My personal Bailiff cherry was popped on June 5, 2010, at Do Division Street Fest. My second story apartment faced Leavitt and Division streets. My roommates and friends, friends of friends and the tattooed people we met while waiting in line for the cigarettes and chewing tobacco at the Camel tent and I came back to our place. We all drank “Grandma’s Lemonade,” (mix a case of cheap beer mixed with cheap vodka, and a packet of Country Time lemonade powder) and watched the bands play from the window overlooking the Leavitt Stage. Nobody—in the apartment or in the crowd—paid attention to the bands on stage, as if in a nightclub listening to a nameless and faceless DJ.
After the forgettable dad-rock bands were finished, I found myself grooving to a sick blues rock riff. I realize I’m actually listening to the band by accident and loving it. I look around the room and everyone else is jamming out, too. Some people have even started sluggishly head banging. I sit at the window and watch a crazy dude dressed in all white dance in circles in the sprinkling rain to a band that finally says, “Hey, thanks for being here; we’re called Bailiff.”
One year to the day later, I’m at the bar at Lincoln Hall auditorium waiting for lead guitarist Josh and drummer Ren to finish their dinner before I interview them on the night their new LP, Red Balloon, was released. My photographer Lisa says, “Don’t be nervous. Just talk to them like they’re your best friends; remember what that guy in “Almost Famous” said when talking to the journalist? ‘Here I am telling secrets to the guy you don’t tell secrets to.’”
Inside the green room, the first thing Bailiff and I talked about were band names.
“So, my parents are both lawyers and I don’t know what a bailiff actually is,” I said.
“He’s the guy that says ‘Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” Josh answered.
Through the hour-long interview, Bailiff and I talk about embarrassing former band names (like Dahoon Holly and Umber Shone), favorite beers (Delirium for Josh and Unibroue Maudite for Ren), and the age old question: are breakups still the best thing to write about?
“Well, they may not be the best, but probably the easiest,” Josh replied.
During the show, the crowd was widely diverse and strangely energetic. They came out to “Crickets,” the ominous slide guitar intro to Red Balloon, and there was a guy with scissors tattooed on his neck screaming in the front row. Right behind him there was a 60-year-old lady that looked like a former hippy who had a pink streak dyed into her greying hair. There wasn’t a divide between these two at the show; in fact, Bailiff brought them together.
As Bailiff played, the crowd fed off their energy. When I first saw Bailiff, they were strictly a three-piece band with your typical bass, drums and guitar. But during this show, they had up to five people playing at once.
“We definitely tried to make our live performance mirror a lot of the recordings, so that has a lot to do with the instrumentation. We wanted to include it so we have someone doing percussion and keys, and we could probably strip everything down and perform as three—but that wouldn’t make the live performance mirror the record,” Ren said.
This shows through in the new songs on Red Balloon. The album is a huge step forward from their older material. The new album has a dynamic flow from start to finish. It isn’t just 15 tracks slapped together from the best of the recording sessions.
Red Balloon shows Bailiff’s strongest and newest songwriting talents when compared to earlier material. The new songs will have you tapping your feet and singing along, and then humming the vocal hooks and choruses long after you listen to the album. Both Ren and Josh admitted they were much more into dirty blues while recording their first EP, but were listening to a lot more pop while they were writing and recording Red Balloon.
“I realized one day that just because a song is catchy doesn’t mean it is a bad thing. When you get over that, you realize that pop is not such a scary word anymore,” Josh said.
If you haven’t already, go check out Bailiff’s Red Balloon and preview four tracks on their bandcamp website. If you’ve been craving some hard rock that does more for you than the Kings of Leon, Bailiff will do the trick.
