Photo: David Young
I think we can call it a bona fide reunion now.
After the release of the 1980s Earwig demos and the semi-private shows last month for PledgeMusic subscribers, Blake Babies today announced a couple more shows in John’s “hometowns”:
October 15, 2016 - The Basement East, Nashville, TN
October 16, 2016 - Saturn, Birmingham, AL
Support at both shows is Phoebe Bridgers.
Tickets are on sale Friday, August 5, 2016 at 10am CDT.
Magnificent.
Since we'll be close, we are open to booking a house concert within approx 200 miles of Nashville on Friday, 10/14, details tbd. Hit us up!
— Blake Babies (@blakebabies) August 4, 2016
Regular visitors here will be familiar with David Young's excellent live photos. He has kindly provided us with another exceptional set from the Blake Babies show at Evanston, IL yesterday.
David has sent a different photo set to the band too so look out for them should they be posted across the official accounts.
This is the setlist from Saturday's Blake Babies show at Space, Evanston, IL:
Thanks for spiketop for sharing the info and for the video of Rain above, taken from a YouTube playlist with 6 other clips.
With thanks to spiketop, here's the set list from the 2 Blake Babies shows on July 9, 2016:
From a Blake Babies interview at chicagoist on the subject of future plans:
STROHM: Nothing specific, but we’re generally feeling good about the way things are going. I can only speak for myself, but I would love to find a way to do more with Freda and Juliana.
LOVE: Not yet, but I hope we play a few more shows. We are also discussing the possibility of reissuing our back catalogue.
HATFIELD: As far as the Blake Babies go, we are not really looking past this Chicago thing. We have no solid plans for anything else but the Boston shows were fun and I hope that at some point we can maybe try and do some more.
As premiered at Stereogum here's an official live recording of Lament, from the Blake Babies' Q Division shows earlier this month.
Best wishes to any of you going to the Evanston show tomorrow. Hope you have a great time.
WGN Radio of Chicago has an interview with all three Blake Babies:
Now, this is a treat! The highly acclaimed and much beloved indie-rock band the Blake Babies (John Strohm, Freda Love Smith and Juliana Hatfield) join Justin [Kaufmann] to talk about their careers, how they came together, when they decided to try a career in music, seeing the bands around them become successful, what they learned from being in a band, trying to create something unique, what they remember about making those early records, releasing the demos of their record, “Earwig” what it means to be a part of this iconic band and the role that music plays in their lives now.
You can listen to the 40 minute interview at WGN's site.
Ryan Bray, for Consequence of Sound:
Boston in the mid-to-late ’80s was a fertile, if underrated, hotbed of musical talent. The city boasted scores of bands that were poised for big things just a few years around the bend, among them the Pixies, The Lemonheads, Buffalo Tom, Juliana Hatfield, Morphine, Belly, and Throwing Muses. The talent was flowing over the proverbial brim, but it needed a hub, an outlet through which the various sounds coursing through the city’s veins could be heard.Fort Apache Studios filled that void. When Sean Slade, Jim Fitting, Paul Kolderie, and Joe Harvard officially opened Fort Apache in the spring of 1986, it was a no-frills operation run out of an industrial space in Roxbury — hardly the stuff of legends. But what started as an effort to document the local scene quickly grew into an enterprise that would produce some of the biggest guitar rock records and acts of the ’90s. The Fort Apache story is one steeped in the DIY ethos that defined the American rock underground and helped pave the way for grunge and alternative to explode into the mainstream. More than the story of a studio, this is the story of a largely unsung underground movement that helped define a musical era.
It's a lengthy 'oral history' style article, well worth your time with quotes from Fort Apache staff and musicians such as Lou Barlow, Kim Deal and Bill Janovitz.
A video posted by Thalia M (@thalianation) on
Thanks to spiketop for getting in touch with the above Sanctify clip from the weekend's Blake Babies shows.
Also, the Girl In A Box clip is taken from Thalia M's thalianation Instagram account, where there are more clips of Lament, Severed Lips and Nirvana, also embedded in an account of the shows at Vanyaland.
The most important news to emerge from the shows is John P Strohm confirming that both sets at Q Division Studios were recorded. YERRRSSSSS!
Video from yesterday's Blake Babies reunion shows in Somerville, MA.
There's more on the Blake Babies Facebook page.
The Earwig demos from 1988 were released on Friday (July 8) as a download for those of use who placed PledgeMusic orders. The quality is outstanding in every sense.
From an interview in The Boston Globe with all three Blake Babies by Steve Smith:
It’s not a journey Hatfield is altogether comfortable taking. “I haven’t listened since we made them,” she confesses during a telephone interview covering the album’s arrival, as well as two concerts the Blake Babies will play in Boston on Saturday for small, select audiences who crowd-funded the LP’s production.“I know I have to listen to them at some point,” she continues, laughing softly. “I haven’t. . . . I’m afraid to go back. I’m listening to the album recordings so I can re-learn the songs for the shows. But I actually have not listened to these demos that we’re promoting.”
Up until around a year ago, neither had anyone else, probably. Strohm, speaking by telephone from his home in Nashville with Love — now Love Smith — on the line in Evanston, Ill., described how the tapes had come to be.
The artwork for the soon to be released Earwig Demos as revealed in the latest Blake Babies PledgeMusic Update. Design by Jeremy Fetzer.
A photo posted by Jeremy Fetzer (@jeremyfetzer) on
Juliana, writing for The Talkhouse:
I had written a song, “Nirvana,” about my big love for Nirvana’s first album, Bleach, specifically for the song “Negative Creep,” which had inspired me so much. Also, we knew a lot of the same people, including Danny Goldberg, who had signed me to Atlantic Records and who worked with Nirvana in management. After Kurt died, I gave a copy of the letter to Danny, who had it framed and hung it on his office wall.
A couple of days after the Nirvana show, my band and I met up to fly to the U.K. to start our own tour, and my drummer gave me the note. He had been hanging out in private with Kurt in New York in the days after the Roseland show and Kurt had then given the note to him to pass on to me.
The article includes an image of Kurt's note.
The Blake Babies Earwig Demos project has reached the 100% goal over at PledgeMusic.
There's still a couple of months to get involved:
John P Strohm writing on the early Blake Babies days at The Talkhouse:
So when I moved to Boston to attend Berklee College of Music in the fall of 1985, I’d had a tiny taste of success in music, and that gave me some ambition — if not for school, at least for making a band. My girlfriend Freda moved out a few months into my first year, and together we very actively pursued our goals. Freda generously gives me credit in her recent Talkhouse piece for being the one with the confidence and relative musical expertise, but as ambitious as I may have been, Freda had the bigger vision. I wanted to crack the local scene and impress the local venues; Freda wanted to be up there with our heroes — even if our heroes (such as the Replacements and the Minutemen) were probably still touring in vans and crashing with friends and parents between tours. As proof of this, I will note that our famous first meeting with Juliana Hatfield — who we approached cold in the Berklee dorms to ask her to join our non-existent band — was all Freda’s idea. And she did all the talking. Neither of us thought of ourselves as potential stars — so we needed to find one. Freda spotted Juliana just as Juliana spotted us, and there was no question in any of our minds that we should make a band.
The previoulsy announced private Blake Babies shows are now scheduled for July:
July 9, 2016 - Boston, MA
2 private studio performances (matinée & early evening)
pledgemusic.com/projects/blakebabies/bundles/17122
July 23, 2016 - Evanston, IL
Private matinée performance
pledgemusic.com/projects/blakebabies/bundles/17128
The I Don't Cares featuring Josh Freese on drums. And jumpsuits.
Blake Babies "Rain (live)" Nightstage; Cambridge, MA 1988How does that Bob Dylan lyric go? "Ah, but I was so much older then. ....." Here is "Rain (live 1988)"- part of the Exclusive DVD in our Earwig Demo Vinyl Bundle-> http://bit.ly/BlakesVinylDVD
Posted by the Blake Babies on Tuesday, 15 March 2016
Via the Blake Babies Facebook account, a video of Rain from Cambridge, MA in 1988.
The clip is taken from a DVD available as part of an exclusive bundle in the Earwig Demos PledgeMusic project.
