Baxter House

Baxter House is an American rock band formed in mid 2005 in Los Angeles California by Rachel Mintz, Sky Minor and Malik Williams. The three friends met while living in a house together on Baxter Street in Echo Park which caught on fire and was partially destroyed. This event inspired the three to form a band and make the band logo a burning house. They were early pioneers of a dramtically dynamic trans-genre sound going from very quiet to a roar within the same song. They helped establish the seminal rock club Mr T's Rock and Bowl as a viable hub of East Side Los Angeles art rock.

History

Singer Rachel Mintz had moved to Los Angeles in 2003 to pursue a career in music. She was operatically trained and sung in the theater and the Miami Childrens' Chorus growing up. She did session work with such notable producers as Carmen Rizzo, Doc-J and Andrew Bush. In 2004, she expanded into the realm of punk rock joining Pigs, a short-lived L.A. hardcore punk band. In Pigs she gathered an appreciation for screaming that she had never experienced, and began to become influenced by some of the more aggressive female vocalists like Courtney Love . She combined that screaming with her already impressive choral and operatic vocal abilities and the template for Baxter House dramatic dynamics was born.
Guitarist Malik Williams moved to L.A. in 2001 to expand his career in visual effects and computer animation. He had played guitar in skate punk and noise rock bands growing up but was not interested in forming a band until his roommate Rachel persuaded him to form Baxter House. He has said in interviews that his main musical influences are "Anything that sounds like skateboarding".
Drummer Sky Minor had moved to L.A. in 2002 to pursue his lifelong dream of being a professional drummer. By the time Baxter House was forming, he had played with six other bands in Colorado and L.A. and played genres of music ranging from Jazz to Hardcore to Surf. He studied drum technique with Kofi and Ginger Baker of fame. Prior to Baxter House, he was with grunge band Your Horrible Smile who was most famous for their song "Shot At The Title" which was used for 2006-07 college football games . At the time of the band's inception, He and Rachel were dating and living together with Malik in the house on Baxter street. Rachel convinced him to leave Your Horrible Smile and join Baxter House.

The band could not find a suitable bassist for the first year of their existence so they simply wrote and performed their songs with only guitar, drums and vocals. They self-produced and recorded their initial EP "Please Baxter Don't Hurt 'Em" over one weekend in 2006 at the Distillery Studio with another roomate, Erika Earl producing and engineering the record. The EP had no bass on it so the band decided to make it deliberatly lo-fi to cover for the missing low end.

The band again self-produced their follow up album "Because We Can" in 2007. The sessions took months to finish because the three were working full time jobs to finance the project and the album is still unreleased. The group momentarily disbanded in 2008 when Rachel and Sky broke up, the question of if they should continue was posted on their myspace page in April 2008. They have reconciled their differences and expect to release the album in 2009.

Discography

EP's "Please Baxter, Don't Hurt 'Em" -2006 (self-released)

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See Also

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