As Flaming Wrekage’s brutal fourth album tickles your earholes, you know this is something special. …
Bakers Eddy’s journey began in 2009 when 4 friends started jamming together in high school creating punk rock with a slight pop edge to it.
Over the next few years the Wellington outfit started to release one off singles slowly but it was only in the last 2-3 years the band started taking their music career seriously.
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Bakers Eddy collectively came to the decision to leave New Zealand and travel 4,155 km to Melbourne to start working with producer Tom Larkin of Shihad fame on their first E.P which will see the light of day this Friday. Hysteria spoke to Bakers Eddy’s vocalist Ciarann Babbington about the title and the sonic direction of the E.P, being influenced by Australian surf rock, working with Tom Larkin and why they found Australia so appealing plus much more!
Hysteria: What was the thinking behind calling the E.P I’m not making good decisions?
Ciarann Babbington: At the time when we were writing the E.P we were just partying a lot and spending too much money and doing a lot of things that influenced the name just by the fact that we were living pretty poorly while we were writing. That theme runs through all the songs so it made sense actually!
When listening to the E.P it reminds me of the garage rock music of the early 00’s, how would you describe the music?
I agree with you, it has a lot of late 90’s early 00’s garage rock and punk rock but I also think it’s got a little bit of Australian surf punk that’s big at the moment. It has influenced songs like Jack Shit For You and bands like The Smith Street Band with their open chords inspired that song as well.
So Australian music is becoming an important influence on your band?
It has since we’ve been over here, we’re from Wellington New Zealand and for some reason Australian music doesn’t find its way over there and when we came to Melbourne we found out about all these bands we had never heard of before and it definitely had an impact on us one way or another.
There are a lot of styles of punk rock that are really well received in Australia, it’s quite different in New Zealand, everything is quite black and white so we were struggling to find our place, where as over here you’ve got bands like Skegss and Hockey Dad making music that isn’t just black and white so that was the main reason we come over to Australia.
[ Ciarann Babbington ]
So you guys moved to Melbourne in 2016 to work with Tom Larkin of Shihad, What was it about Australia that appealed to you guys?
I think it was the size of Australia, we specifically went to Melbourne to work with Tom but also it’s bigger than Wellington and the rock music scene here especially is more colourful than back at home. There are a lot of styles of punk rock that are really well received in Australia, it’s quite different in New Zealand, everything is quite black and white so we were struggling to find our place, where as over here you’ve got bands like Skegss and Hockey Dad making music that isn’t just black and white so that was the main reason we come over to Australia.
Are there bands in New Zealand that you guys were into as well or did you mainly listen to music that was outside of your home country?
We were listening to a lot of New Zealand music but we found the music outside of our country had a bigger influence on us. If you had asked me that question 2 years ago I would of said we were listening to music like Shihad. New Zealand music for me is reggae and dub that’s the music we love, artists like Fat Freddy’s Drop and Katchafire.
You’ve opened for Gang Of Youths, The Rubens and Highly Suspect and the band’s playing The Great Escape festival next month in Europe alongside several Australian artists. Who are some other bands you would love to go on tour with and what do you like the most about playing festivals?
We would love to go on tour with The Bennies because I know there in Europe at the same time as we are. What we like about festivals is meeting people, you get to hang out with other bands, start relationships and you get to see a whole bunch of other bands. It’s like a cool vibe when you get to play festivals just hanging out and the parties are great.
You guys are doing 4 headline shows as part of the EP launch tour, two pre-show launches in Melbourne and an official launch in Sydney and the Gold Coast, is there any plans for a show in Brisbane and are you guys hoping to travel in other parts of the country such as Perth and Adelaide?
Absolutely, there was suppose to be a date in Brisbane but we couldn’t get the venue so we couldn’t do it this time around. We head to New Zealand to do a few shows and then we’ll probably do another tour around Australia and hopefully get over to Perth and play other places we haven’t been to yet. We definitely will do Brisbane; I know the music scene there is definitely kicking at the moment so we need to get back there.
We’re going to be messing around with some weird stuff but at the same time it’s still going to be a party.
[ Ciarann Babbington ]
Are you guys currently working on new material for an album? What can fans expect from a debut Bakers Eddy album?
We’re slowly writing, we’re going to be spending about a week in Europe specifically to write new music. We’re going to find a house in the middle of nowhere, sit down with some guitars and write a bunch of songs, we’re going to try and write a lot of songs. It will be a good follow up to the new E.P, at the moment we’re experimenting with different ways of playing chords on the guitar, we’re going to be messing around with some weird stuff but at the same time it’s still going to be a party.
On your Facebook profile, you mention the band was taught Maori Culture in school giving you a respect for their culture and then coming to Australia you found there was a gap in respect, education and human rights for our indigenous people. Is it important for you guys to make your fans aware about what’s going on politically?
I think it is important, I don’t think we do it enough. Growing up in New Zealand you can see there is a gap. In school it was compulsory to be taught the multi language alongside the customs and about respect. When someone formally comes to your high school you do this celebration where you greet him or her as well as sing and it goes for an hour, it’s a big deal for us.
As the vocalist, are you the primary songwriter or is it more democratic and all the members of the band can take turns in writing lyrics?
I write all the lyrics, in terms of the music it’s always been about collaborating, we learned how to play music through writing songs, we’ve always written songs together as a unit. I’ll come to the table with riffs or Jamie our drummer writes lyrics too. So we just bring everything to the table and then hit it out for a few hours and see what happens. Everyone’s got their own say; we communicate with each other and say honestly if what we’re doing is shit or not, so we don’t start any arguments.
What does the future hold for Bakers Eddy after you guys have completed touring in Australia and Europe?
Coming back and doing it all again this time with an album. That’s the plan to just keep going, progress further, make more music and play to more people.
How did you come up with the band name Bakers Eddy?
Honestly, it’s not an interesting story. I got stoned in high school in English class reading To Kill A Mocking Bird and the band prior to that had come up with 7 different names. We were 4 years into the band and we thought the next name we decide on, we’ll have to stick to it and we’re not going back. So I was stoned and dyslexic and I read this line in the book that mentioned this place called Bakers Eddy and I thought fuck this is a great band name we’ll take it!
Purchase Bakers Eddy’s debut EP I’m Not Making Good Decisions here.
Catch Bakers Eddy at the following dates later this month.
Thursday 26th April // The Record Crate // Sydney with Ride For Rain & Serial Killer Dinner Party
Friday 27th April // Miami Shark Bar // Gold Coast with Serial Killer Dinner Party, Charlie Rebel, Drop Ins, The Ill-Nation & Monster Fodder
