You can’t talk about The Breeders without talking about The Pixies first.
The Pixies officially formed in 1986 and Kim Deal,
a newlywed at the time was working in a medical lab. She knew how to play guitar,
but not bass. She would answer a “wanted ad” in the Boston Phoenix newsletter that read -
Looking for a “bassist'' into Hüsker Dü and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Please – no chops.” Kim answered, even though she didn’ know how to play a bass guitar yet.
She would join The Pixies in 1986 under the stage name “Mrs. John Murphy. Her
twin sister Kelley was also asked to join , but she passed and went onto to Calfironia instead.
Kim Deal and Charles Thompson IV, the frontman of the Pixies who also went by the name Black
Francis, were both musical forces to be reckoned, but that often led to them
arguing and butting heads over creative control. Deal wanted more opportunities to write songs.
Three years later, after hitting walls with her ability to express herself within the
confines of The Pixies, Kim started her own side project, the band we all know as The Breeders.
Today lets talk about the history of the breeders and whatever happened to the band
Kim had been making music with her identical twin sister Kelley,
since they were kids growing up in Dayton, Ohio. The twin sisters grew up on 70’s AM radio and
played together as a country duo at truckstops and bluegrass bars under the monicker the breeders.
Their parents were from West Virginia, and they instilled in them a pragmatic outlook on life.
Kim’s twin sister Kelley wouldn’t officially join the Breeders until 1992 because around the
time of the band’s formation, the only position available was drummer and she wasn’t interested.
The original 1989 lineup of The Breeders consisted of Tanya Donnelly from Throwing Muses,
Josephine Wiggs from The Perfect Disaster and Jim MacPhearson who was a personal friend of
Kim’s.The name the “breeders” is a term that gay people use to desribe straight people.
Even though Kim was the bassist for The Pixies, she didn’t want to play the same
role in The Breeders, handing off bass duties to Josephine Wiggs. In a 2017 interview with
The Guardian newspaper, she said it’s because she and i quote is “a guitar player at heart.”
The band already had an in with a label thanks to Kim’s Pixies connections,They would sign with the
same label with 4AD - and went on to release their debut album “Pod” in 1990. The album
featured a cover of the beatles song happiness is a warm gun, which became a minor hit on college
radio. The timing was serendipitous as grunge was just on the verge of surging in popularity,
and Kim even landed a personal praise from Kurt Cobain, when the Nirvana frontman listed Pod in
his journal as one of the 50 albums that had the biggest influence on Nirvana’s sound. He also
admired Kim’s abilities as a songwriter, saying that “Gigantic” was his favorite Pixies song.
Deal has always committed to the “All Wave” recording philosophy, which producer Steve
Albini who worked with the Breeders explained in a 2008 meant that they would use: no computers,
no digital recording, no auto-tuning, or any other mainstays of contemporary production.
In fact, in a 2018 interview with “The Gentlewoman” online, Deal revealed that
she writes all her lyrics on paper plates, which perfectly sums up her approach to creating music.
The band was still on the verge of commercial success when they recorded
their “Safari” EP in 1992. But a line up change was also brewing.
Tanya Donnelly left The Breeders to focus on her own band “Belly.”
In 1992, the band toured with Nirvana in Europe,
which was also one of drummer Jim MacPherson’s first times playing
outside of Dayton. It’s rumored that he even had to ask Dave Grohl what a monitor was.
One year later, following a disastrous tour with U2, The Pixies called it quits. Black
Francis notified his fellow band members by fax, no less that the Pixies where done. Some claimed
in addition to creative differences it was Deal’s constant lateness and/or her growing fame that led
to additional friction with Black Francis. Finally Kim could fully focus on The Breeders. In 1993,
they released their most commercially successful album, “Last Splash,” featuring the hit song
“Cannonball.” Last Splash was certified platinum and the track “Cannonball” made it to #2 on the
Billboard rock charts. The song would become one of the defining songs of the decade.
And the band’s label was surprised to see radio stations adding the track to their programming
without having to even beg. To everyone’s surprise, Last Splash, released through major
label Elektra in the US, outsold Black Francis solo debut and all the Pixies albums as well. And
Deal proved she could make it on her own writing a majority of the music and lyrics on Last Splash.
Kim Deal would tell the new york times why last splash broke the band instead of their
debut album Pod as she would reveal the chemistry
seemed better the second time around telling the newspaper
That the songs on pod were never played live prior to recording, whereas on Last Splash the band
would make demos of the songs and played them live before hitting the recording studio. She would
tell the Times “At that time it was when this kind of music was indeed taking over the charts. There
was a whole new paradigm in music. No longer was it paula abdul or michael bolton. And then
this groundswell from the people started moving from the college charts to the mainstream charts.
We did indeed ride the tide of what was happening then she'd say."
The band was also caught offguard by the success of cannonball as
Josephine Wiggs would tell the Times During the mixing of the record,
the song was still called by its working title “grunggae” it was a jooke about how
the song was grunge, but had a reggae llt to it. Even that late it stage it wasn’t like
oh we’ve got this great song that should be the single. We didn’t know until it happened.
Things screeched to a halt in 1994 when both twins did separate stints in rehab.
Kelley was caught in possession of heroin and Kim was struggling with alcohol. Kelley
was arrested after signing for an Emery Worldwide package that consisted of several grams of heroin
the Breeders played their final show together at lollapalooza in LA in September of 94.
Kim Deal would tel lthe new york times in 2002 that following the band’s long time on the road
they returned home to Dayton, Ohio exhausted,The band attempted to return
to the studio but internal problems and exhaustion stopped the band in its tracks.
In a 2017 interview with The Guardian online, Josephine Wiggs taled about what happened:
“On the one hand, you’ve heard what was going on [during this period],
and I did not want to be involved in that,” she says. “It sounded like such
a nightmare. I thought: ‘I just don’t think I can do it, for my own mental health.’
Things got so bad for Kelley that her father checked her into rehab at the Hazeldean Clinic in
Minnesota in April of 1995. Lucky for her she was able to convince the judge to drop the charges.
Kim and Jim MacPhearson briefly formed a new group called the Amps,
which put out one album called “Pacer,” but Kim was still dealing with addiction at the time.
When she blacked out onstage at an “Amps” gig, it caused a rift between her and Jim
that lasted almost 15 years. Josephine didn’t stick around either. By 1996,
Kim Deal reclaimed the Breeders name ewith essentially the same lineup as the Amps and
played some shows, but failed to have any success at recording new material.
Work on the band’s follow up to Last Splash would begin in 1996. From the start the new version of
the breeders were volatile as drummers, guitarists, bassists and even producers
came and went and the band’s creative sessions were stifled by Deal and her bandmates addiction
to her dominating demenaor.. Originally the band enlisted producer Mark Freegard
who helped produce Last Splash but the sessions went downhill pretty quickly.
Recording would begin at the magic shop in Soho, but Kim was frustrated with how the drums
sounded so she uprooted the band and moved them to midtown in a studio that had the biggest
collection of vintage equipment on the east coast. She recalled to the Times one night working in
the studio while her bandmates were in the lobby of the studio getting into trouble
by smoking crack and she recalled i will never be allowed there again.
Soon enough Freegard quit, a few more bandmates left and nothing had been
accomplished. Just in 1997 alone, the band was estimated to have spent $340K
mostly on hotel rooms, studio time and moving equipment
The band then moved to Avatar Studio, formerly known as the legendary the power station. John
Agnello who worked on the Amps record was called by Deal to help revive the project.
The pair decided to start from scratch ,but Agnello would recall to the Times
Kim, at this point, was in no shape to work. During one late-night session,
Agnello pointed to a bag of pot sitting next to Deal. ''I told her,
'Maybe you should cut down on that, so that you could focus on the record,' '' he says. ''And
she went off on this whole diatribe on how she knew how to use drugs to influence what she was
doing -- this whole thing describing how she was matching medications for different songs.
I looked at her and I went: 'Wow. This is gonna be a problem.' ''
He would even recall how one drummer the band was looking to use for the record
only stayed in the studio for about a half an hour
before making an excuse that he had to run some errands and he never returned
Even after all these years and as musicians and producers came and went Kim still couldn’t find
her perfect drum sound. She would end up moving back to Dayton and learning to play the drums.
Soon afterwards she would hook up with producer Steve Albini in his chicago studio
where he previously recorded both The Pixies and The Breeders first album.
The producer jumped at the chance to work on the Breeders next album admitting to the the
Times that Kim’s stubbornness is and i quote “one of the things i love about her.” While kim
was happy with her drumming she worried about what would happen when the band hit the road.
It was around 1999 that Deal was living again in new york and met three young musicians who were
playing in the band FEAR including drummer Jose Medeles, guitarist richard presley,
bassist Mando Lopez who she soon started jamming with. Deal would end up uprooting
her life in new york and move out to LA. Soon enough her sister Kelley would join her and
the new breeders lineup would go record their long awaited follow up called Title TK in 2002.TK
was journalist shorthand for to come. Their was a lot of buzz over the breeders return. Elektra
gave away some songs as free downloads while the buzz also helped push sales of the Pixies
and the Breeders back catalog. And 6 years later the same lineup released 2008’s Mountain Battle.
This version of the Breeders lineup even made a cameo on Season 7 of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer at a fictional on-set nightclub called The Bronze.
And fast forward to 2013 and Kim Deal announced she was officially leaving The Pixies for good.
Black Francis was rumored to have been shocked by Kim’s announcement.
The tensions between Kim and Black Francis had only gotten worse with her finding success with
the Breeders. In a 2020 interview with Grunge.com, he said this about Kim leaving the band revealing
“She always had her own ambitions and became comfortable in a leadership role
in her other band. It must have been hard for her to be in a band
where some other guy was always pulling at the reins" he'd say.
For a second time in Breeder's history as a band, whenever things cooled off for The Pixies,
they heated back up for The Breeders. The classic last splash line-up reunited for a 20th
anniversary tour of the album , and they released a new record together in 2018 titled All Nerve.
Kim talked about learning how to create great music sober in
a 2018 interview with The New York Times saying:
“Opening the doors of perception,” with drugs, Kim said, “you can really
only open the door once. It doesn’t need to keep getting reopened all
the time. That was something that I realized" she'd say.
Their 2018 album was generally well received, only faulted only for lacking a bit of the energy and
power of their original 1993 release. Given that both sisters are in their 50’s now and sober,
it’s not surprising that their sound has mellowed out a bit.
I wanna know, do you prefer Kim Deal with The Pixies or as the frontwoman
of The Breeders? Let me know in the comments section below and we'll see