Two-piece duo The Baker’s Basement are bringing a unique sense of individuality back to the rock genre – nowhere is this more evident than in their song, Kings Hwy. Their music also has elements of folk and indie, making for something very different to most of the rock out there at the moment!
By Jane Howkins
You recently released a single titled Kings Hwy. What can you tell us about the song?
Kings Hwy is an ode to the home that once was. After bidding farewell to our rented house of ten years, we were drawn to reflect on all that happened within those walls. It was a place we lived, created and honed our craft. So many songs and projects and life episodes. Kings Hwy was crafted to capture 3 stages of experiencing a home: the nervous excitement and potential energy of first moving in; all the days spent actually doing the living and the phase of moving out, with memories engrained while also experiencing a renewed sense of wonder over where and what comes next.
Where can Kings Hwy be purchased and how has the reception been so far?
Kings Hwy can be listened to on all major streaming platforms and purchased on Bandcamp. The response has been good! I think a lot of people can relate to the moving process and what that entails both physically and emotionally.
You also released a track recently called Wild Wild Sheep. What can you tell us about that song and what does the title refer to?
“Wild Wild Sheep” is a song inspired by the sort of sheep one might count when trying to fall asleep. More precisely, it’s about the fantastical places to which those sheep travel when they are no longer being accounted for. With their sleepy shepherd busy collecting z’s, those Wild Wild Sheep are free to dive deep into vast worlds unknown: landscapes wider than oceans, taller than mountains, longer than cornfields and stronger than rivers.
We recently put out a video for this one as well. We created a wind-up toy world in our basement that shows our imaginations at work. It’s a lot of fun!
An album was also released recently with the same name. What can you tell us about the album?
We’re both pretty proud of this body of work we just put out. It’s a great reflection of where we are now in terms of ability, confidence, personality and soul. We have embraced our quirky and playful inclinations as an act but didn’t shy away from the tender moments that ground the work. Years ago, our move from a traditional full drum kit to our current set up (a more compact homemade kit built out of paint buckets) involved a fair share of growing pains. It took some time to build our confidence and way of doing things given a smaller size and peculiar rhythmic set up. This album felt like a turning point for all of that, and it allowed this adventurous collection of songs a chance to be given a real sense of life. A lot of small songs and details about the little things. Soundscapes and effects are interwoven, captured largely in the field from our own journeys. A whole lot of love went into this album, and we like to describe it as a sort of whimsical journey to places both real and imagined. In the past we haven’t been the best with promoting ourselves, but we have really tried to give this project a chance to be heard. It’s been great so far.
Do you plan to release any more singles anytime soon?
Yes! We just released a single in the spirit of the spooky season called Skeleton Party – we even morphed into skeletons to create a video of us performing the tune at an amazing studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan called Dogtown. Our next single is called Something’s Brewing and we’re releasing it in mid-December.
Has the pandemic hindered your work much?
The start of the pandemic was a challenge, but we embraced it from a creative aspect. We did a month-long springtime ‘house tour’, where we toured to a different area of our house each week via zoom. We also made a song/video called At Least 100 Things to do Inside a Quarantine. We even had a couple in person events, performing at a distance in backyards; there were some folks who wanted to make their loved ones’ celebration special, despite not being able to go anywhere. We feel very lucky to now have a steady stream of shows and to be performing beside other artists again. It’s been an encouraging year.
You’re based in Cleveland, Ohio. What is the local music scene like where you are?
Cleveland has a bit of everything if you are willing to explore… from metal to folk-punk to hip-hop and Americana. Every winter they do an awesome outdoor music festival called Brite Winter where we all embrace the cold weather together. Also – it’s nice being an artist in a city in such close proximity to other towns with performance opportunities: Akron, Columbus, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Toledo, Kent. You see a lot of bills shared between artists from these places. We especially love performing around Akron.
Your music is rather folky. What/who influences you most as artists? What have you been listening to recently?
Our influences are all over the place. Some of the artists we’ve been listening to a lot recently: Mac Miller, Lomelda, Louie Zong, Jon Brion. Others that have stuck with us over the years: Beatles, Bone Thugs, Lana Del Rey, MGMT, Death Cab, Modest Mouse, Milk Carton Kids, Mr. Gnome, Amy Winehouse.
Do you have any plans to tour in the UK?
We would love to find our way over the pond. We’re hoping to figure a way to make touring work beyond the Midwest in the coming years. We’ll see how it goes!