Green Baby: At the Crossroads of Krautrock, Neoclassical, and Cosmic
Out of Tallahassee, Florida, Green Baby is a band that is hard to define. They seem to be able to blend krautrock with neoclassical music, art rock with ambient music, and surrealism with punk.
Everything they do keeps you thinking and guessing and has such a multi-layered and addictive quality to it that it’s hard not to be a fan. At the wild intersection where kosmische freak-outs, krautrock grooves, neoclassical weirdness, trippy art rock, and ghostly ambient soundtracks collide, Green Baby detonates a free-range musical beast. Genre-smashing, … a beautiful mess, catchy, unsettling, and heartbreakingly gorgeous. You’ll catch ghostly whispers of Brian Eno’s atmospheres, Can’s motorik pulse, Amon Düül II’s cosmic freakouts, and the classical ghosts of Erik Satie and Chopin all swirling around…
Ross Beattie had the pleasure of chatting with Mr. Christian Fabian — one half of the married duo behind at least half of the band — so that you can dig a little deeper into what exists inside Green Baby.
“We share the love and thrill of playing spontaneous music.”
You used to be in a band called The Exploding Madonna. Tell the readers a little about that band, and how you then came to be in a band with your wife that goes by the name Green Baby.
The Exploding Madonna existed between 2002 and 2009 and played a blend of shoegaze and heavy psychedelic rock with a dark edge. We were a three-piece, with guitarist Paul Burdack writing most of the material, mutated through the efforts of drummer Mike Coleman and myself on bass and vocals. Our shows were loud and crazy events with an attendant light show.
Despite having a repertoire of pre-written songs, The Exploding Madonna spent the majority of their rehearsals playing improvised music. Some of these jams were later rewritten into song format. Several recordings exist online at theexplodingmadonna.bandcamp.com.
Green Baby came along about a decade later, a few years after Deb and I got together. We didn’t plan on starting a band but were learning and adapting some classical pieces. Within a year, we started making our own music. While we differ sonically from The Exploding Madonna, we share the love and thrill of playing spontaneous music. Actually, Green Baby’s next album is a bit heavier and darker than its predecessors and bears some resemblance to The Exploding Madonna. Of note, Jeff McGriff (drummer of Green Baby) was the original drummer of what became The Exploding Madonna when we were playing mostly improvised music.
Did the two of you meet through music?
Yes and no. We first met at a show I was playing in the late 1980s in a band called Pink Trim—wherein I made an impression on Deb, but she was not fully impressed. The music came a couple of years after we got together. We both were aware of each other’s musical backgrounds. We had toyed with the idea of playing music together and finally overcame shyness to learn a piece by Philip Glass (‘Metamorphosis’) with Deb on piano and me on bass. Soon afterwards came renditions of works by Erik Satie, Dustin O’Halloran, and others by Philip Glass. (We plan on releasing some reverent renderings of these pieces, stay tuned.)
Between songs, we began playing improvised pieces and that’s where we found our launching pad and subsequent home: we decided to focus on making spontaneous music. We set up a small recording studio and began editing our recordings around 2020 and have continued to grow and evolve. Necessity was the mother of invention. We had music deeply embedded in who we are and how we cope with the world. It was an amazing gift to discover we could do this together.
You’re based down in Tallahassee, are you both Florida natives?
Deb is from Detroit, Michigan, raised on Motown and punk, and I am from Massachusetts/California, raised on church music and Rosemary Clooney. We both moved to Florida in 1985 and met in Tallahassee around 1988. Jeff and Alan are both Florida men, I think.
At what age did you start playing music?
Deb began piano lessons at age 5, which was a few years back now. More recently, she has begun using keyboards, synthesizers, and samplers, which is an indescribably amusing and liberating opportunity to “play” an entire orchestra.
I began playing violin, trumpet, and baritone around age 8 before moving to bass in high school and later, in college, to inflicting vocals—fronting several Tallahassee punk/prog/proto-metal/psych rock bands (Zen Lemmings, Pink Trim, Pigeon, Tron, Apocalypse Now, The Divided Body, The Exploding Madonna).
Tell us a bit about the creative process for the music you make as Green Baby.
It usually starts with Deb dropping a foundation on the piano and then I respond on the bass. What follows is a mostly impulse-driven give and take and requires a proper state of mind. Mood at the time of playing is key. Our best stuff comes out when we’re really pent-up or stressed out.
When we are joined by Jeff or Alan, we play “pass the torch,” with each person rotating through a leading role for a little while. None of that is planned, and the “songwriting” is very much a communal activity. Our gang is pretty respectful of each other’s sonic space, and it provides a “safe” area in which to indulge impulses and a space that allows for sensitivity to react quickly to each person’s playing. It’s a very dynamic process between equal partners, with each person adding significantly to the band chemistry.
There are no roadmaps for the songs. Each piece of music develops spontaneously and evolves as it proceeds. We only have one song so far (‘What It Means By Crackers’) that has been played numerous times with a consistent motif, but it’s never been played the same way twice—nor will it ever be.
We record most of our jams. After listening back, some tracks jump out as ripe for editing. The studio is the next instrument added to the process—we sculpt the tracks into shape with varying degrees of editing and overdubbing. The vocals and lyrics are usually added last and are the only part of the recording that is planned out.
Can you give us five influences on your music? And do these correlate to your top five favorite artists or bands?
Bowie, Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, Can, and Brian Eno would all be suspects—the holy quintuplet presiding over a host of other influences. After years of avid listening to a broad swath of musical styles, we are saturated with the music of our influences. Too many to name, even though we did. We are musical soup—and we sure know it. We don’t specifically try to emulate anyone in particular, but the influences surface as the music proceeds.
Tell us a bit about the recording process for the latest album.
Most of our songs start as multitracked recordings of improvised jam sessions with Deb on keys and piano and me on bass, drums, or guitar. The ‘Truffles’ recording came out of a weekend of jam sessions with guitarist Alan Alovus (also guitarist and songwriter in Band of Names) and drummer Jeff “Ferberbert” McGriff. The four tracks on the recording were spontaneous recordings, minimally edited and with minimal vocals. There are more recordings by this lineup that will see the light of day eventually.
You mention setting up a small recording studio at home around 2020. Can you tell our tech fans what equipment you use?
The studio has a Kawai Howard baby grand piano, Kurzweil digital stage piano, a few MIDI keyboards for triggering samples on an iPad Pro, and a Solina String Ensemble; a few basses (Sting Rays), a Dean acoustic guitar, a Telecaster Deluxe, a couple of guitar amps (Ampeg Reverberocket 212 and Peavey Backstage), and bass amps (Fender Rumble 800 and Hartke HA5000). We also have an acoustic drum kit, a Yamaha electronic drum kit, Peavey PA system with Sennheiser microphones, and a tambourine to tie it all together.
My pedal board has a Keeley Compressor, Malekko B:assmaster, Moogerfooger Drive and Moogerfooger Delay, two Moog expression pedals, an Electro-Harmonix Mel 9, and Electro-Harmonix Memory Boy. I use it for bass, guitar, and occasionally vocals.
We record onto a TASCAM 12-track recorder and then dump the data into a PC to edit with Cubase or into the iPad Pro to edit with Cubasis. Numerous plug-ins are utilized and a majority of these are FabFilter effects.
I really love the artwork from the ‘Œuf’ album. How did you come across the artist?
It would be lame to admit that an internet search based on “woman with eggs” quickly revealed this painting, “Old Woman Selling Eggs” (1632) by Hendrick Bloemaert (public domain, baby!). But certain liberties were taken with the subject’s eyes, lending a personal and original touch (saving face here, lamely). The name of the album, “Oeuf,” means “egg” in French, and just sounds great to say and ponder. The painting draws such a focus on the egg and, as in the picture, the image really sticks, over easy, to the eyes. Couldn’t resist!
How do you find the job of self-releasing your albums?
Very fulfilling. It’s such a pleasure to see the music develop and then to be released as a finished product. Green Baby does all its own production, mixing, and editing. This eats up a lot of our free time, but we couldn’t think of much else we’d rather do. We release our music through a distributor (Distrokid) who places the music on the major streaming services and also self-release on Bandcamp, Facebook, and Instagram. We have also been making CDs of our albums. While this format isn’t the sexiest right now, it is affordable. One day we’d love to press some vinyl, but for now it is cost prohibitive. Anyway, I personally prefer CDs. They look like little space-age records and in my opinion are the best-sounding physical audio media format.
As we are self-releasing, we don’t have any pressure to produce a commercial-friendly product. Total artistic license with the music, lyrics, artwork, and so on. So nice. But the flip side of being independent is you have to do all the legwork yourself and handle the costs, but it is totally worth it.
How is the live music scene down in Tallahassee at the moment?
We can’t claim to have our fingers on the pulse of the Tallahassee music scene, but it has always been an incubator for great music. What we do know is that right now there are some great young local acts (Sleep John B, Hard Stuck, Medians, to name a few) that are doing something new and interesting. We have some great venues supporting local alternative live music, including 926 Bar & Grill, Real Cool Time Records, and The BARK.
If you could have a dream special guest on your next project who would it be?
Jimi Hendrix springs to mind, but there are many others depending on the feel of the song. Regardless, we are super happy with our current musical partners (Alan Alovus and Jeff McGriff [el FERBERBERT]).
What was the last album you bought?
Just picked up a used record of the Moody Blues ‘On the Threshold of a Dream.’ Guilty pleasures. Well, scratchy guilty pleasures. You have to love the spoken poetry sections of their songs.
What was the last gig you went to?
MSSV (Mike Baggetta, Mike Watt, and Stephen Hodges) in Tallahassee. These guys are masters of dynamic and nuance and put on a great show. Band of Names had the opening slot and had the pleasure of hanging out with the MSSV guys the next day. Good people.
What’s the next gig you have tickets for?
We’ll be seeing Stereolab in September. We’ve never seen them before and are psyched.
What’s next for Green Baby?
Currently playing frequently in the studio and working on a trio of new albums. The first is titled “FIG 7” and has Jeff on drums throughout, making it a bit more edgy, aggressive, and dancey than our previous work. “The Snake Tree” is the other and is more in the vein of our first album, “Oeuf,” with a more eclectic mix of songs and textures. The third is so far all synthesizer and electronic drums and is unnamed as of yet.
We are also involved in a couple of cover bands. Deb plays keys, Jeff plays drums, and I sing in a Joy Division/New Order cover band in Atlanta called “Substance,” along with Anton Rivera (guitar) and Brandon Ivey (bass). We’ll be playing shows in the region in the fall. We also play in a hard rock Neil Diamond cover band in Tallahassee and Atlanta called “Apocalypse Now,” with Deb, Christian, Alan, Jeff, and joined by Jonathan Lammers (Band of Names) on bass. This is a resurrected version of the band featuring several new members and we hope to be up and gigging by the winter. Anyway, both of these bands are a blast and force us to play in a different style, keeping things fresh.
Ross Beattie
Green Baby Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
