Baby Steps
The Boston Globe, December 11, 1998
Music Section: Joan Anderman
Boston's own Baby Ray begins the unsteady climb through the clubs and radio to mainstream success
The story isn't new. Rock band records demo tape on four-track machine in songwriter's messy living room and sends it out to a hundred or so indie labels. Demo winds up in garbage heap with the piles of other unsolicited demos received that week. Band doesn't get a deal. Or, miracle of miracles, they do get signed, and make a CD. Unfortunately, indie label lacks funds and clout needed to get band's song on the radio. CD is purchased by band's closest friends. End of story, either way.
Or not. Every once in a while that CD gets noticed, not because an executive had the deep pockets or the industry influence to wedge a single into rotation, and not because it mimics the lucrative tinkle of the platinum-selling band du jour, but rather because the music -- and here's a radical notion -- is that good. Boston rock band Baby Ray may be poised to join that rarified stratum of groups that make their way into the mainstream, against all odds, on the sheer strength of their songs.
Together for just more than a year, Baby Ray released its first CD, "Monkeypuzzle," last month on the New York-based Thirsty Ear label. The first single, "Never Know My name" is being spun on WBCN's and WFNX's Sunday night local music shows, and the band performed live in 'BCN's studios last week. "They were great," enthuses DJ Shred, who played the 7-inch single of the song "Sorry," when it came out a year ago. "They're really trying to do something different."
Indeed, "Never Know My Name" skitters out of the speakers with a pair of kinetic ping-ponging guitars and a thoroughly ingenious, twisted melody. Drums bash in a tart, taut shuffle, and the bass line ricochets in deep space like a rubber band with a brain. The song, and the whole CD, bristles with an energy as oddball as it is pristine, as challenging as it is accessible. This music is unabashedly catchy, and yet you'd be hard-pressed to find a hook. It's genuinely, seductively smart.
Armed with 14 tracks and more chord changes than some rockers can count, Baby Ray cuts a rakish path through the trippy fields of quirk-pop mapped by XTC, the band to which they're often likened. It's an apt comparison, but by no means does justice to the range of Baby Ray's sound, which stretches from dreamy balladry (the mesmerizing "Curl" to heavy metal (sprawling, wordless "Porky's Prey").
"It's not genre-crossing at all," explains singer/guitarist/songwriter Erich Groat -- who wrote the songs on "Monkeypuzzle" and also plays in the local band Willard Grant Conspiracy -- over lunch at the Middle East. "There's a lot more slow acoustic stuff, and some extremely frightening, angry, metallic stuff. We wanted to suggest some of the variety of what we do, but also wanted to put together a cohesive record. So we decided basically to make this a pop album."
The four-song, four-track demo that paved the way was recorded, in rock-n-roll storybook fashion, in Groat's living room, with fellow Baby Ray singer-guitarist Ken Lafler. The pair -- who met at Williams College, moved to Boston, and have since played in various bands together -- decided to lay down their own tracks after their most recent group, Brain Helicopter, broke up. Drummer Nathan Logus (who's played with the Barnies and Jules Verdone, and the only band member who couldn't make it to the interview) played on a couple of the songs, and, lacking a bass player, everyone took a turn at bringing up the bottom end. "It occurred to us," says Lafler, "that if we were really gonna sign, we'd need to have an actual band." Enter bassist Paul Simonoff (formerly of Chainsuck), who was found, quite literally, milling about at T.T. the Bear's Place in Cambridge. "I was watching a show and Nate was basically tapping people on the shoulder asking them if they played bass," Simonoff explains. "He gave me the tape and I auditioned." That was August, 1997.
This spring, Baby Ray signed with Thirsty Ear, a small label, but one with an illustrious history. Before it became a freestanding record label in 1995, Thirsty Ear Communications handled marketing for various major labels. In the late 1970s, the company pioneered the concept of selling artists to the then-unnamed alternative music audience; Talking Heads, R.E.M., and the Police were some of the artists Thirsty Ear worked with early on. The company's founder and president, Peter Gordon -- who signed Baby Ray -- says he hears in them the elusive blend of adventurousness and artistry that bears the mark of a great band.
"The demo was just very fresh, very musical," says Gordon. "It was intriguing because the band took a lot of chances and yet they really understood the art of making music. Some bands just deconstruct, and that's fine. But Baby Ray are able to take off, and leave just enough bread crumbs to find their was back home. It's a guitar-based pop band, and every trick in that genre has been pulled. That Baby Ray were able to reinvent that, I think, is tremendous."
Thirsty Ear's enthusiasm and support is the bottom line for Baby Ray. As to pesky details like paying the rent, Groat moonlights as a linguistics professor at Harvard, Lafler works in the financial aid office at the Harvard Law School, Simonoff tests software, and Logus is a freelance Web page designer. "To me, the big advantage of being with Thirsty Ear is that we knew they wouldn't mess with us, creatively," says Lafler. "We know that they would let us make the album we wanted to make. And I think for all of us that was the most important thing to begin with." The disadvantages, Lafler concurs, revolve around more practical concerns, "like they can't get us on commercial radio, and maybe they can't even get us on college radio." (The single has, in fact, been picked up by a handful of stations around the country, and has made it to the Top 30 in Cooksville, Tenn.) "But it's a balance," add Groat, "of doing a creative thing and still having something we can move ahead with career-wise."
Yet in spite of this project's relatively low status in the pecking order of the music industry, the music itself is being heard loud and clear. "Boston is a hotbed, but every once in a while a band stands out, has its own sound, that separates it from the pack," says Sean Sweeney, vice president for marketing at Newbury Comics, where "Monkeypuzzle" is being given every advantage. "We're trying to help the band out by keeping the CD well-priced and positioned on an endcap [an aisle-end display]. That's what we do with the records we believe in. And it's selling nicely."
Still, ascending the ladder of rock stardom is an exceedingly slow, often mysterious, and entirely unpredictable process. For all the positive media response, including notices in Billboard and Musician magazines, Baby Ray is having trouble lining up club shows at home. They've played sporadically at Mama Kin, Bill's bar, and the Lizard Lounge, but can't seem to break into a regular schedule on Boston's tightly knit club circuit. "We're not a guaranteed draw, Lafler concedes. "Many people who book the clubs still haven't made up their minds." Thirsty Ear's Gordon, cautiously optimistic, says that concentrating on breaking Baby Ray in the Boston area is a double-edged sword. "On the one hand, Boston's been greatly supportive. On the other hand, it's a helluva music town, saturated with talent. It's a high cost of entry getting into Boston. But I think Baby Ray finally has all the calling cards."
The boys in the band, meanwhile, are staying sane and grounded, learning to live in the protracted state of uncertainly -- full of wild highs and inexplicable lows and endlessly tangled signals -- that is a hallmark of an aspiring musician's life. They're hanging on to their day jobs as long as they can, because "you really can't predict when it's going to reach a certain point and take off," says Groat. "We're not pulling the levers," Lafler adds. "And all our potential hit songs have the F-word in them, so I'm not sure what's going to happen," Groat cracks, only half joking.
These are baby steps for Baby Ray. They know they've made a great record; they also realize that that's no guarantee they'll be embraced by an adoring public, or even, for that matter, that they'll get a hometown gig. It's a time for big hopes and realistic expectations. Asked to define success, Lafler mentions taking an entire year to devote exclusively to music. Groat fantasizes about an enthusiastic audience. And Simonoff says, without a glimmer of irony, "more microphones would be good."