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| Stephanie Vogt's Donoma attacks (photo by Paddypix |
In the cluttered forest of local music - overpopulated with pale bluesmen, human jukeboxes and dwarf folkies - a few impressive rock bands stand out like towering redwoods. Surprisingly, in Racine and Kenosha those bands all happen to be led or fronted by guitar-slinging ladies nowadays.
Less twin cities than Rust-Belt rivals, Kenosha and Racine
had a live-music scene dominated for decades by all-male groups. Today these former factory towns, set a few
miles apart on the shore of Lake Michigan, are enjoying the emergence of a
fem-rock revolution. Matching catchy
original tunes with captivating performance styles, this potent girl-gang of
four have rabid fans here. Yet they rarely
play Milwaukee venues.
Donoma (started
by Stephanie Vogt) along with Folkswagon
(led by Rachelle Van Offeren), Ash Can
School (fronted by Janet Lee Aiello) and the Jill Plaisted Band are breaking new artistic ground. Kenosha and Racine may be minor moons in the
outer cultural orbit of Chicago, but these bands are helping them shine
brightly. Here’s why they’re worth the
short drive south to catch them at a hometown bar, where there’s rarely a cover
charge.
* * *
DONOMA: Kickass
art-rock with sex appeal
Ensconced in a spacious subterranean rehearsal room and
recording studio in uptown Kenosha, Stephanie Vogt totters gorgeously on
red-ribboned high heels while shooting a video.
She’s stretching a skintight mini-dress and screaming “Santa Baby” as
though it were a kiss-off number.
Suddenly she stops, halting the uptempo hard rock, and laughs loudly.
The other members of Donoma
- Shelle Mounce (bass), Tim King (guitar), Israel Alpizar (drums) and Nick
Campolo (violin) - are having a wonderful Christmas time too. A mural of David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and
Bon Scott provides added inspiration.
The band has an attacking sound, the raw energy of artists in
rebellion. They also excel at
introspective ballads, like “Phantom Limb” from their 2010 CD A Sight of the Sun. Vogt’s brash whisky alto is as dependable as
her rhythm guitar- and keyboard-playing.
Donoma merges influences ranging from punk to Pearl Jam into a
Frankenstew of menace and compassion.
It’s sometimes pretentious, but frequently provocative.
FOLKSWAGON: Americana siren sings of heartbreak and
joy
In her forties now, Racine-based singer/songwriter Rachelle
Van Offeren has been punched in the face a few times by life. But she absorbed the blows and turned her
bruises into art. Folkswagon (est. 2008) is the perfect vehicle for her personal,
plaintive songs of love and loss.
Rachelle is a gifted guitarist and a seductive vocalist, especially when
singing close harmonies with her sister and tambourine-wielding bandmate Susan
Ma.
Folkswagon’s charm comes from the spell that Rachelle casts
with her gritty full-throated soprano.
It suggests a lonely siren hailing you towards a welcome doom. Her songs “I Don’t Know How” and “Every Once in a While” (from Folkswagon’s 2010 CD Fresh
Fruit) are minor-key masterpieces of yearning and regret. The players come from both Racine and
Kenosha. With its rootsy folk-pop Americana sound, Folkswagon would feel
at home in Nashville or Austin.
JILL PLAISTED BAND:
Soulful singer practices aikido
with acoustic guitar
Jill Plaisted’s profession is social work, but her vocation
is making music. Meanwhile, this busy
30-something singer/guitarist is working towards a master’s degree in
counseling at Concordia College. She
also practices the martial art of aikido,
whose Japanese name means the way of
mutual spirit. And that’s a fitting
description of her Kenosha-based band.
Featuring virtuoso electric guitarist Tom Barr, (ex-R&B Cadet) drummer Cy Costabile and
Bill Robbins on bass/vocals, the Jill
Plaisted Band plays mostly covers, including that groovy Wilco/Woody
Guthrie collaboration “California Stars.”
For a recent show at Henry & Wanda’s in Racine they tossed a few
Plaisted originals into every set, including the dreamy “Lost for You.” Jill’s voice is soul-deep and pure, a refined
instrument capable of going from jazzy moan to gospel cry in a heartbeat.
ASH CAN SCHOOL: Funky
pop-rock transfused by new members
Despite the fact that they’ve been on the scene for thirty
years, the married musical partners (bassist/vocalist) Dave Jude Aiello and
(singer/rhythm-guitarist) Janet Lee Aiello of Ash Can School gig harder than most local bands. And they have a vast catalog of original
songs to draw on. At a November basement
rehearsal in Kenosha, Dave joked that he selects them at random for set lists.
Rejuvenated by the addition of drummer Tom Selear and
guitarist Guy Crucianelli, the Aiellos’ band mixes tongue-in-cheek
working-class consciousness (“Lifestyles of the Poor & Unknown”) with a
quirky pop-song sensibility (“The Only Lonely One”). Echoing the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, Janet
delivers the Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing” with conviction. Demure offstage, Janet stalks the floor,
fierce and amusing as she mocks, growls and croons. Ash Can School has released four albums on
iTunes, including 2014’s The Ever
Blooming Knockout Rose.
* * *
Why a Fem-Rock Revolution?
“[S]ometimes I think that the whole reason pop music was
invented in the first place was to vent sick emotions in a deceptively lulling
form. . . And it gave them [i.e. the
Ronettes, Shangri-Las and Crystals - early ‘60s “girl groups”] a kind of
anarchic power, which can still move us.”
- Lester Bangs, “On the Merits of Sexual Repression” (from Blondie, 1980)
Mr. Bangs, an early champion of Patti Smith, is on to
something truthful here. But in order to
explain the phenomenon of “feminine rock” - meaning good (often loud) music written and performed by women, usually in
collaboration with sympathetic men - we must dig deeper.
There are at least two reasons why females thrive at
creating rock ‘n’ roll music: (1) women
can draw upon personal experiences of social oppression, long a source of
inspiration for musical Jews and African-Americans; and (2) women are generally
skillful communicators - and, of course, effective singing is all about
conveying emotions, both simple and ambivalent, so that listeners believe the
singer and are moved by the song.
As for the success of fem-rock in southeastern Wisconsin, Fowlmouth frontman Jeff Moody credits
the Kenosha public-school system’s music programs for producing so many solid
musicians in a city of 100,000. Racine
native Victor DeLorenzo (Violent Femmes,
etc.) says he’s excited to be gigging there again. His (partly female) trio Nineteen Thirteen played at TG’s Restaurant & Pub in Kenosha
last month and is scheduled to visit George’s Tavern in Racine come April.
Longtime chronicler of the club scene in both cities, Kenosha News music columnist Paddy
Fineran complains that most rock ‘n’ roll has lost its essential
dangerousness. So he finds Donoma’s edgy
sound and charged performance style refreshing.
“Donoma is ready to break out of the local scene,” Fineran
says, noting that their second album is being produced by Mike Hoffman (EIEIO, Semi-Twang), a Milwaukeean with major-label connections.
Kicking back in jeans and t-shirt with a can of PBR, Vogt
embraces her fate. She seems unfazed by
the routine of rehearsing, collaborating with her bandmates and entertaining
fickle audiences. Donoma, after all, has
played about 350 gigs so far. The
nuisance and necessity of a day job doesn’t bother her either.
“I want to earn a living doing music full-time,” she says
confidently. A mature 25 years old, Vogt
seems ready for a career-making break.
Together with the Jill Plaisted Band, Ash Can School and Folkswagon,
Donoma is at the vanguard of a local music-scene revolution.
Imagine a stage where gender matters less than talent, where
passionate musicians play true-to-life songs for thinking adults. Then come to Racine and Kenosha and witness
this quartet of bands accomplish exactly that.
[© 2014 by J.C. Mrazek]
Links:
Photos:
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| Ash Can School at TG's - Kenosha, WI (photo by D. Aiello) |
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