Rising with goodness and fibre, and delivering healthy funk-fuelled music bread is The Bakery, a collective of creative sorts who have donned their aprons and rolled up a brand of tasty doughy funk. But shitty puns about food and bread aside, the band are heading the crop of groove merchants infiltrating our fine city, among other large-membered bands (*ahem*) like The Fuji Collective and Rumpunch.
And what a large-membered band The Bakery are! 11 in total, all making songs with lyrics like “my balls swing from side to side” and “you ride your women tough like you ride your horse” which feature in the track Balls. The brashness is very much there with everyone in the band on this track. Despite this, The Bakery brings forth a soulful, funky, danceable sound on a track like Way Back which gets you up from that boring chair and boogying around.
When catching up with Jesse and Emily from the band, we learn that they keep themselves grounded with a day job (as many musicians do). Drummer Jesse couriers packages around town. “I do deliver people sometime, across the border and that kind of thing. Sometimes I move Mexicans over to Marrickville! I try to bring some of them to shows, (but people) won’t recognise them, cause they’ll more be looking like vampires *laughs*. People can be kissed by a Mexican at our shows!”
With that kind of attitude to work, you can tell music seems to be on Jesse’s mind quite a bit “My life is about working as little as possible so that it doesn’t interfere with my music. Of course, sometimes I need money to buy stuff (for the band) like the costumes for the Mexicans, so one works with another fairly well”.
Looking at the gear they get into when on stage, Mexicans would probably fit right in. The Bakery go all out with feathers, masks and the odd bunny suit. So, aside from plans to bring sombrero-wearing props to the stage, the band do sometimes go about the serious side of actually making awesome funky music. Emily chimes in with the process of how they make their tunes, despite being a huge band. “Generally it is very democratic. We vote on ideas. We start with 30 people putting ideas in and in the end we get 10 people throwing in their hat, but in the end it all just comes down to me!”
All that hard work of formulating songs and the working negotiation that goes into it does end up with them doing exactly what they love in the end, as Jesse explains, “We’re kind of gearing up for the summer madness that are the summer gigs. Lotsa lotsa gigs, a north coast tour in January and a few festivals. We’re busy as well and we’re lovin’ it! We play because we love it. So the more we get to do it, the more we get to, well, love it.”
The run of dates which The bakery have in the next few weeks over the Chrissy/New Year period show that they are not afraid to put in the hard yards for the music. The band are spending their festive season in the North Coast of NSW, playing at two staple haunts in the area — The Nimbin Hotel and The Beach Hotel. This is sure to get them the sun and surf that emulates the brightness of their music. But will the extended time away cause shifts between the large collective? “Sometimes we box to sort out certain conflict. Getting physical to sort things out sometimes is the way to go.” Olivia Newton John-style maybe? “Yeah it’s possible”, Jesse laughs.
The Bakery are playing with a line of local funky crews like King Farook, Ray Mann Three and Rumpunch at Romp! It all happens at The Factory theatre on Friday 5 December. Check out their website at http://thebakery.net.au for all the info you need.
