Gus Baldwin was ridin’ solo, fresh on the scene in Austin after stints with his high school-formed band, the Sealions and a six-year stint with Dallas’ Acid Carousel before joining friends to form Gus Baldwin and the Sketch. Transforming the singular Gus Baldwin—a garage-rock dealing singer—by adding David Rawlinson (guitar), Lucas Martins (bass) and Trey Gutierrez (drums), the foursome suddenly made their mark on the Austin scene as a premiere psych-rock outfit.
In January, Gus and the Sketch released their first full-length record, The Sketch, recorded in Studio 22 in Los Angeles and entrusted engineer Joey Oaxaca to capture Gus and the band in a raw, live manner.
“One day off on tour, I had a friend who had a studio there and I knew he had a tape machine so, I’m like, that’s the only way this is gonna work,” Baldwin said, stoically.
“If we’re doing it, it’s gonna be analog so that no one’s like, I don’t know like, fuckin’ with it too much. You know, if you’re in the digital world, you can redo and you can go endlessly and you can make everything perfect. And it was fun. We didn’t really intend to make a record. We just intended to document some of our songs.”
Recording an unintended album on your day off while on tour is quite the notion, but when you’re holed-up in LA—a city that Baldwin said they “don’t really like”—this might be the best time to do something this radical, at least in the mid-2020s.
“We started at like 11 a.m. and by 3 p.m. I think we had all the music done,” he recalled. “We’ve been playing these songs every day. Three takes of each song, all the songs are like two minutes long, you know—the long ones are like three minutes long. It was honestly my favorite recording experience I’ve ever had. Because of the immediacy of it and the honesty of it.”
Bands in the ’60s and early ’70s were no strangers to laying down an album in one day. Black Sabbath’s self-titled album, Dylan’s Another Side of Bob Dylan, The Beatles Please Please Me, were all recorded in a day—an honorable mention: Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album was laid down in 36 hours.
“When we think of so many of our favorite records, there’s a lot of like ’60s stuff and they used to have to make a whole record in three to six hours,” Baldwin explained. “We had come up with a group of songs that was [sounded] like the band. The idea of actually practicing and going and playing it together, it’s old fashioned now, but we like it, and we want to do it again.”
That camaraderie lends itself well to living in Austin—a melting pot of musical taste—where there’s something for everyone, every night of the week. Baldwin and the Sketch have played the Mohawk so many times, they were jokingly called “the house band.” Hotel Vegas in East Austin is a stage they haunt quite frequently as well (and is one of this writer’s favorite stops when in ATX).
“In Austin, I guess it’s competitive in nature…there’s a lot of people playing pretty often here, which I love that you can play all the time here and people just like going out to shows,” Baldwin said. “It’s an extremely, extremely encouraging scene, and that was kind of part of the reason I was wanting to move down here. I feel like everyone kind of is just like tossing out cards—everyone gets in, you know, like, dealing cards like you’re playing poker. Everyone gets the same number of cards.”
When Baldwin isn’t performing solo or with The Sketch, he splits time as a frequent collaborator with The Black Angels, another dynamic psych-rock band from Austin. It was with that band that he was last in St. Louis.
“I love St. Louis. I’ve been there like three times… with The Black Angels and with the time I had, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of record shops, quality of the parks, food and all the people we met.”
Baldwin’s last time in St. Louis was in 2023 at The Pageant—but this year’s Evolution Festival will be his first time back with The Sketch, and the excitement in his voice was contagious.
“We were on tour when we got offered Evolution. We got the call, ‘Hey you want to do this festival?’ and we had never heard of it. Like ‘oh, when is it?’ It’s the same weekend as Levitation (music festival in Austin). So, I was like, oh, it might be hard. Then, they’re like The Hives are playing and we’re like, ‘We’re there,’” Baldwin said, laughing. “Yeah, just want to meet them.”
What can you expect from Gus Baldwin and the Sketch at Evolution Festival? Take the Animals, plus The Scientists and combine it with a lot of the Osees and Ty Segall—it’s going to be a wild ride.
Or just take Gus’ advice: “I’m not a prophetic man, but just have fun with it and dig in—I’m stoked to be coming. We’re very excited for this festival.”
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