Idol Chatter & Voice Views

His blind audition: Pryor Baird, 35, of Orcutt, Calif., covered “I Don’t Need No Doctor” by Ray Charles. Adam Levine turned early in the performance, all the other coaches followed. Blake complimented his “weathered” vocals, saying it sounded like Pryor smoked a pack of cigarette and drank a bottle of whiskey before taking the stage. Pryor joined Team Blake.

His background: You don’t make a ton of money playing and singing the blues, Pryor said. He should know. He told The Voice that from age 15 to 26 he toured, traveling all over the country, playing four or five shows a week. Then, in March 2010, “I packed up 10 guitars, one suitcase, put a tarp over it and drove to Nashville.” He’s now the project manager for a company that restores damaged homes. “I’ve been in Nashville for seven years,” he said, “and I played more music when I was in California. If I could make my living by playing music — sign me up.”

What the show didn’t show:

* Pryor told California’s Santa Maria Times that he grew up around music. His mother was a big fan of the blues; his dad was more into country, bluegrass and Americana, Pryor told the newspaper.

* During a conference call with the media, he said he started playing a guitar when he was 2 1/2 years old. “It’s just a part of me.”

* While he’s known mostly as a blues performer, Pryor said he enjoys performing a wide range of music — “bluegrass, the chicken-picking country music, I love blues. If blues was a person, that’d be me.”

* In 2008 and 2009, Pryor’s blues band entered the International Blues Challenge, hosted by the Memphis-based Blues Foundation. Both years, they finished in the Top 10.

* At the time, Pryor was leading a blues band known as Pryor Baird and the Deacons. You can find lots of videos of them performing on YouTube. I’ve embedded one below.

* Before there was any such thing as iTunes — “when you still had to sell CDs out of your car” — Pryor told Voice Views he and his band released a pair of albums. One is called “Under the Influence.” You can still listen to snippets of the tracks on AllMusic.com. The album’s nine songs include a six-minute version of Pryor’s blind audition song, “Don’t Need No Doctor.”

* More recently, Pryor has been performing as the Pryor Baird Band alongside Gabriel Riley II (drums), Artis Joyce (bass) and Mike Torres Jr. (keys). The Facebook link below goes to their band page.

* If he released an album today, Pryor said it would feature musicians who had mastered their instruments, “great songs, great hooks, great melodies” and would defy genre classification. “You could go to a country festival and see us. You could go to a blue festival and see us. You could go to a world music festival and see us. That’s the kind of music I’d like to put out.”

On picking Blake: “I went into it thinking it was going to be Blake, that’s who I was going to pick, no doubt. But once Adam started laying it on pretty thick, it was pretty tough. But I feel like Blake and I have a lot in common. We both love country music. We both love to be outdoors, hunting, fishing, sitting around a campfire and having a good time. Blake’s someone I would totally go hang out with.”

On social media:
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Twitter: @BairdPryor
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