Baskery
A few weeks ago, self-described "banjo punk" trio
Baskeryquietly signed a record deal with Warner Bros. The signing comes a little over a year after the Bondesson sisters — Greta, Stella and Sunniva — moved to Nashville from Stockholm, where they grew up, to dedicate themselves to music and songwriting.
Sunniva Bondesson, the youngest of the three and the band's primary songwriter, tells Nashville Cream by phone from Los Angeles that Baskery has "tons of stuff" written and demoed.
"That's how we got the deal," she says proudly. They also have some session and co-write work Bondesson says may or may not make it onto their first effort for WBR. As they decide which songs to give the major-label shine, they're also in talks with their new label — hence the trip to L.A. — about a producer to helm the project.
"We're trying to meet as many people as possible and find out who's going to be the one," Bondesson says. "We're stubborn people, so it has to be someone with a lot of authority so they can kind of crack our wall."
She walks back that "stubborn" talk a bit when she describes the particularly strong bond she and her sisters have developed.
The Bondessons have been singing together since they were kids, and playing in a band for a decade. They've already had a record deal, on EMI in Sweden, as the rockabilly band The Slaptones. The drummer in that band was the person who got them interested in playing music in the first place — their dad.
"We have our certain [kind of] communication," Bondesson says.
That said, "I think we're pretty easy to work with," she continues. "We are totally in tune with each other and we know exactly what we want."
The sisters all live together, and Sunniva produces and records their demos at home, so getting an outsider on their wavelength will probably take some doing.
"We're trying to listen to other people," she says with a laugh, "but it's pretty hard."
Friday night, Baskery headlines the second night of Third Man Records' AmericanaFest showcases. In a nice bit of booking kismet, the Haden Triplets open the show in the Blue Room; they'll be followed by Jonah Tolchin, Pete Molinari and Danny and The Champions of the World. (This is an AMA wristband-requiring event, but a limited number of $15 tickets will be for sale, space permitting.)
If you haven't seen Baskery around Nashville much before, that's by design — they've been lying low for a bit as they worked on writing and recording. Here's the video for "The Shadow," from their last album Little Wild Life:
