Hailing from Chicago, Babe Report is gearing up for the May 31 release of their debut full-length album, Did You Get Better. The album’s release follows the release of their lead single, “Turtle of Reaper,” earlier this year. That track, which also opens the album, serves as an appropriate entry point to the project’s dynamic and endearing sound/ethos, befitting of their Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure-referencing name. The project is led by Ben Grigg who used to play in Geronimo! and FCKR JR, among others. Grigg formed Babe Report with his wife Emily Bernstein (also of FCKR JR) while in lockdown, and later expanded the project with bassist Meck and drummer Peter Reale (of defunct punk trio Yeesh). To find out more, I sent a few questions to Ben… 

I’m curious about the name “Babe Report.” Your press materials mention that it’s a Bill & Ted reference, but how does it reflect your music and the larger purpose of the band? And how does the Bill & Ted franchise tie into all of that? 

Haha, that’s a great question. I’d like to say that the Bill & Ted franchise has nothing to do with the band or our music, but thinking about it more, I’m not sure that’s true. It’s hard to say how much cultural impact the original Bill & Ted movies had on society, and how that affected our choices to explore music as a creative path. I mean, I aspired to Keanu’s carefree personality as a kid. And the whole idea that Wyld Stallyns could unite mankind as a societal driver of good is inspiring stuff. The Bill & Ted fandom wiki also tells me that Wyld Stallyns was integral to contacting extraterrestrial life, so that seems important. To be perfectly honest though, we do not talk about Bill & Ted. It just doesn’t come up. 

Babe Report formed during lockdown. How did that context shape your music?

A couple of the Babe Report LP tracks actually predate lockdown. Emily, Peter ,and I were in a very short-lived band called Ordinary Reaper just before Covid. Our first show was going to be March 19, 2020. Suffice it to say, that show didn’t happen. We had a good handful of songs though, some of which we liked a lot. Then, with lockdown, the band sort of fizzled out. We had some Zoom hangouts, and tried a practice while masked. Our practice space was just big enough width-wise to have a drum kit, and just long enough to fit 3 people, so it was close quarters. It didn’t really seem covid-safe, even with masks. We sort of let that band die. At that point I had moved in with Emily and we’d go to the space and I’d play drums, with her on guitar. It wasn’t Ordinary Reaper, it was just messing around. I think we watched the original Bill & Ted around this time and jokingly called the project Babe Report (“it’s a history report, not a babe report”). The first batch of Babe Report songs came out of that lockdown boredom time, when it was just Emily and me. Eventually, life was getting back to normal and we invited Mech in to play bass. I think we all saw the potential of the band at that point, since Mech is such a killer bass player. We needed a great drummer though, and my drumming was going to hold us back. I checked back in with Peter to see if he was interested in joining us again. That was that! In terms of the actual context of lockdown, I think just the bizarre circumstances of it all helped. We continued to play music because we had to, as a way to maintain some semblance of normalcy.

You just signed with Exploding In Sound Records. How did that come about?

EIS is the best record label in the world. There are no legal contracts per se though, so I don’t know if “signed” is the right word. I have been lucky enough to know Dan Goldin (EIS heart and soul) for many years now, since before the label existed and he just had a blog of the same name. Dan and EIS were a huge help with my previous band Geronimo!, and we were lucky enough to put out 2 tape EPs and a full length LP on EIS. We got to know many of the other bands, and played shows with them. We did a bunch of stuff with Ovlov, Speedy Ortiz, Kal Marks, and others. It really felt like a family and some sort of new golden age of what a label could be. EIS has always been number 1 in my book. Full disclosure though, a few years back I started assisting Dan with some basic label functions, mostly focused on the behind-the-scenes with with our distributor and some accounting. Helping out with the label has only made my love of EIS increase, and fully crystalized to me what a kind and wonderful person Dan is. I know I would have asked Dan and EIS to put out this record, even if I hadn’t been involved with the label for the past few years. It’s the only way I would want this record to exist. 

The lead single from your debut album is called “Turtle of Reaper.” What does the title mean?

This is a fun one. I mean, it’s open to interpretation. Would the grim reaper have a turtle as a pet? If so, what would he call the turtle? Maybe “Todd”? Honestly, the title has nothing to do with the song. It’s just a funny phrase that’s been on the “song title list” in my phone for a while. I think it may have been from one of those AI band name generators, back when Ordinary Reaper was still a band.

How would you describe the song?

Turtle of Reaper is probably the most “rocking” song on the album. It’s a good one to kick off the LP and if people accidentally run it on their turntable at 33rpm instead of 45rpm, it sounds heavy as heck, haha. It’s also a really fun one to play and “sing-yell”. All the lyrics have imagery about a location very near to where I live, at a bus station just a short walk away. I used to wait for the CTA 85A bus there on my way to work in the morning. I feel like I’m there when I sing this song. 

You’ve mentioned that it’s an indictment of fear-mongering clickbait media. Do you have any thoughts on how to deal with that problem on a cultural level?

I’m not sure if I should be the one answering questions about how to fix problems in society, but I do have opinions about it. I think fear-mongering in the media has existed for a long long time. Even in the pre-internet days, I feel like coverage of crime on network TV always seemed overblown, like a way to justify extreme laws, especially regarding drugs in marginalized communities. I went to high school in a very low-income neighborhood and it made me realize that all this news coverage was ridiculous. It mostly felt like it was coming from a place of fear and mistrust, which I don’t see as a plausible path to overcome any societal issues. It felt like a way to demonize an already downtrodden element in society.

“Turtle of Reaper” is obviously about a political topic. Do you see Babe Report as a political band? What do you see as the relationship between politics and music—or politics and art more broadly? 

I don’t see us as a political band. I mean, we are all people with strong political ideas, but we are not what I’d consider a punk band. We are not Fugazi. I do think music and art have great potential to influence society though. Just like Wyld Stallyns, sometimes that happens by accident, and sometimes it is the objective of the artist. If Babe Report addresses political subjects, it’s from a perspective of being a human in society. It’s really more observational than attempting to force others towards a certain viewpoint. 

Your debut album, Did You Get Better, comes out on May 31. Again, I’m curious about the title. 

The title of the record took a long time to agree on. We had some real doozies. I forgot who suggested “Did You Get Better”, but everyone immediately jumped on it. It has some nice connotations, implying injury and healing. I know I’ve had mental health issues throughout my life, and the past 5 years with lockdown and relationship issues had been hard on me at times. “Did You Get Better” as a title reflects that, asking the question and leaving it unanswered. Or perhaps, leaving it up to the listener to answer for themselves. Also, it is very nearly what George Carlin’s character Rufous says at the end of Bill & Ted (“They do get better”). We’ve come full circle.

Before Babe Report, you were in a couple of other bands: Geronimo and FCKR JR. How has your approach to music evolved from one project to the next? 

Great question. Geronimo! for me was a project of ambition and friendship. We all come from the same small city and moved to Chicago together to try to take on the world. We all knew each other and our families, etc. The whole goal of that band was to take music as far as we could while we were still young. It was thrilling and fun, but we were taking on a lot of risk for our futures. I remember wondering if I had really screwed up my chances to have any kind of tolerable job if the band didn’t succeed. Luckily, when we threw in the towel, we all landed on our feet. I love those guys, and we still make music together under Kelly’s moniker “Milked”, as well as Matt and my lockdown project “Big Big Bison”. With Geronimo!, the writing was almost all collaborative, with some songs coming directly from Kelly. We’d just hammer away on ideas, practicing many times a week. With FCKR JR, the songs were mostly fully formed ideas I had under my solo moniker “Whelpwisher”. It was a vehicle to play these songs live and have social fun-time with our bandmates. For Babe Report, the songs are about half collaborative and half Whelpwisher songs. The Whelpwisher ones (Turtle of Reaper, Voidreader, Universal, Malort) are all pretty different now from the original recordings I made alone though, completely for the better. I see those Whelpwisher recordings as a way to convey ideas to the other band members. They’re like a rough draft to be revised and punched up. Luckily, I’m blessed to have such amazing band mates in Mech, Peter, and Emily. They’re great and creative musicians, I feel very lucky that they take the time to play music with me.

What’s on the horizon? 

Shows and hopefully selling lots of records, haha. Maybe opening for 311 at Wrigley Field?