundreds of other pale, skinny, guitar-wielding young folk warriors of the 1990s: I could write. Bad with harmony, but good with words. Not exactly commercial fare, though. I started writing these songs to amuse myself, mostly. I was 18, with a baby daughter, and didn't get out much. I didn't have the concentration to write a novel, really. I was too tired. But three or four minutes, that I could do. Most novelists, I think, start by writing short stories. I did that, too. But my short stories were set to music: people seemed to like the one about the woman on the lam after shooting her husband, the one about the soldier's footlocker, the one about the crook mouthing off to the cop, the one about the ex's dog, the one about the chick named Memphis, the one about Michaelangelo and the nuns, the one about coffee (typical audience confusion, this is actually the same as the first song). It was a lot of fun. Kind of like childbirth, I'm sure; I mean, how much fun can living out of your car be. But you only really remember the good parts, and I had a lot of fun. A link to folkweb.com and the albums Friends and road dogs: The Frequent Co-Writer The Poet The Grouch The Marys Ye olde ancient pre-prose publicity machine: "Christian Bauman is a strong writer of political songs, so what this album [Out Here in the Perimeter, 1995] lacks in polish it makes up for in incisive lyrics and attitude. Bauman spent years in the army and time in Somalia and Haiti, so the international flavor of the songs is neither forced nor false. A lot of people with big budgets would be happy to have material this strong. Out Here in the Perimeter is not an album suited to being played in the background. It stands up as a strong first work by a writer willing to try his hand in different styles with big arrangements or simple acousticity." --Richard Meyer, songwriter and former editor of Fast Folk, writing in All Music Guide "These tunes and images [from RoadDogs, Assassins, and the Queen of Ohio, 1997] will be tattooed in your memory just as surely as that rose is tattooed on Bauman's arm." --Marilyn Rea Beyer, FolkRadio 91.9 fm Boston, writing in the New England Folk Almanac "Folk-on-the-edge...true genius in writing." --Crossroads magazine "Pay attention: Chris has the songs." --Fast Folk magazine "Rough-edged sonic moves...this guy writes killer songs." --Dirty Linen magazine "Raw, rootsy, and powerful! A reminder that one guy with an acoustic guitar can still be very, very cool." --The New Jersey Courier News "With the force of a stiletto through the heart, Bauman makes a powerful claim as one of the most beautifully dangerous talents in contemporary folk music." --The Easton, PA Express-Times

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