Dirty Ghosts has just finished soundchecking at Toronto’s Silver Dollar Room, and Allyson Baker is flanked by friends and well-wishers. Once a fixture of Toronto’s music scene, the singer/guitarist has spent the last 12 years in San Francisco. Though she originally moved there to pursue a career in music, a series of disappointments and harsh realizations had her contemplating musical retirement until, five years ago, she started Dirty Ghosts. Initially envisioned as a recording project just for herself, they’ve since turned into a full-fledged touring band. We caught up with Baker before the show to discuss how the project formed, how it evolved into its current life as a hip hop/groove-rock hybrid and whether or not she still maintains a connection to the Canadian music scene.

AUX: You seem to have a lot of musician friends here in Toronto. Do you still feel part of a scene here?

Allyson Baker: No, I wouldn’t say so. It’s been 12 years since I left. That’s a fucking long ass time. You know what I mean?

Would you say Dirty Ghosts has Toronto roots? Wasn’t the band name born here?

Yeah, it comes from here originally. Nick Flanagan and Carson Binks, who is on the album but is not in the live band, Andrew Moszynski – you know, from Quest For Fire and the Deadly Snakes – and I think Dave [Plisskensen], who was in a great metal band called Rammer – they all played together at a high school battle of the bands. They played one show, at Opera House. They wore dirty ghost sheets, and I think they only played one song, and they lost. But the name stuck. It almost become like the name of their crew, and then it was extended to all of us.

When Carson and I started this project, we decided to bring the name back because it was so awesome. But we’ve used it throughout the years, like in Teen Crud Combo, which was my old band with Nick [Flanagan], we had a song about the Dirty Ghosts. And for my last band, Parchman Farm, the publishing company was Dirty Ghosts. It’s like a Toronto thing, basically. It’s just like a dumb inside joke, but it keeps the Toronto connection happening.

Why did you decide to leave Toronto in the first place?

For me it was just a really small scene of people. I had already played in a couple bands in this very small group, and every musician I knew was already in their own band and doing their own thing. I was playing with a band called Teen Crud Combo at the time. I loved it and I was really into it, but nobody in the band wanted to do the same things I wanted to do. Those people didn’t necessarily feel the need to tour and really go for it.

I came to the realization that it wasn’t going to work out with that group of people. I thought that if I was going to break up this band – which I don’t even want to do – to find other people to play with, I really needed to move, find totally new people and just start from scratch. And also after growing up here and living here, I just needed a big change. I was ready for something new. I left Toronto because I wanted to be in a touring band that was active, with the goal of making that my career.

Did moving to San Francisco help you accomplish that goal?

Not at first, no. After moving and spending years of working on it, everything kind of just imploded, and I said “Fuck. This.” I was done. I think because I started doing it young, I always kind of put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. I had worked myself up too much as far as what I thought should happen, and that translated itself into a series of disappointments. By the end of my last band, Parchman Farm, I was tired. I was burnt. I just wanted to work on music by myself. I felt 30 looming, and I remember thinking to myself “I cannot picture myself dragging an amp on stage, it’s too depressing.” And that’s how I started Dirty Ghosts. That was my weird way of quitting playing, while still kind of needing to do it on some level. It was just something I did for myself. I never intended to share any of this music. I just wanted to go home after work, write songs and go to bed. I kind of felt like I was done being in a band.

So Dirty Ghosts started as just a studio project?

Yeah, totally. I had these songs I wanted to record, and Carson [Binks] wanted to be part of it. Carson and I, the way we started writing music for this, we would jam basically against looped up funk drums. And then we had a live drummer, and we’d go into a rehearsal space and try to work those songs out. And it never went anywhere. I realized this isn’t going to work. The only way it’s going to work is if Carson and I jam over these loops and then I arrange a song over it.

The drum sequencing was arranged by your husband at the time, hip hop performer/producer Aesop Rock. How did he get involved?

In the end this drummer guy quit, so Aesop just said “well, why don’t I just cut up the drum loops and sample it like I would for my own music?” So that was how that started. But then we ended up remixing the record a couple of months before it came out. We took it to a real studio, because we had done it all at home and it was pretty rigid and digital sounding. Because we had been playing live already with a drummer, we had a drummer come in and play live drums on top of the drum samples.

Do you consider it a solo project?

Well, it’s vague. We play the songs that Carson and I started and worked on together, but Carson’s out of the picture now. He left to play bass in a metal band called Saviors, and he left right around the same time that we put the live band together. Carson also left before the album was done, so I had to finish the record myself. It’s weird, but I guess the band’s always been… I guess I’m the only remaining member, and I write a majority of the songs. But we’re really starting to figure out the live show with the band I have now. So I think the next album will definitely be more of a collaborative effort with the band.

Are you at the point now where Dirty Ghosts is your career?

No, not at all. We all work day jobs. And right now we basically all took a month off work to do this tour and test the waters.

Do you want to make it your career, still?

I mean, it would be great. We’d love to. But we’re all at the age where we’ve totally accepted that if this is not in our destiny, it’s totally fine. We’re going to keep doing it anyways. I don’t think we’re at the point where we’re all willing to move into a tiny apartment together and sleep on the floor to like “live the dream.” No. We’re starting slow and we’ll see how it goes. If it picks up steam, amazing. And if not, we’re having a great time, we really enjoy doing it and we’re all good buddies. It doesn’t feel like anything other than a bunch of friends on bowling night.