“My only New Year’s resolution is to stop talking shit,” Gus Baldwin says, sitting in his house/practice space/rock & roll hall of fame on Hollywood Ave.
Serendipitously, the vocalist sports a Planet Hollywood sweatshirt as he chats while sandwiched on the couch between his bandmates in the Sketch. Baldwin’s roommate and bassist Lucas Martins, meanwhile, dons a cast on his arm and six staples in his skull – the result of cracking his head open while skateboarding two days prior. He removes his hat to have someone take a picture of the staples so he can see them.
“I landed the trick, for the record,” he clarifies.
“You can go ahead and put your beanie back on,” Baldwin quips, recoiling from the fresh wound.
The cozy house is covered wall-to-wall with records, cassettes, instruments, show posters, and set lists. Photos of musical inspirations hang like patron saints. Alongside drummer Trey Gutierrez and guitarist David Rawlinson, the duo wrote most of their debut album, The Sketch, in the living room.
“I’m sure our neighbors hate us,” Baldwin laughs.
The frontman originally assembled the quartet in 2022 to back him up live as he performed his solo material; they came out halfway through Baldwin’s performance at Chess Club during that year’s South by Southwest as a surprise.
“We were definitely still getting our sea legs,” Rawlinson says of the show.
“Everyone was there to see Nolan Potter anyway,” Baldwin adds, nodding to that gig’s headlining jam band.
Three years later and sea legs intact, make no mistake: Gus Baldwin and the Sketch is a band.
Like their rock forefathers – Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention – the group follows a time-honored tradition of naming themselves after their frontman and “the somethings.” On The Sketch, out Jan. 31 via Permanent Teeth Records, Gus Baldwin and the Sketch pays homage to this bygone era not only in name but in sound, channeling the raw energy of punk with the classic rock ethos of their influences.
Fast-paced and punchy, the album captures the runaway train feeling of the band’s live shows. “We like being really tight as a band, but I like the idea that it sounds like it could fall apart at any second – but it’s holding on,” Baldwin says.
At the same time, the LP is tinged with emotion and references to the struggles modern artists face. Lead single “(She’s Gone) Arigato,” for instance, alludes to the divide between Austin’s eclectic locals and tech boom newcomers.
“That song is literally about people I know in Austin. There’s a line: ‘Quit acting local/ Going down to SoCo/ I don’t want to know you/ Burn your Palo Santo,’” Baldwin says. “That’s just saying how much I don’t like people that hang out on SoCo. It’s pretty juvenile in a way.
“It’s just talking shit,” he admits. “I think it’s healthy. They can write a song about us if they want to; I would love that.”
Six days into the year, and the singer has broken his New Year’s resolution.
“I knew this was gonna devolve into us talking shit,” Gutierrez laments.
WANNABE PUNKS AND PAISLEY COWBOYS
Baldwin and Martins met in math class at the University of North Texas and bonded over music and pre-class cigarettes. Soon enough, Baldwin invited Martins to join his psych rock band, Acid Carousel. The pair spent time immersed in Denton’s DIY scene before heading south to Austin, drawn by the city’s collaborative, anything-goes music culture.
“Everyone’s friends here, which is cool,” Baldwin says. “Back in DFW, people didn’t like each other in the scene. And then when I visit friends in New York or L.A., they’re usually just talking shit about other bands. No one has anything nice to say about anybody. That’s the total opposite here, and I’m fucking stoked about it.”
Baldwin and Martins soon crossed paths with Rawlinson and Gutierrez at Eastside DIY arts compound the Electric Church, where Rawlinson’s band Millbrook Estates and Gutierrez’s Cosmic Chaos often played on the same bills with Acid Carousel.
Despite their separate projects, the musicians quickly found common ground in their shared ambition to push beyond the indie circuit and take their music to a larger stage. After leaving Acid Carousel, Baldwin was eager to start something new. Some of his solo material – tracks like “Beautiful Delilah” and “Slacker’s Prom,” which now appear on The Sketch – constituted the band’s earliest material.
Days after our initial meeting, Baldwin charts the quartet’s journey on the Tweedy’s patio, eyes hidden behind a dark pair of sunglasses.
“The reason the album is called The Sketch is because it is the band all together. The record I have coming out in the summer, that’s just me. [The same musicians] all play on it, but I see a delineation because the songs on our record were formed as a group,” he explains. “I came in with a riff and a melody and we formed something around it together.”
Each member of the Sketch cut their teeth in psychedelic rock and garage bands, but the musicians were eager to get distance from the genre. Their new project plays like a genre-blending rollercoaster, something that will please a rock purist and an old-school punk alike.
“When we started, we wanted to be punk so bad,” Baldwin recalls with an eye roll. “But we didn’t dress right or hang out at the right places. None of us have studded wristbands, and that was a big turnoff.”
“I used to get called a paisley cowboy,” Rawlinson adds, referencing his psychedelic roots.
Now less interested in such arbitrary genre tags, the singer summarizes: “At the end of the day, it’s just rock & roll.”
ONE FUCKING DAY
The band captured the electric energy of their gigs by recording The Sketch the way classic rock bands used to: live in the studio, straight to tape. On a rare day off on the Sketch’s May 2024 U.S. tour, engineer Joey Oaxaca (White Reaper, Starcrawler) recorded the album’s 11 songs in just one day at his Los Angeles-located Studio 22.
“None of us had ever made a record like that because we all grew up in the GarageBand/Pro Tools world, where it’s a lot of bedroom recording and you just record everything by yourself or you record it one at a time,” Baldwin explains. ”It was like how they made records in the Sixties, or basically until Pro Tools was invented: Put everyone in a room and record it.”
The old-school approach proved to be a revelation for the artist, who appreciated the simplicity and decisiveness it demanded. “I’m not a purist about analog – it’s not a sound thing for me, it’s a workflow thing. You have to commit,” he says. “Anytime I’ve recorded on Pro Tools the engineer is like, ‘We’re gonna get eight takes and comp them all together.’ Then it’s like the performance doesn’t matter necessarily; the mix is what matters more.”
For Baldwin, the process felt like a return to the basics. “[This] was the easiest record I’ve ever made, and it’s my favorite. And it took one fucking day.”
Rawlinson quotes the late, great Steve Albini to signal his agreement: “’If a record takes more than a week to make, somebody is fucking up.’”
“Those are hard words to live by, but he kind of had a point,” the guitarist says.
Compared to high-octane tracks like “Steady on It” and “Itch,” slow burners like “Sympathy for Sunday” and “What the Freaks Say” offer Baldwin a chance for introspection. The latter, the singer’s favorite track on the album, channels the universal feeling of isolation and the eventual pride in standing apart. “It’s about feeling like a loner and growing up being called a freak or a nerd,” Baldwin explains. “And eventually accepting that in a positive way – like, I’m actually happy to be this way. It takes growing up to say that.”
Despite the band’s humor and playful winks – like the self-referential nod in “Luxury Television,” a callback to Rawlinson and Gutierrez’s previous band of the same name – there’s a depth of emotion threading through the record. The band credits Austin’s collaborative music community for shaping their output. “Our sound is influenced by the people we meet [and] the bands we play with here,” Martins says. “Austin continues to influence us. It’s inevitable to be in a place and have it soak into what you’re doing.”
“IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT, IT’S NOT FOR YOU”
The Sketch is loaded with hyperlocal references that ground the album in a city that’s both the band’s muse and battleground.
“The issues I have with Austin are not in the music scene,” Baldwin notes. “You see the tech industry making it harder and harder to be any sort of artist and live here, and those people are what made the city so special in the first place.” Rising costs force musicians to make peace with financial struggle. Rawlinson sums it up bluntly in advice to younger bands: “Get comfortable being poor. You’re going to be poor until you die. Just accept that now so it’s not as disappointing when you’re older.”
Baldwin also points to the city’s lack of all-ages venues, a contrast to his formative years in North Texas. “When I grew up in Dallas, every club was all-ages,” he recalls. “I could go to whatever show I wanted. Then when we moved down here with the old band, some of us weren’t even 21 yet, and we had a lot of issues with our friends not being able to come to shows and sometimes the bars not even letting us in. Everyone should have the opportunity to go see whatever they want. You know, throw Xs on their hands and let them do their thing.”
Despite their gripes, the band would still choose Austin over everything.
”I feel like when we were in Denton, anything you would do that would be remotely well received – like going on tour or something actually cool or productive – was seen as so unrighteous. Like, ‘Oh, you’re selling out. You should just play in this living room for the rest of your life,’” he recalls. “I know motherfuckers in Denton who still do that, and they have this shield of righteousness about it. But I didn’t want to play in a basement for the rest of my life.”
Baldwin says he feels lucky to play with such great musicians in a city where ambition isn’t frowned upon by the community, but fuels it.
“The people that you get to know living in the city influence your creativity in some way or another, whether it be people you know showing you new music, or just my interactions with other people,” Rawlinson says.
“Even the people we don’t like, like the tech bro dudes and all that,” Martins adds.
“Maybe especially the people that we don’t like,” Rawlinson agrees.
Despite his pointed lyrics and unfiltered opinions, Baldwin insists he isn’t here to preach. He wants listeners to take their own message from the music – even if that message is “fuck this band.”
“Whatever you take away from seeing our band or listening to our songs, that’s for you. I’m not pushing any agenda. I’m not here to tell you what to think or how to feel,” Baldwin says.
But he can’t help himself. He’s talking shit again. ”Some people I hope don’t enjoy [the album],” he says. “I mean, why would you want an asshole to like you? I want an asshole to hate me.”
Gus Baldwin and the Sketch hosts a Feb. 20 all-ages-friendly album release show at 29th Street Ballroom alongside Blank Hellscape, Guiding Light, and Grocery Bag.
This article appears in February 7 • 2025.
