BAM! It's a Girl music post!

Caley Conway and the Lucy Cukes

I'm the first one to do a massive eyeroll when people start blathering on about "It's Woman's Night" or "Girl Rock Festival" or such and such, as if women needed their own festival because somehow we're handicapped when it comes to music. I'm all for thing like Girls Rock (summer camps to get young women playing in rock bands), but once you're graduated/grown up, there's no need to segregate us.

That said, I think it was just coincidence that some of the bands that have caught my ear lately happen to be female fronted. The first one I literally stumbled upon. I was on a lovely Saturday morning bike ride in that part of 'Tosa I usually get lost in and I noticed there were increasingly more people people on the bike trail than there were not a mile earlier and BAM! I'm suddenly in the middle of this farmer's market!

I pulled off my headphones, talked a peach vendor into selling me just one peach (I was hungry!) and I heard some music that drew me in a little more seductively than the usual folkie-at-a-farmer's-market.  It was a little three piece band (the drummer, it turns out, had forgotten his sticks and ran home to get them DOH!) called Caley Conway and the Lucy Cukes. Conway has one of those voices you picture singing in the foothills of Appalachia, but there's this urban, almost Dylan like sensibility to her lyrics and songwriting. Except I get the feeling she's a much nicer person.  I heard snippets of lyrics like how impressed people would be when she takes out the trash (and of course, this is snidely delivered), but darn it, her voice is so sweet that you put up with lyrics that kick you. It's like having a pie in your face, but you deal with it because it's really good pie. I dropped the folky word, and they assured me they rocked too, but, well, their drummer was getting his sticks. I believe them, though. They had some complex arrangements going on between the guitars and basses and mandolins and whatever instruments they felt like picking up. I made a point of getting their name and will keep an eye out for them, but after two songs my heart rate was going down and I needed to get back on my bike.

Ramma Lamma 

A coupla weeks later, again, on the bikes. This time was the second Chill on the Hill I've been to all year. The first was "Irish Night" and my bandmade Dan Mullen turned my head by closing out McTavish's set with a celtic version of "Maggie May." I've seen McTavish enough times -- this was the first of them bravely pushing on withOUT Mark Shurilla (and not a Shurilla tribute show, either). But it was the following week that's I'm writing about here, to keep this "Chick Night" theme going. It was indeed Chick Night (I don't know what the very nice and politically correct folks at the Bay View Neighborhood Association called it) and the first band was a wonderfully fun glammy, garagey outfit called Ramma Lamma. Lead singer Wendy Norton looks, sounds, and writes songs as though one fine day in her youth she woke up, heard Joan Jett and said BAM! That's what I wanna be! She's simultaneously badass and fun, and so's her band. Lots of times a band like this will be totally badass (see Cycle Sluts from Hell) or totally fun (see Cyndi Lauper) but like Jett, she unabashedly loves rock and roll and wears it well. Plus, her band is tight, punchy, and can handle her catchy, riffy songwriting. And, she's working my favorite subgenre of rock, so they're definitely on my Must Catch Them Again list.

Wanton Looks

They were followed by some equally badass women out of Chicago called Wanton Looks. There must be a
really good garage punk revival going on down the I-94 road: this is the second good garage band out of the Windy City I've seen. They didn't blow me away as strongly as Ramma Lamma did, but they got stronger as the night went on. Bassist Tracy Trouble trades lead vocal duties with guitarist Inga Olson, and while Trouble has a strong voice, my advice to her is to write songs in a key that hits the strong part of her range. I could hear the best part of her voice only later in the set -- and that's when I realized it existed. (I only realize this because I can be accused of the same issue -- writing songs in a key that doesn't necessarily suit my voice). Otherwise, this band has a lot of the same stuff going for them as Ramma Lamma does: fun badassery in that Runaways vein. They're a little more on the metal punk side as opposed to Ramma Lamma's glam punk. Olson and Trouble have more rawkstar swagger to them, but they're kind of upstaged by their really top notch drummer, Meg Thomas. I'd like to see them in a dark club -- maybe on a bill with somebody like Black Actress.

So there. I've written a "Chick Rock" blog entry, and if I were reading this, even with the disclaimer, I'd probably be rolling my eyes over this. Especially since the three bands I saw don't need the "pretty good for a girl" handcap hanging on them. I just happened to stumble upon three really good bands over the past few weeks, and they just happened to be fronted by women. BAM.