Interview: CJ from Bakers Eddy

So I have braved the cold winter evening to travel to the humble West Melbourne suburb of Maribyrnong, where the 4 Bakers Boys live in an old and rather run down 1970’s home – with some of the original 1970’s décor to match.

“We’ve only got a temporary lease here, as they are going to knock it down soon” says CJ – quite a common issue for young Melbourne renters looking for a reasonably priced property.

Despite the location being a little further out than the boys would prefer (40 minute tram ride into the city), they’ve called this place home for the last 4 months and spent the majority of their time here.

For the purposes of this exercise, I’ve decided to give it the affectionate nickname ‘The Bakery’.

So you guys have recently made the move from Wellington to Melbourne in March this year – Tell us a bit more about why/what you’ve been up to and how you’ve been finding it being in such a big city?

Mainly it was nice for us to have a change, we’ve grown up together, we started the band when we became friends and were in Wellington this whole time, this move was needed to shake us up.

It’s been interesting, been doing some major songwriting and working pretty hard since we got here so although it’s a big place with a lot to do we have been kind of confined to our house and the studio a fair bit.

We’ve have found the culture and everything different people are different too and it’s a whole new vibe.

We recently opened up for Strangers Melbourne show it was a good night but I had been sick for two weeks prior and had no voice etc – even despite this we still managed to play a really good set.

How did you guys originally come up with your band name ?

Dyslexia and a Book.

What’s it like all living in the same house? Is this the first time you guys have lived together?

First time we’ve lived together, apart from Ian and Alex (who are twin brothers) had obviously lived together growing up, it’s another whole new experience living together 24/7, even for mates that have known each other as long as we have – it’s been good though, we got to know a lot more about each other, and when it comes to the band, it’s strictly business, we all have a good working relationship and a good relationship with Claire (The band’s manager who has also made the move over to Melbourne).

So can we get a brief band history of how you guys got started etc?

First year in high school, eventuating into Rockquest the following year, but that wasn’t ever a thing that we aimed for – we just did it because we wanted to play gigs and not many local venues are keen to come and let 14 year olds play.

Alex joined us later in 2011, we had always been mates of course with his twin brother Ian being our bassist from the start and he used to sometimes turn up to our jams etc anyway. One day we decided it would be a good idea to have another guitar player, we were doing a show at Jamie’s (Drummer) Dad’s party and he quickly learnt a few songs and played that with us, then a just few weeks later at Wellington High we played at a screening of Shihad’s Beautiful Machine movie.

So you’re about to head off home to NZ for 5 dates in Hamilton, Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin for the ‘All our Truths’ tour with Skinny Hobos and Dead Favours supporting Decades – How did that come about? Is Wellington going to be kind of a ‘Welcome Home’ gig for you guys?

We weren’t planning on going back to do an NZ tour again so soon, but supporting Decades was an opportunity we couldn’t refuse.

So Wellington obviously will be our homecoming show, and we are really looking forward to looking forward to catching up and partying with our old friends.

We’ve all changed quite a bit as people, things are gonna be different for us than they were when we left, it will be interesting.

We’re also going to play our new songs which is really exciting, I don’t know if people will be expecting it to be the case that we have all new songs, which is cool, I don’t know how people will react, which is a bit scary.

What does the future have in store for Baker’s Eddy and what can we expect in the way of new material etc?

We’ve got big plans for the next 5 months, we’ve been in the studio recording the best songs we’ve ever written at Studio in the City working with Shihad’s Tom Larkin – so we’re looking to release a couple of singles , video and an EP as soon as those are finished.

This will be a huge step up from our previous EP – different vibe in terms of songs, and sound, it all feels brand new again which is exciting, just like when we first started the band.

Our sound is quite diverse and we wanted to narrow that down into really who we were.

We’ve come to understand that in the past 7 years we’ve been trying to sound mature, but that’s really the thing that we shouldn’t do, now we’re getting the same vibe as how we sound live coming across in the recordings.

We definitely have big plans in regards to spreading our wings internationally, but we really want to crack the Melbourne market first before we do anything else, part of why we’re here now is to give that a really good shot.