Just after college I created a band with one of my best lifelong friends and we created our best song, Baba Yaga. It grew from a jam session where we spun folk-like music from my guitar and his violin. Our quasi-inspired ditties were the source of a lot of fun and laughter and for one great year we dove head first into the possibilities offered by a lively set of folk music.
In one of the first jam sessions he came up with a melody to accompany my strumming and stopped to say it reminded him of a folk tale he’d heard as a kid about Baba Yaga, a witch that flew around in a mortar and pestle and had a house propped on chicken legs.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but rolled with it – and a song was born.
11 years ago we recorded the song after having revived the band for a brief period, and adding the creative input of several other members. I wanted to put Baba Yaga on the self-titled debut for The Fenbi International Superstars but it just wasn’t ready at the time we went to press it. Instead we completed the track several months after the fact, and versus releasing it as a single, allowed it to collect dust.
Until FolkeFIRE revived it.
While the FIRE part of my mission is to pursue financial independence through music – eventually maxing out my ROTH IRA using only funds acquired from performing music, the other part of this mission is to keep up the creative part of my soul through music and writing – activities that once brought me a lot of joy but have since been squelched by the pursuit of reasonable living standards. I was recently inspired to dust off the MP3 version of Baba Yaga – and for $50 released it digitally worldwide through CD Baby.
I am thrilled to be able to share the track with the world. To quote my pal Jeff Douglass (RIP) I don’t think it will set any world records, but it will forever encapsulate one of my favorite periods of my life!
