The Bakersfield Breakers at Otto's Shrunken Head

Keith Yaun played jazz guitar in the Keith Yaun Quintet in the 1990s, but in the 2000s began exploring vintage guitar styles in surf and twang music. This led in 2010 to the formation of the New York City-based instrumental trio, the Bakersfield Breakers, with bassist John Hamilton and drummer John DiGiulio. From the beginning, the band’s mission was to reawaken the guitar-driven sound of the 1950s Bakersfield twang and 1960s surf rock. The band's second and most recent album, released under the name the B Breakers, is 2017's Dune Buggy.

Unsteady Freddie presents the Surf Rock Shindig at Otto's Shrunken Head on the first Saturday of every month, attracting bands from around the world who expand on the classic form of reverb-saturated surf rock. The Bakersfield Breakers tonight reached for dimensions akin to and yet beyond the confines of the surf rock genre. Locked into an instrumental trio format, each musician was required to do heavy lifting consistently throughout the set. With the full support of his hefty rhythm section, Yaun hung melodies on the periphery of original songs and covers, and then used these textures to launch into intriguing leads and spirals. Hamilton and DiGiulio then brought an undercurrent of balance, linking with stomps, shuffles and softer grooves as necessary. The guitar leads were not fashioned to dazzle, but they accomplished this feat nevertheless. This is how a cool trio works.