Pryor Baird had barely finished the opening verse of “I Don’t Need No Doctor” when the first judge on The Voice, Adam Levine, hit the button that flipped his chair around, meaning Baird had passed through the show’s “blind audition” phase.
By the end of the song, all five judges had hit their buttons to face him as he riffed electric guitar and sang the soulful blues tune. They all wanted a chance to serve as his coach and have Baird join their team.
Baird, who currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee, was born and raised in “a little bitty town called Old Orcutt,” he told the judges. He will continue on to compete in the “battle” phase of the show on Blake Shelton’s team.
The Sun caught up with Baird to talk about growing up and performing on the Central Coast, his bluesy style, and what it’s like competing on The Voice.
Sun: Tell us about growing up in Orcutt and when you first started playing music.
Baird: I grew up in Old Orcutt, California, on some property on the outside of town, was introduced to the guitar by my uncle at like 2 years old, started taking lessons at 3, and that kind of leads me to where I am now.
Sun: That’s pretty early to start.
Baird: You know Jerry Coelho, Coelho Academy of Music? Jerry was my one and only guitar teacher for my entire career. I had guitar lessons every Tuesday for, God, I don’t know how many years.
Sun: You played some mean guitar during your audition for The Voice. Blues is such a raw, rough, and gritty style, but at the same time when you play it over and over, it tends to get polished even though it’s still rough around the edges.
Baird: Blues is something that will never be polished. If you think about where it comes from, it originates from down in the South in the delta. There’s nothing about the delta that’s polished. It’s cotton fields and deltas and it’s beautiful in its own way, but it’s a music that came from hard work and people who were in the worst possible frame of mind and place you could be, but they turned it into something beautiful. To me, it’s just this wonderful expression that you can put every ounce of yourself in it and let it come out and it feels so good.
Sun: How does that translate for your vocal style?
Baird: I remember like it was yesterday, when I was a little, little, little kid, and I remember hearing Jimmy Reed live at Carnegie Hall. I remember listening to Muddy Waters. Freddy King is probably my favorite, and I remember listening to Freddy King’s voice and saying to myself, “When I get older, that’s exactly what I want to sound like.” I never took a vocal lesson. I didn’t know how to do it, I didn’t know what to do, and then one day I had to sing and it just came out like that and it kinda stuck.
Sun: When you decided to throw your hat in for The Voice, how familiar were you with show?
Baird: Very unfamiliar. I’d only seen a couple episodes. I’d had a couple buddies who were on it, and I only watched their episodes when it was on. So, to say that I was uninformed and unaware of anything about The Voice would be a very accurate statement.
Sun: Tell us about your “blind audition” for The Voice.
Baird: A blind audition is where you’re out there for six or seven or eight weeks at a time and they give you a list of 400-and-something songs [to choose from] … . When it came time to go to the blind audition, you just go up there and hope you don’t trip going up the stage, hope you don’t mess up, do the very best you can do. Once I got up there to sing, I was telling myself, you know, “You only need one chair to turn.” And as soon as the first chair turned I kind of tuned everything else out and just kept going and having fun with it.
Sun: You got a lot of enthusiasm from the judges, who are also coaches you got to pick from. Who did you end up choosing?
Baird: I chose Blake Shelton.
Sun: Why was he your choice?
Baird: I went into it fully knowing that if I had the opportunity to pick Blake, I would. Fortunately that happened and I was able to have my pick of whoever I wanted. Towards the end, I was very close to picking Adam [Levine]. Adam had a lot of great positive things to say, as did every single other coach. You know, Adam was really focused on my guitar playing; it was something that was really important to him, and it’s extremely important to me as well. I almost chose him, but right toward the end, Blake was like, “Everything that he just said, you can do it all over here too. You can do whatever you want,” and I said, “OK, I’m gonna pick Blake.” I think Blake and I have kindred spirits. We’re both from the same place, lived the same kind of life. Not monetarily, but we’ve grown up hunting and fishing and being outside and enjoying the outdoors, being a musician that has played the honky-tonks, has played the divey bars, has toured in a pickup truck, and stayed in really bad hotel rooms, and not made any money and all that stuff. He’s just a good guy, a regular down-home, real person.
Sun: Do you foresee some more guitar solos while competing on The Voice?
Baird: I certainly hope so. I’ll do it as long as they let me.
Sun: Are you playing with a band while you’re performing?
Baird: Every single contestant plays with the same live band, and they are phenomenal, one of the best bands I’ve ever played with in my life.
Sun: You live in Nashville now. When did you make the decision to leave your home on the Central Coast?
Baird: I moved to Nashville in 2010. I was working at the Far Western Tavern and I’d been there forever, but then, I remember being in town playing music all over the place and seeing all these bands playing all over the place. And it was the same guys and the same bands playing the same bars and playing the same songs, week in and week out. That scared me to death. I said, “I don’t want to look back 20 or 30 or 40 years from now and be like, ‘What if I’d just done this, what if I’d just done that?’” So, literally, I called my dad and I said, “Dad, I’m moving,” and he said, “OK, where are you gonna go?” I said, “Well, I don’t know.” So he said, “Well, why don’t you come over and we’ll talk about it.” He’s got a pool hall right there in Orcutt, and we had a few cocktails and he had a big map up on the wall. He put a blindfold on me, spun me around in a circle, and gave me a dart. He said, “Where you gonna go?” And I said it was either going to be Chicago, Nashville, or Austin. And the dart landed in Paducah, Kentucky, and he said, “Well I guess that’s close enough to Nashville, I guess that’s where you’re going.” And literally two weeks later I had sold everything I had, packed up what I needed, which was one suitcase, 10 guitars, an amplifier, and my bed. I had a 2003 Ford F150 pickup, I loaded it all in the back, put a tarp over the top of it, and said goodbye to my mom, sister, and drove down to my dad’s house to say goodbye to him, and he was standing there with a cooler and a suitcase. I said, “What are you doing?” and he said, “Well I’m going with you. I’m not going to let my son drive all the way across country and have a good old time all by himself. I want to go too.” I said, “All right,” so he jumped in the truck with me and we left that night and drove to Nashville.
Sun: How has it been in Nashville?
Baird: Moving to Nashville is the greatest move I have ever made in my entire life. Not just move, but decision, not just for my musical career, but my personal life. I’ve found some of the greatest friends that I will have for forever, and I found the love of my life out here. If I’d have known my dream was three quarters of the way across the country, I would have moved here a long time ago.
Sun: So Pryor, what’s next for you on the The Voice?
Baird: The battles are next, so up until then, just keep watching The Voice every Monday and Tuesday and supporting the artists. Everybody on the show is great, and everybody brings something to the table. We’re all a little family. So turn it on, watch it, enjoy it, share it with your friends, and pass it along.
Managing Editor Joe Payne remembers putting Pryor Baird and the Deacons in the Sun’s community calendar years ago. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 15-22, 2018.