Making Music: Baker & Goods

Charlie Baker ’17 and Lachlan Kermode ’17 became friends last year during rehearsals for Grind Arts Company’s “Sweeney Todd.”

“When we had nothing to do, we would pass the time by singing random stuff together. But we didn’t form a band until this August, when Charlie invited me out to stay with his family in Montauk, which is a small beach town,” Kermode said.

After coming in from the water one day, they pulled out their guitars and started jamming. The very first song they played together was the middle school-era classic “Thnks fr th Mmrs” by Fall Out Boy. “That’s when we realized that our voices sounded really good together,” Baker said.

Both members write songs individually. “Generally, our songs are about girls. Keep it a nice, focused subject. We want to get into the complicated stuff like politics and religion, I swear, but you just can’t cover that business in three minutes,” Kermode said. Their next project may be a “concept album,” for which they have yet to decide the actual concept.

Because the two spend most of their free time together, rehearsals are informal, except when a show is coming up. According to Kermode, “We just rehearse in my room in Witherspoon, usually pretty late at night when our schedules are both free. I think some of our neighbors get riled up sometimes.”

Baker added, “We often hear banging on the floor and ceiling, but we like to think that it’s just people expressing their appreciation. Apparently, we have lots of fans. P-Safe likes our music so much that they often show up to our rehearsals!”

When asked the meaning of the band name, they answered they were originally going to call themselves “Professor Jeff,” after their favorite English professor Jeff Nunokawa.“We decided against it so that Professor Nunokawa wouldn’t sue us,” Baker said. “But we were brainstorming names one day, and I said it would be funny to have a band called ‘Baker and the Goods’ at some point in my life.”

Kermode liked the idea and suggested shortening it to “Baker & Goods,” which gives the sense that they are a duo.

So far they have performed at the Murray-Dodge Café, the Nassau Literary Review launch party at Small World Coffee and Tower Club, where they opened for Caroline Reese and the Drifting Fifth on Princetoween. “Murray-Dodge Café has actually made us their official ‘Artist-in-Residence,’ which is pretty dope,” Baker said.