The Bakersfield Sound Comes to East Hampton Library

The Bakersfield Sound was one of the dominant elements of country music from the 1960s through the 1980s and beyond, lifting such stars as Merle Haggard, Buck Owens and Jean Shepard to international fame. On Saturday, May 18, at 1 p.m. New York-based country singer Tennessee Walt will be presenting “From Bakersfield With Love,” a lecture and concert about Bakersfield artists and their music at the East Hampton Library.

The show will include classic Bakersfield songs such as Owens’s “Act Naturally,” Haggard’s “Today I Started Loving You Again” and Shepard’s “A Satisfied Mind,” but also songs by lesser-known Bakerfield artists such as Tommy Collins, Rose Maddox, Billy Mize and Red Simpson. And, as usual, Walt will talk about the stories behind the songs and the man who wrote them.

“People think of country music as based in Nashville, and indeed the 1950s through the 1970s was the era of the so-called Nashville Sound, a pop-influenced school of country,” said Gayden Wren, the Queens resident who performs on voice and piano as Tennessee Walt. “But Bakersfield, California, is a long way from Nashville, and the artists who rose out of Bakersfield’s rich musical culture had a country style all their own, far grittier and more akin to traditional country than what was coming out of Nashville in those years.

“The artists of the Bakersfield Sound were primarily refugees from the 1930s dust bowl, born in Arkansas, Texas and especially Oklahoma, or the sons and daughters of refugees,” Wren continued. “The experience of migrating west, usually with nothing they couldn’t carry in a single car, left them alienated from the glossy country of the Nashville Sound and hungry for music that related more to real people and the lives they lived.

“In a sense, they’re the real heirs of Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter Family, Ernest Tubb and Hank Williams, the people who made country what it is today.” Wren concluded. “When you listen to Haggard or Owens, you’re hearing a purer form of country than you could get from Nashville, then or since.”

“From Bakersfield With Love” is the eighth show from Tennessee Walt, following on the heels of “The Other Great American Songbook,” “Bristol & Beyond: The Birth of Country Music,” “Hanks a Lot!,” “Riding With the Outlaws,” “An Afternoon in the Country,” “Three Chords and the Truth: Country’s Greatest Songwriters” and “The Hank Williams Century.” Those shows have been enthusiastically received in dozens of venues in the greater New York area, as well as in Florida, Michigan, Tennessee and Texas.

This will be the first performance of Wren’s new show. All seven of his previous shows have premiered at the East Hampton Library, stretching back to 2016.

“East Hampton is special for me,” Wren said. “Back in 2015, when I first started playing as Tennessee Walt, I’d never done anything like this before and had no real credentials to say that I’d be any good at it. Steve Spataro, who’s the program director at the library, took a chance on me, and I haven’t forgotten that. I’ve done more than 120 shows since then, but the East Hampton ones always have a special meaning to it. The audience there is knowledgeable and has always made me feel welcome, and I look forward to visiting each year.”

Admission to “From Bakersfield With Love” is free. East Hampton Library is at 159 Main Street in East Hampton. For information, call 631-324-0222 or visit easthamptonlibrary.org.