The Twins Tower: The Breeders are back in St. Augustine

By Shelton Hull

Since its founding in 2016, it has only taken a few short years for the Sing Out Loud Festival to become the centerpiece of the musical year in Northeast Florida. This year's festival takes place on Saturday and Sunday, September 21 and 22nd. The Breeders are playing on night one of the festival, as part of a stacked lineup that also includes Ole 60, Eric Church, Tre Burt, Ryan Bingham and the Texas Gentlemen, Molly Tuttle and Golden Highway and JJ Grey and Mofro. Night two will feature Kevin Morby, Alex Wolf, Marcus King, Noah Kahan, Sierra Ferrell and Norah Jones. Even at $150 for a single day pass and $270 for the whole weekend, tickets sold briskly.

If you're reading this, then you've surely made plans to attend already, but let's talk about it anyway. The Breeders are my favorite band of all-time, in large part because it was their 1993 album “Last Splash” that precipitated my very first to the historic 5 Points neighborhood of Jacksonville, which has been the undisputed center of what was then called “alternative culture” in Northeast Florida for the better part of 60 years. 

It was the spring of 1994, and I was just 16 years old. I was new to this style of music, and my main sources for learning about it were MTV and an old show called “Welcome to the ‘90s”, which used to air on 104.5 FM from 8pm to 10pm every Saturday night. It cannot be emphasized too strongly how important shows like this were for the culture, not just here but all over America. No matter who you talk to from that era, everyone has their own stories, which are all very similar. I got my CD from a store called Theory Shop, which was owned by the Faircloth sisters, who also owned a club called Einstein A Go-Go, where many bands of that era played. (You, the reader, may be interested in a lovely new book out called “Occupancy 250”, which collects photos and flyers and general memories of the space from those who knew it best. It's an essential document of that time and that place and those people, most of whom are now long gone. Highly recommended!)

Out of all the great bands who helped define that era, the Breeders are among the few who have not only stuck around, but have actually managed to thrive in the the current market, still making new music and touring regularly today, almost 35 years since their debut album, “Pod”, was released in 1990.

Technically, the Breeders are led by Kim and Kelley Deal, twin sisters born 11 minutes apart in Dayton, Ohio on June 10, 1961. They grew up in the Huber Heights suburb, where their father worked as a laser physicist at Wright-Patterson AFB. They were born just a few minutes apart, but they have always been very different people, almost as different as they are also so clearly similar. 

The name was derived from old LGBTQ slang; the term is a sort of slur on heterosexuals, kind of an inside joke about the Deal twins and many of the other women in their circles, most of whom chose to eschew the traditional notions of family that many women of their generation were pushed to adopt. When you consider lyrics like “Motherhood means mental freeze” from “No Aloha”, you can see that as kind of a recurring theme in their music, as well as their lives. In fact, she went so far as to call herself “Mrs. John Murphy” on their first EP in 1987. Ironically, she would end up becoming a feminist icon in the music scene, along with a number of other women in music at that time, of whom the key figure was probably Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth. 

The sisters first used the name as teenagers, when they played duo gigs in the Dayton area, an extremely fertile creative territory that also produced iconic bands like Guided By Voices and Brainiac. The Breeders are now the primary heirs to the legacy of music from Dayton, but that history actually predates them. It goes back at least as far as the Ohio Players, whose “Love Rollercoaster” hit #1 way back in 1976. It also includes another highly influential set of siblings: the ill-fated Troutman brothers, who led the beloved funk band Zapp.

Once they moved to the Boston area, Kim Deal immediately settled into a scene that was also on the rise, led by The Pixies, which she joined after answering a newspaper ad in January 1986. (It was truly a different time!) Oddly, Kelley also auditioned to be their drummer, but she turned down the job. Kim, however, became their bassist and, inadvertently, the focus of the band's aura. But their leader, the great Frank Black was always notoriously stingy about sharing the spotlight with his colleagues. Even though her lead vocals on “Gigantic” (1988) helped put them on the map, Kim was not allowed to write more songs for the band, so she was in need of a new creative outlet, and that was when the Breeders were reborn.

By this point, Kelley had gotten settled into her day job as a defense contractor,and had mostly put aside any musical ambitions until Kim began work on the Breeders. They quickly found a number of kindred spirits in the scene, and the resulting band was like a sort of alt-rock supergroup that was entirely controlled by women; this was a revolution in the industry, at a time when critics were still openly debating the question of whether women could actually hang on that level. To look back on all that from the perspective of today, where the music industry is basically dominated by women in almost every genre, it's insane to think that anyone had any doubts. But history will reflect that the Breeders and their peers played a significant role in helping to put that silly debate to bed, once and for all. 

“Pod” was released by 4AD, founded in 1980, one of the most important record labels of the past 50 years. 4AD had made a distribution deal with Elektra Records shortly before they started work on “Pod”, and this album became one of the signature releases under this new arrangement. 

The group included Kim Deal, as well as Tonya Donnelly, who was then part of Throwing Muses, a brilliant band that she started with childhood friend Kristen Hersh in 1981. They had released their third album a year before “Pod”, and while the group dynamic in that band wasn't nearly as dysfunctional as that of the Pixies, Donnelly was (and remains) always keen to try new stuff, especially if it involves working with her friends. They also bought in Josephine Wiggs, bassist for the British band Perfect Disaster. Out of the 11 different people who have played in the Breeders, Kim Deal and Josephine Wiggs are the only people who have appeared in every incarnation of the Breeders. (Kelley was present during the recording sessions, but she did not appear on the album.) The band also included Boston’s Carrie Bradley on violin and drummer Britt Walford, who was then in Slint. (For contractual reasons, Walford used an alias on the album: “Shannon Doughton”. No one has ever explained what that means, or if it means anything at all. Breeders fans obsess about stuff like this.)

“Pod” was their first time working with the late great Steve Albini (1962-2024), who would end up behind the boards for all of their material (except for “Last Splash”) until his death in May of this year. (Albini died of a heart attack at work at his studio in Chicago. The city later named the street in front of the studio after him, a fitting tribute to one of the most important figures in the entire history of the Chicago music scene.) Also, the album art for every Breeders project was done by the late great Vaughan Oliver (1957-2029), who was responsible for pretty much all the albums issued by 4AD, crafting an aesthetic that remains an instantly recognizable part of the 4AD brand, in a way that's only equalled by the folks who designed the original Blue Note records. Whenever the Breeders record their next album, it will be the first one that does not include the subtle but crucial influence of Vaughan Oliver and Steve Albini, and that will be a very interesting experience for longtime fans of the band.

They followed that with the “Safari” EP in 1992, which was recorded in London the year before. This marks the official start of the sisters’ recorded legacy. They also added drummer Jon Mattock, who was then playing with the seminal shoegaze groups Spiritualized and Spacemen 3, both of which were run by the brilliant Jason Pierce. (In keeping with tradition to that point, Mattock also used an alias for contractual reasons: “Shannon Doughton”. No explanation of this was needed!) Mattock was on the album, but by the time they began playing their first live shows, the drum chair was being held down by Jim McPherson, who never relinquished it, nor did he ever use any aliases. The Breeders opened for Nirvana on their European tour in 1992, playing shows in Dublin and Belfast that June, and that marked their formal introduction to mainstream audiences. 

But for the overwhelming majority of Breeders fans, we knew little about them prior to the release of “Last Splash” in August 1993. The lead single was “Cannonball”, an instant classic released three weeks earlier. It remains their best-known and most beloved song, arguably the best song that anyone put out all year. The video was co-directed by Kim Gordon and a guy called Spike Jones, who you may have heard of. This was the first music video he ever directed; his second effort was for their next single, “Divine Hammer”. These two videos were visually as fresh as the actual songs, and they made such an impression that Jones went on (very quickly) to become probably the greatest music video director of all-time.

“Last Splash” dropped right when alternative rock was the biggest thing in music, and their association with Kurt Cobain put them on map forever. Cobain, who famously described his own hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as his failed attempt to write a Pixies song, was probably the biggest Breeders fan in the world, and he made sure to put them over on-stage and in the media at every possible opportunity. (Someone should do a study of all the artists whose t-shirts were worn in public by Cobain, and see how much that simple gesture would ultimately mean for those artists. He wasn't the first person to wear obscure t-shirts in this manner, but he was the master.) 

He had already used them to open for Nirvana in Europe in 1992, and he brought them back to open 25 more shows in November and December 1993, sharing the bill with bands like The Melvins, Come, Shonen Knife, Half Japanese and even Cypress Hill. (This was the infamous MTV new year's taping on December 13, where Kris Novoselic accidentally knocked himself out with his own bass, a crucial little piece of Nirvana lore.) They also played together on a benefit for Bosnian rape victims earlier that April. Like most bands who opened for Nirvana, the Breeders would play for their biggest crowds ever during this period. They last opened for Nirvana in Denver on December 18, 1993; Cobain would only play 26 more shows before his tragic death on April 8, 1994. 

Like many musicians of that era, Kelley Deal found herself in the grip of addiction, specifically to heroin, and that culminated with her getting busted in 1994 for a FedEx package of heroin that she signed for at her door. (Again, it was a very different time.) In retrospect, it seems obvious that they were probably always planning to get back together at some point, but no one had any idea at the time–probably including them as well. 

That was the end of the Breeders for basically about eight years, but it did little to slow down their productivity. Kim started The Amps, a side project that effectively functioned as a temporary stop-gap between Breeders albums. That band only released one album, “Pacer” (also produced by Albini) in 1995. It was an excellent album, and one that pointed directly toward the kind of stuff that she would do when the Breeders finally reunited about five years later. The band included both Deal sisters, as well as McPherson and two new guys who would later become part of the next incarnation of the Breeders: guitarist Nate Farley and bassist Luis Lerma.

Kelley started her own band as well, with friends she made while in rehab. The Kelley Deal 6000 was originally called Solid State 6000, and they released two albums in 1996 and 1997. The first, “Go to the Sugar Altar”, marked the very first time she had released any music on her own, and it was good, but the follow-up, “Boom Boom Boom”, was one of the best albums released in a year that had a bunch of excellent albums. Tracks like “When He Calls Me Kitten” and “Baby I'm King” stand up with anything her sister has ever written, and Kim Deal is one of the great songwriters of the past 30 years. A tremendous achievement, born from the darkest time of her life. Now, if it wasn't for her sister constantly pushing her to do stuff, she might have never gotten back into music in any serious way after she moved to Boston in 1986, but these albums showed that she had plenty to offer as an artist in her own right. 

And that was basically the end of the Breeders, as far as they or anyone else knew at the time. There were rumors, the occasional one-off, but most people figured they were just another one of those bands from that era that had their moment and then faded away, almost as quickly as they exploded on the scene just a few short years earlier. But, as it turns out, they were just getting started. Their third studio album was “Title TK”, released in May 2002. The title is kind of an inside joke about the fact that they didn't know if there would even be a third album. Not even hardcore fans had any idea they were working on anything.

Ultimately, “Title TK” is their greatest album, and one of the finest recordings of the entire 21st century to date. It's an album by a band that was DONE, and they knew it, and you can hear it in her voice on every song. The Breeders didn't just come back from oblivion, they came back hard. That was 22 years ago, and they have never really stopped since. They released “Mountain Battles” in 2008, followed by the “Fate 2 Fatal” EP almost exactly a year later. It was another full decade before their most recent album, “All Nerve”, was released in March 2018. It's a very appropriate title for an album by a band that has been all nerve from the very start. Kim Deal wanted to write more songs, and she ended up writing some of the best songs of an era with such a uniformly high quality that it remains the standard by which indie bands are still measured today.

Some of the great artists performing at Sing Out Loud this weekend, and probably most of the audience, were not even born when the Breeders first made their name in this business. Anyone disappointed that they didn't get to see them at their peak can take heart in knowing that they are still at their peak. Having watched them several times in recent years (most recently at the Ponte Vedra Concert Hall), I can assure you that neither Kim nor Kelley nor Josephine nor Jim have lost even half a step to the passage of time. The sisters are now 63 years old, but the only way you would notice is if you're old enough to remember those days gone by. As things currently stand, the most likely scenario is that the Breeders will never stop. So if you miss them this time, don't worry. They WILL be back!