Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Fem-Rock Revolution in the Rust Belt: Racine & Kenosha's best bands are led by women


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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.

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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. 

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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]

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Ash Can School at TG's - Kenosha, WI  (photo by D. Aiello)

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