Sweet returns

The Blake Babies' blessed reunion

by Brett Milano

It took Allen Ginsberg only a few minutes to figure out the Blake Babies. When the trio were just starting to play together, they raised their hands at one of the poet's question-and-answer sessions and asked him to name their band. Ginsberg took a look at Juliana Hatfield, John Strohm, and Freda Love and came up with a name likely inspired by the first half of William Blake's Songs of Innocence & Experience.

Perhaps Ginsberg spotted something that the band's fans would later respond to -- an overall sense of freshness and innocence. It was there in the band's waifish look, in their gentle guitar sound and vocal harmonies, and in the self-doubt expressed in Hatfield's lyrics.

A bit more of a snarl would develop over time -- in the guitars and, especially, in the lyrics -- but the Blake Babies never lost their innocent edge. They drew charm out of their naïveté. Their last release before calling it quits -- the 1991 EP Rosy Jack World -- found them covering the Grass Roots' bubblegummy "Temptation Eyes." But fans would have probably had a hard time back then imagining what the Blake Babies might sound like all grown up.

The answer has arrived in the form of God Bless the Blake Babies (Zoe/Rounder), the band's first album together in nine years: the Blake Babies sound pretty much the same as ever. More important, God Bless doesn't come off as nothing more than a Juliana Hatfield solo album with different players. For one thing, the band (whose current tour will bring them to the Paradise in Boston March 9) are more democratic now than they were back in the day. The writing credits on God Bless are spread around, Strohm gets two lead vocals, and Love takes her first turn singing lead as a Blake Baby. There's also a different quality to the songs Hatfield delivers. As a solo artist, she's held her melancholy in check, or at least channeled it into anger. But here, prompted by Strohm's folkish guitar, she returns to themes of heartbreak and self-doubt.

"It's true, we make each other miserable," Strohm laughs over the phone from his home in Birmingham, Alabama. The three members now live in different cities, with Hatfield still in Boston and Love in Bloomington, Indiana, where she's teaching yoga, finishing a bachelor's degree, and continuing to play with her previous recording outfit, the Mysteries of Life. "If anything, the sound probably has to do with the collaborative nature of it," Strohm continues. "I think working together gives Juliana a different emotional response -- I'd say that the more sassy songs are the ones she wrote herself, and the more poignant ones are the co-writes."

In Hatfield's view, the sadder sound is there because it's honest. "That's part of me, and it's the part that seems to come out in the music," she says during a separate phone conversation. "We never knew how to fake it, we didn't have the skills or the attitude or anything like that. So our true nature is bound to come through when we play together. I think a lot of my songs are inspired by the knowledge that I'm going to die. That sounds real heavy, but when you get to an age to realize that, you can start appreciating life more. So the songs are more like casually heavy, or heavily casual."

Hatfield had an emotional catharsis soon after the Blake Babies reunited, in late 1999. "It was the strangest experience. We played a gig in Birmingham for New Year's Eve, and the first time we got together was to rehearse for that. I had the weirdest, most intense experience in the rehearsal room; suddenly my whole life flashed before my eyes. I can't quite express it, but it was a serious reckoning. I saw Freda and what she has, her life and her children, and I saw my life -- and I started comparing it and asking, `What have I really accomplished?' It was one intense moment, and then suddenly it was gone. But that added weight to the whole experience and made it more important to have this be fun."

It was Love who pushed for the band to get back together, something neither Strohm or Hatfield had considered. "It's true, I'm the brains behind it," Love says in yet a third conversation. "But I'm afraid the reasons are going to sound really boring. The idea just popped into my head, and I was curious to see if the others would be interested. John and I are good friends and we talk all the time. Juliana and I aren't as close in contact, but we're probably better friends now than when we were together." Adds Hatfield, "I thought I would never play with them again. To me it was something in my past that I'd finished doing."

In fact, the Blake Babies became so frazzled before their break-up that the shows got to be a little amusing. During some of the gigs on their final tour (including the one I saw in LA), they grew so sick of their own material that they played a bunch of songs from Neil Young's then-current Ragged Glory album instead. And it seemed fitting that the last song on their final record was "Nirvana," which Hatfield wrote about her love for that band (and released before Nevermind), even as the rise of alternative rock signaled the end of the road for the Blake Babies.

"The band would have ended either way," Strohm says. "It's not like alternative music going mainstream ended the Blake Babies. I do remember a lot of debate at the time, like `Will this be good for music? Will people like the Jesus Lizard be heard? Or will a lot of crap bands that are superficially like Nirvana do real well?' To me that period represented the death of something really cool and significant in the culture. When the Blake Babies started, in the late '80s, commercial music was terrible and the underground was a reaction against that. The ultimate goal for a band like us was to be as big as someone like Sonic Youth. We just wanted to own our own van and maybe stay in hotel rooms."

God Bless is the first Blake Babies album with major-label distribution. It's also the first Blake Babies recording on which Hatfield is not the group's full-time bassist. After years as a guitarist, she was reluctant to return to bass, which is what she originally played in the band. On the new disc, the bass parts are divided among her, Strohm, and Evan Dando. Bassist Daniel Johnson, formerly of the band Verbena, will join the core trio for the tour.

God Bless is practically a concept album, with at least half the songs pertaining to drugs, and specifically to the experience of being involved with a user. And where there are drug songs, it seems you're almost bound to find Evan Dando, who duets with Hatfield on "Brain Damage," a song he wrote with Ben Lee. True to Dando's style, it's one of the most good-natured drug songs you'll ever hear: he sings "I took every drug that I could find" as if he were talking about a day on the beach. Dando plays the charming rogue and Hatfield the supportive friend, much as they did 10 years ago on the Lemonheads' "My Drug Buddy." And it gave me a warm and nostalgic feeling to hear them sing together again -- the modern-rock equivalent of hearing a James Taylor/Carly Simon reunion.

"I thought it was bold for Evan to sing those lines," Hatfield says. "It's kind of sunny and poignant at the same time. People are going to take it literally and relate it to what they think his life is like. He doesn't care, but that's good, because his drug use was blown out of proportion by people who didn't know him." But Strohm, who played in the late-'90s version of the Lemonheads, notes that "Evan's always been on again, off again with the deranged behavior. He and Juliana have a very long and strange sort of friendship."

Hatfield's own songs pick up the theme of "Choose Drugs" (from her last album, Beautiful Creature). "People are going to hear those songs and think she's a full-on addict," says Strohm. "It's ironic because we've all put that behind us -- not that any of us were big druggers, but we're living relatively chemical-free grown-up lives. Juliana has always been pretty straight, but time and again she's been emotionally involved with serious drug addicts, that's followed her through her adult life. So I assume she's trying to put herself in the character of people who take drugs."

Hatfield's own take is less specific: "We're all musicians, we've been playing for 15 years, so we've been involved with a lot of people who have succumbed and maybe some of us have had to struggle with our own problems. It's part of the lifestyle with people who are your friends and people you love. If they're creative, they have a whole other set of issues that a lot of people might not understand or deal with every day."

Once the band realized they had a theme, they ran with it. After wrapping up the album, they came into Fort Apache and cut three drug-related cover tunes as B-sides: the Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated," the MC5's "Shakin' Street," and Fleetwood Mac's "Walk a Thin Line." They were even planning on calling the album High As a Kite, "until people got cold feet about it," says Strohm. The title they did choose reflects an odd bit of band history: it was something Bono blurted out during a 1991 radio interview, when the DJ played a Blake Babies track. "We don't know if he was making fun of us or what," says Strohm. "This was the Achtung Baby era, when he would show up in rock-star mode, at least pretending to be crocked." So they're sticking with the title, even after learning that another reunited band are about to release an album called God Bless the Go-Go's. "Pretty bizarre, but I'm a fan of theirs," says Strohm. "You wouldn't think it's a title that would occur to a lot of people."

There are no plans for the Blake Babies to continue after their national tour. Hatfield is working on a new solo album after releasing a two-disc set last year. Meanwhile her unreleased 1997 album God's Foot has shown up on Napster, and its appearance confirms rumors that the disc -- lost during her split from the Atlantic label -- is the best thing she's ever done. "I have mixed feelings about that," she says. "I feel offended by what I see is a violation of my rights and my property. The version on there has a completely random sequence, and there's songs on it that I didn't want people to hear. But there's a thin line between right and wrong. After Jeff Buckley died and the record [Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk] came out, I knew Jeff wouldn't have wanted that -- but I bought it anyway."

As for the Blake Babies, Hatfield says that "we're all playing it by ear and living for the moment." Adds Strohm, "A few things would have to happen before we could do this again -- for one thing, this upcoming tour would have to be fun, and we'd have to have more material we think is good. But you never know; we're enjoying this now, and I think we were all too young to sit back and enjoy it before."

The Blake Babies perform tonight (Friday, March 9) at the Paradise in Boston. Call (617) 423-NEXT.