Blake Babies
The Internet Age has turned nostalgia into the world’s hottest commodity, and few things fuel and satisfy the demand for it quite like rock-band reunions. The music festival circuit is replete with fence-mending, cash-grabbing rockers of yore taking victory laps for fans. Reunions have become the standard, cliché epilogue in almost every established band’s trajectory. And that’s what makes the return of Boston college rockers Blake Babies so interesting — the trio never enjoyed fame, hype, money or latter-day mass nostalgia. Rather, after an unearthed relic stirred up some dormant inspiration, three friends found a good excuse to put the band back together and break out the old songs again.
Don’t feel embarrassed if you’re completely unfamiliar with the band. Blake Babies fans tend to be those of us lucky enough to have coexisted with the band during their brief run as critical darlings during the post-R.E.M, pre-Nirvana indie-rock window. Singer-guitarist John Strohm was already a founding member of then-hardcore Boston upstarts The Lemonheads when he and then-girlfriend and drummer Freda Love Smith met singer-bassist Juliana Hatfield at Berklee College of Music. The trio created a delicate but spunky folk-infused brand of power pop that hinged on the contrast between Hatfield’s childlike vocal delivery and the often acerbic lyrics of her angsty, first-person confessionals. That sound grew considerably stronger and more mature over the course of three critically acclaimed LPs — 1987’s Nicely, Nicely, 1989’s Earwig and 1990’s Sunburn — but the band never gained much of a following outside college radio circles. Blake Babies disbanded in early 1992, just as Nirvana brought on the alternative-rock big bang that would serve each member well in their post-Babies endeavors.
As a solo artist and with her band, The Juliana Hatfield Three, Hatfield enjoyed heavy rotation on MTV’s Buzz Bin in the early ’90s, while Strohm and Love formed the country-tinged noise-pop band Antenna back in their hometown of Bloomington, Ind. In 2000, Blake Babies reunited for another record and tour, then considered the band’s last hurrah. Strohm started law school, got married and now lives in Nashville, where he works as a prominent entertainment attorney. Smith went on to be a lecturer and undergraduate adviser for Northwestern University’s Department of Radio/Television/Film. Hatfield continued playing music full time, releasing more than half-a-dozen solo albums since, as well as albums via side projects like Some Girls (with Smith on drums), Minor Alps and, recently, The I Don’t Cares — a band that also features Replacements legend Paul Westerberg and A-list session drummer Josh Freese.
Earlier this year, Strohm came upon a box of tapes unearthed in a basement in Indiana, one of which contained the demos for Earwig. Impressed not only by the quality but also the “essence” captured within, he decided they needed to be heard. By way of a PledgeMusic campaign, the band crowdfunded an LP release of the material. In what seemed like a logical incentive for fans, the band decided to reunite for a handful of shows if they met their fundraising goal. Smith, the catalyst behind the band’s first reunion, had made attempts to reunite Blake Babies a few times over the past several years, but the deciding vote was always Hatfield’s.
“Freda and I are always up for doing stuff,” Strohm tells the Scene via phone. “We love to play music together. We love to play music with Juliana. Juliana is the one who’s always [saying], ‘I don’t know.’ ”
But the Earwig Demos came together at just the right moment.
“I don’t even know how it happened,” Hatfield explains on a separate call. “It wasn’t my idea. I don’t really conceptualize anything or really plan ahead. I feel like things just kind of happen, and I’m receptive to what’s kind of in the air, and this whole getting-back-together thing feels like it just sort of came along with the wind.”
The band booked just a handful of shows — one in Evanston, Ill., where Smith now lives, with a hometown block party gig in Boston following shortly after. The band also booked a couple appearances in Strohm’s adopted hometowns of Birmingham, Ala., and Nashville, bringing them to The Basement East on Saturday.
Hatfield admits the first few outings were shaky, but that the trio is quickly settling into an old, familiar groove made new again after 15 years apart.
“There’s an ease to playing with them, John and Freda,” Hatfield explains. “A chemistry that I don’t have with any other things that I’ve done. So it’s not just going back and getting together and playing the old songs — it’s really trying to use our present energy, who we’ve become as people, taking this new, older, richer, experienced energy and bringing that to the old songs and seeing how they mix together.”
Things are mixing together so well that the band has started writing new material, while figuring out how to work together with every member living in a different city and tending to their careers. With the benefit of hindsight and without any outside pressure to create, Strohm insists the band is considerably less ambitious than they were 25 or 30 years ago, explaining that they’ve set the bar at simply having fun again.
“If there’s anything I want to say about it, it’s that we’re just trying to have a good time,” he says. “It’s really fun to share the songs several years after making them, and we’re enjoying it and definitely forging and looking ahead. So it’s definitely good vibes.”
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