By Jim Barber
The pandemic upended the lives of hundreds of millions of people all over the world. It made everything from shopping, to going to work and school frighteningly difficult, spreading fear, isolation, dislocation, shattering any spectre of normality.
For musicians and bands, it was catastrophic. No more shows, no more tours. Even getting together to write songs, practice and perform online shows was an epic challenge. But being the creative souls they are, like artists of every genre and medium, musicians persevered, pivoted and used the trying times, the untraditional modalities and the crying need to express not only their own anxieties, but to be a healing salve and source of inspiration to the rest of the world. Bands such as Seattle rockers Baby and the Nobodies hunkered down and managed to write songs. They wrote songs that drew attention to the ills of the world, but song about hedonistic distraction. About the perils and power of rock and roll, and about the human experience, from the mundane to the sublime.
What resulted from these efforts, now that the pandemic is firmly in our rear-view mirror, is their powerhouse third album, Ready or Not, which was released late in 2025 on F-Bomb Records. Headlined by the creative tandem of vocalist/lyricist Rebecca Terry and guitarist/pianist/songwriter Rev James, Baby and the Nobodies sees this new record as a bold statement, one that will help the burn a path to the upper echelons of the music industry, continue to garner them legions of fans and mark them out as possibly one of the next important acts to come out of the fecund and fertile musical climate of the American pacific northwest.
Ready or Not was released on vinyl, the first time Baby and the Nobodies has released an album in this particular physical format, but one which Terry says she, and a large proportion of the band’s fans appreciate.
“All the feedback’s been good that we’ve been getting. It’s amazing, everybody loves it. Everybody’s telling us they love it. We did vinyl for this brand new one. This is our first 12-inch release. I love vinyl just like I like actual magazines because I like to have it in my hand and I like to look at the artwork and appreciate the type of paper that’s used for the sleeves, just like for magazines, it’s about the texture. I appreciate actually having something tangible in my hands. I would like to hope that that’s why vinyl has become popular again. I also just think it’s because everything old is new again. And you have people that are in their teens and 20s, who never really experienced vinyl, except for maybe their grandparents’ vinyl. Maybe their moms and dads’, depending upon the age gap. But my mom used to always tell me that everything old is new again at some point. Just like history always repeats itself, so vinyl’s coming back again,” she said.
“I’ve seen some bands at their merch tables, they’re offering cassette tapes. I never would have thought that cassette decks would come back again, or 8-track, or anything like that. But there’s some bands that offer that. I’m not super tech-savvy, so when everybody started doing iPods and MP3s, I was still like, give me the CD. Once again, give me the real thing in my hand. When I bought a new car a couple years ago, I had to make sure that it still had a CD player, because it amazes me that now cars don’t come with CD players.”
While it was released in late 2025, Ready or Not was actually written and initial tracking for the songs took place during the pandemic. That alone messed up the logistics and processes for most bands and recording artists at the time, but there were some other challenges that led to the delay in getting it out into the world.
“I wanna say we started writing everything for this new record during the pandemic itself, and then, I don’t remember the timeline here in Seattle, but I remember that we went back into the studio in February or March after the pandemic, and just started tracking everything. We got everything done in three sessions, and then we just sat on it for a while, because we had a little bit of member changeups, and stuff like that,” Terry said.
“But as far as the actual record coming together, and getting the record done, it didn’t take us very long at all, because our guitar player, Rev, had already been writing. We have a studio here at our rehearsal space, and then we’d go up to London Bridge in Seattle, and track with Jonathan Plum [Ann Wilson of Heart, Candlebox, Alice In Chains]. So, our own space is where we do all the demos, and the pre-production.”
Besides being the band’s third release, always a sign of good fortune, good songwriting and a burgeoning fan base, it was a powerful experience for all the band members of Baby and the Nobodies, to record within the legendary confines of London Bridge. Located a few miles from downtown Seattle, the facility, built in the mid-1980s, played host to some of the earliest recording sessions for legendary Seattle/grunge bands such as Soundgarden, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.
“Yeah, so when you load in, you load into like, I wanna call it the main room, or the main area. You just walk in there, and it’s just amazing – the size of the room, the sound of the room, everything. Just one of the cool things that’s still there is the piano that Mother Love Bone used to play, Andrew [Wood, the band’s vocalist who died in 1990, spawning the one-off band/album Temple of the Dog], that’s in there,” she said, the awe obvious in her voice.
“So, there’s just a lot of history, and you just walk in there, and you’re kind of like, oh my God, I’m in here. Like, so many greats have been in here. And then when you’re tracking your vocals, it’s like, wow, this is like the same little vocal box that Layne Staley [the late Alice in Chains frontman] was in, you know? Yeah, like, we were even joking. It’s like, oh, is this where he got the idea for ‘Man in a Box,’ like, the vocal box?”
The process was also elevated by the input, experience and professionalism of the producer for Ready or Not, a stalwart of the Seattle Scene, the previously referenced Mr. Plum.
“That was the first time that we went in there and worked with him. He met us at a show that we were playing in Seattle at this awesome place called Slim’s Last Chance. They have amazing chili. If you’re ever in Seattle, and you’re hungry, go there and get some food. I highly recommend. We were playing a show there, and he came up to me after our set, told us that he liked the band, liked the voice, just everything. And I joke that we courted, but we courted professionally for probably a few years, because he was always like, ‘when are you guys gonna come work with me? When are you gonna come work with me?’ And then we finally made it work, and we’ve been working with him now for years,” Terry said, explaining why the collaboration works so well.
“He understands the dynamic of the music. He understands the dynamic of all the personalities in the band, which is a big deal. Yeah, he’s just, he’s amazing to work with. And there’s always a little bit of like, creative differences and creative ideas with different people in the band. And it’s nice because Jonathan’s good at taking everybody’s ideas and just molding it and making something amazing out of it with everybody feeling like they were heard and like they had a chance to give input and, you know. Yeah, he’s amazing.”
While taking inspiration from the artistic ghosts inhabiting London Bridge, and hailing from a city with a pioneering pedigree in the development and popularization of what initially was called Grunge music, but is more accurately dubbed ‘alt-rock’ in the early 1990s, Baby and the Nobodies draws from a great swathe of rock and roll history, with a definitely punk sensibility, coupled with melodic hooks that are times as good as anything on pop radio. There’s also a more retro aspect to the sound, particularly on the song ‘Why’d You Have to Go’ which falls very much into the same category as The Ramones cover of ‘Baby I Love You’ (originally recorded in 1963 by The Ronettes). There is a high-energy raggedness, very much along the lines of The Runaways, with Terry’s vocals at times demonstrating the snarling energy of Joan Jett, combined with the punk vibe of Exene Cervenka of X.
“I always tell people it’s straight up rock and roll. I’d say that it’s straight up rock and roll, but we also have been told that it’s got this pop-punky attitude to it. So, it can go either way. Yeah, I… But I just say straight up rock,” she said.
All of which makes sense when you consider that Terry and James the co-founders and primary songwriters in the band, have an impressive array of formative influences.
“It was Madonna for me. I was in preschool, maybe kindergarten age. And it was her Like A Virgin cassette that I used to always run around the house listening to with my mom’s Walkman. And then after Madonna, it was Motown artists like Diana Ross. Then I started listening to Tina Turner because my grandmother and my mom loved Tina Turner. So, Madonna, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Selena around the time that I was eight or nine, because I’m also Hispanic, so I gravitated to strong female Hispanic singers, just like Alejandra Guzman. I grew up listening to her. Rev was really into New York Dolls, Social Distortion, Def Leppard, Motley Crue – that type of stuff. He started playing guitar around the time that he was 13 or 15. And he was super into like the hair metal bands,” Terry said.
“And then the older I got, the more varied the musical taste got. Then it was Blondie, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks, and it just kept morphing. And I just kept getting influenced from all these other artists.”
Rev James is the initiator of most of the musical ideas, while Terry handles a lot of the melodies and lyrics. The process has become more rich and more democratic, as the new band members, bassist Lonnie Bristle, guitarist Tyler Sweet and drummer Dane Sims come to the creative table with lots of ideas and a desire to integrate more into the band – investing themselves not just in terms of their time and talent, but also building an emotional stake in the band, key to the long-term success of any artistic enterprise, especially a rock band.
“So my guitar player, Rev and I, we met years ago, obviously. It was probably 10 years ago when it loosely started – the concept of it, anyway. Not long after, he was in between projects, and I was at the point where I was trying to get something started, and we just clicked musically, and we were just messing around one night. He was playing guitar. I ended up singing a couple songs. And he was like, ‘holy shit, I’m going to build a band around you.’ And that’s essentially what happened. The next thing you know, we’re building a band, and a few lineup changes later, and a couple records later, here we are. So, Rev usually writes everything, and he gets an idea, a melody line, brings it to the rehearsal space. And then the drummer hammers out what he’s going to do. And then Rev and the bass player, the rhythm guitar player, figure out what they’re going to do,” Terry said, talking about how she enters the process.
“I personally don’t like to hear a lot of shit until they actually have the foundation for what they’re doing. Because I don’t like to get ideas in my mind and then be told, oh, we’re only gonna do this for like four times instead of six times. And then I’m like, oh, well, what I had was this. That kind of throws me off and it throws my rhythm off for what I’m thinking about doing. But yeah, so usually Rev has the idea that he brings in to everybody. And we have an amazing lineup right now. This is the best lineup that we’ve had, in my opinion. Tyler, who’s on rhythm guitar. Dana on drums. And new bass player named Lonnie Bristle. And I couldn’t be more stoked about who’s in the band right now. Getting back to the writing, usually I don’t have anything until I start to hear the songs. And then usually it’s a couple of words that come together. So, I’ll have like, kind of like a tagline in my head.
“There’s one song that we’re working on right now that my bass player brought to the table. Every time that I hear the bridge, I just have the words ‘like fire’ coming through my head. At some point when we start working on that more, I’ll end up working more with that idea. For me, it’s just little things sometimes. Maybe it’s just a word. Maybe it’s just a phrase. It’s usually just a snippet and then it evolves. And Rev in the very beginning wrote most of the lyrics as well because I would only have these little snippets. But it’s nice because I’ve been able to get more involved and more confident and been able to contribute. I’m bringing a lot more to the table.”
The first single from the album, is the wonderfully incendiary and eminently memorable song, ‘Bombs Away.’ Terry discussed how that song came about.
“That was like 97% of Rev. It’s almost like a warning label – about a relationship. And it’s almost saying ‘I’m gonna hurt you.’ Like, things aren’t going to end up going the way you think they’re going to go and you’re definitely going to get hurt,” Terry said, adding that in terms of the subject matter for Baby and the Nobodies, most of it comes from the everyday life of a band, and the everyday life of people trying to make their way through a pretty messed up, dysfunctional world.
“As a band, it’s kind of all over the place. There’re the party songs, songs about drinking and hooking up with people. There’re songs about being on the road, like ‘Another Night, Another Face,’ which again, being on the road and hooking up with people. Then there’s songs that are a little bit more political, like on the last album, ‘Kings and Queens.’ That one is really about, honestly, social media and just how you can’t believe everything that you read before actually doing any research. Because there are some people that are like, ‘oh my God, I read this on Facebook. It must be true.’ But there’s no actual research that goes into it. It’s just, ‘it must be true. I saw it, I read it.’ There’s a line in there that talks about how divisive we’ve become and how people are just constantly glued to social media and to their phones.”
‘Aggressive’ could be said to be an antidote to the ‘Karen’ infestation that seems to have overtaken the human race, another sign of our maladjusted society.
“Oddly enough, we needed to fill a little bit more space for the vinyl. We need another song. So, we wrote that one in about a week. And a lot of it has to do with me working in customer service. There’re some lines in there where, you know, it talks about, you tell me that you asked me for my opinion and then you tell me that I’m wrong. Well, then why are you asking me for my opinion? You know what I mean? So, there’s little things in there that just has to do with dealing with people and customer service,” Terry said.
Baby and the Nobodies has done a fair bit of touring in the American northwest, but also made some sojourns down the Pacific coast to California, where they had the opportunity to play in one of the most iconic clubs in all of Los Angeles, the Viper Room, right in the heart of the vaunted Sunset Strip.
“We played at the Viper, which for me was amazing. And that was pre-pandemic. And it was amazing. I absolutely loved it. It’s the only room that I’ve ever played that where you do your soundcheck, the audience doesn’t actually hear your soundcheck. Which to me, I’m like, oh, this is amazing. Why can’t more places be like this? Cause yeah, you get up on stage, you do a soundcheck, you do a line check. Anybody that’s in the room hears what you’re doing. But the Viper Room, no, there was this awesome little curtain. So, nobody saw anything. Nobody heard anything. Nobody in the crowd knew that we were even back there fiddling around with anything. And it’s the Viper Room, like, you know? Then as far as bands, like you asked, L.A. Guns, working with them was amazing. Faster Pussycat, the Dollyrots. It was so cool to play for their audiences and be part of those shows.”
Plans are underway to do more recording and touring, now that 2026 is underway, with Terry saying she hopes Canada can become part of the routing soon.
“Everybody that’s in the band has built their life on the music. So we can all just get up and go when we need to. Everybody has their passport. Everybody’s good to go. We’re good to come to Canada if we can get someone to book us or get another band to bring us along.”
For more information, visit https://babyandthenobodies.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, Ontario, Canada, who has been writing about music and musicians for more than 30 years. Besides his journalistic endeavors, he works as a communications and marketing specialist and is an avid volunteer in his community. Contact him at bigjim1428@hotmail.com.
