The members of Baker St, an indie pop/rock band made up of Columbia alums and one current student, gathered last Friday in a Chinese restaurant a few blocks away from the Delancey on the Lower East Side. There, they played a release show for their new EP, Irregulars.
The gig was only one night, but the band is looking forward to a longer residency at the Sidewalk Cafe at Avenue A and 6th Street in April.
“We basically get to do a bunch of different types of shows,” said frontwoman Michelle Hutt, CC ’09. “One show’s going to be all covers or stuff we always want to play or that our friends want us to play, and one will be a normal type of show, and for the other we’ll bring in friends.”
“We have friends?” said bassist Mke Kennelly, CC ’11.
“Well, we have some friends,” she said.
If anything, friendship seems vital to the dynamic of the quartet, which is comprised of Hutt, Kennelly, Kevin Oshinskie, and Jimmy Nugent, CC ’13.
“We’re friends who happen to be in a band,” said Oshinskie, a student at Fordham University. “It’s something we do for fun. It’s not something we do to make ourselves known to bolster our own careers.”
The band, whose name and EP title are nods to Sherlock Holmes, came together in 2009 after Hutt met Kennelly in a music theory class at Columbia. Hutt soon pulled in Oshinskie, an acquaintance from her hometown, to be their drummer.
The puzzle wasn’t complete, however, until Nugent came on the scene, a recruit from Kennelly’s quantum physics class.
“I was, like, I play guitar and Ken was, like, I’m in a band that needs a guitarist,” said Nugent, who’s majoring in computer science-mathematics.
“And it was perfect,” Hutt added of Nugent joining the group.
Nugent’s arrival allowed the band to expand its sound in terms of lead guitar, said Kenelly, and freed Hutt, who played rhythm guitar in addition to singing, to move to the keyboard and synthesizer.
When asked about influences, the members cite a variety of individual sources, from Ben Kweller and Juliana Hatfield to Tré Cool and Slash.
“I don’t think we do too much pandering in terms of what we do,” Hutt said. “What’s coming out of Brooklyn right now, it’s getting more and more noise-oriented, synth-oriented, less and less songs where you have a whole line and there’s a melody and there are lyrics you can actually hear and we don’t really do that because it’s not what we’re about. ... We like doing short, sweet, pop songs.”
Currently, the band members juggle their music with school and day jobs. Kennelly recently accepted a job offer as an analyst—“whatever that means,” he joked—while Hutt is teaching art in public schools.
The demands of everyday life, however, don’t deter the band, who have released three EPs, the latest being Irregulars.
“At some point, I’d like to go on some form of a miniature tour and do some more stuff,” Hutt said. “But again, it’s more like, we’re not hunting for something. ... It’s supposed to be fun.”
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