The Damsels Give Lesbian Music Fans Something to Sing About
by Sharon Hadrian, August 7, 2006
The queer music scene is filled with folksy-rock acts,
from Ani DiFranco to the Indigo Girls, and joining the musical
fray are The Damsels, a female-fronted group from Baltimore.
The band are new on the block, in a sense; they just released
their debut album, Ashes, on May 27th. But they're no kids,
having toiled on the Baltimore club scene for years.
Baltimore Gay Life has even called them "local heroes."
The essence of The Damsels is in blending, whether it's
their hybrid blues-rock-roots style, or the merging of two
solo guitarists into one cohesive unit. Formed in 2003,
the three-piece band consists of out lesbian singer/guitarists
Rachel Hall and Sabrina, and drummer Timmy P, whom Sabrina
describes as "a straight guy with a lesbian heart."
The band began as an amalgamation of solo acts;
Sabrina "stole" Timmy from another band, and both knew Rachel
from the local music scene. When Sabrina developed some neck
problems that necessitated a sit-in guitarist, she invited
Rachel into the group. The trio began playing full-time as
The Damsels a few years ago, and they haven't looked back
on their solo careers since.
The lead-up to the current band has been a long one,
with over 40 years of musical experience between the two female leads.
Sabrina started singing at birth, and guitar naturally
followed as an accompaniment instrument at age eight.
Somewhere during that time she also figured out she was gay.
"I knew when I had a crush on Jodie Foster when I was four,
" she says. "I just always knew I liked girls. I knew I shouldn't,
but I just did."
Rachel had a similar musical upbringing, but was a bit
slower coming to terms with her sexuality. She was singing
onstage by age four, and began playing guitar before she
reached her teens. By age 13 she was writing songs--including
the current Damsels hit "Oblivious"--but it would be years
before Rachel realized she was gay. "I've always been very
curious and very scared, but I think I finally figured it
out my first year of college," she says. "Being a guitar
player was definitely an arena in which I could display
my masculinity without being ridiculed for it. Also,
I was assumed gay as a solo artist long before I came out
or knew I was gay, but I liked it."
What has resulted from this personal and musical journey
are songs of maturity, and Ashes represents the band's
well-traveled lives. The album is filled with songs of
experience, whether in love, loss, or just life. "For me,
heartache is a number one inspiration. [It] seems like
when I'm going through a personal crisis, the music just
kinda comes out," says Sabrina. "Not just heartbreak but
heartache--arguments, personal growth, that sorta thing.
[When I'm not broken-hearted], I don't write."
In fact, the band's music mirrors their personal lives
in a lot of respects. Sabrina and Rachel are a couple both
on and off stage, and many of the songs on The Damsels album
have been written for or about each other.
One of the most powerful tracks, "The Crying Tree,"
is a song of longing and heartache, with a catchy chorus rising
above a melodic lead guitar. Songs like "Ashes" and
"Dangerous Curves" have similar themes, but with very
different musical executions; the former a haunting ode
to unrequited love, the latter a Melissa Etheridge-esque
acoustic ballad.
It's difficult to name the best track on such a diverse
album, with 12-bar blues numbers like "C7" situated next
to slow acoustic love songs like "The Words," which Rachel
freely admits makes her cry. The Damsels music runs the
gamut from radio-friendly pop-rock songs to country and
blues jams, all pulled together by a tremendous sense of
musicality.
In fact, their guitar-driven music and strong vocals
at times draw favorable comparisons to Melissa Etheridge,
whom they also frequently cover at live shows. Sabrina,
in particular, tends to play and sing in the style of
the iconic singer (as if her 12-string Adamas guitar didn't
give her away).
Rachel and Sabrina share songwriting and singing duties
on the album, and both of their voices are powerful and
well-trained. Sabrina is the more bluesy singer of the duo,
while Rachel's voice is more introspective and soft
(but with the ability to wail). She's also the more political,
snippier singer, with sarcasm flowing freely through some of
her songs. " It's funny that the shy one has the more sarcastic
lyrics and the bigmouth has the sensitive lyrics," kids Rachel.
The musicality and talent on Ashes is unmistakable,
but lesbian music fans tired of the same old generic love songs
will also find solace in many of the lyrics, which are written
with either gender-neutral or feminine pronouns. "I normally
write in the 'I' or 'she' person," says Sabrina. "Rachel is
more third person in the past, but [her] new stuff uses female
pronouns. We want a good gay following and a good straight
following, and so far it hasn't been a problem."
Perhaps the most blatantly gay song is "Dirty Little Nice Girl,
"with overtly lesbian lyrics like, "Dirty little nice girl/Crooked
in a straight world/Where your mommy and daddy, they really
want a wedding/But not one to a girl..."
With an album full of girl-loving songs, The Damsels have
had to deal with being a gay band in a straight bar world,
but it hasn't been as bad as one might expect.
"Of course, The Damsels have had the few 'dyke' comments
in the bar on occasion, and I've been fired from a few gigs
for being a lesbian and bringing a 'lesbian crowd'--the typical
'I don't want my bar turning into a dyke bar' reason," says Sabrina.
"But we're pretty lucky. We've even won over a few of the
assholes--people [who] were making 'dyke' comments and by
the end of the night they were big fans. You just never know."
But The Damsels are not simply another lesbian bar band,
having played with national touring artists such as Melissa
Ferrick and LP. "That was our first original gig, opening for LP,
"says Sabrina. "Oh my god. We only had eight originals and
had barely played them. But LP is awesome. She's a sweet person.
We wanna open for her again in the future, and we'd love to tour
with her if we can."
A few years later and with their new CD to peddle, the band
is showing no signs of slowing down or lowering their expectations.
They hope to branch out from Baltimore a bit more in the future,
playing gigs wherever they can, labels be damned. But they haven't
forgotten their roots. "I'm from the old school where you tour
and promote the hell out an album," comments Sabrina. "We think
clubs sometimes match up gay or girl acts for a better draw,
and we agree with it. We love playing with other lesbian or
girl bands. It's cool."
On the lookout for a tour and support wherever they can
find it, the one thing experience has taught The Damsels is
never to fall complacent and settle. "We did get an offer to
be on a Christian rock label the other week," laughs Sabrina.
"They said they didn't care about the lesbian thing, [that it]
would be a good diversity thing. It was a youth-oriented project,
but not for us."
Learn more about The Damsels and purchase their CD at the damsels.net
Sharon Hadrian - AfterEllen.com (7 Aug 2006)
On Track with the Damsels
by Rahne Alexander
The Damsels will be playing at the Colonial Inn in Upperco on
Oct. 7, Leadbetters in Fells Point on Oct. 28, and Carpenter
Street Saloon in St Michaels on Oct 29. For more information,
check them out at http://www.thedamsels.net.
New bands are born every day in the world of rock music,
and some births are more serendipitous than others. Such is
the case with the Damsels, a two-year-old, three-piece act
that graced this year's Pride stage and that calls the Fells Point
bar Leadbetters its home away from home. Drummer Timmy P and
guitarist/songwriters Rachel Hall and Sabrina are gearing up
to go into the studio this fall to record their first CD.
Playing against the drummer stereotype, Timmy arrives for
the interview early and begins to trace the beginnings of
the Damsels, when he met Sabrina at an audition for his previous band.
"We didn't have a singer, and Sabrina answered the ad,
luckily enough," Timmy says. "I wasn't particularly happy
in that situation, and I just felt a click with her, and
she felt the same thing. Later that night, she was packing
up to leave and I said, hang out. We went outside and I said,
you're definitely going to make the band. But if you join
this band, in about a month, you're going to want to leave.
And sure enough, it was about a month later. It worked out great.
That was the beginning."
That fateful night is now five years in the past, and
Sabrina and Timmy kept playing together. The mutual admiration
between the musicians is still clear.
"I have never heard a drummer that can make the drums sing
like he does," says Sabrina. "He can play drums with me singing,
and the audience could swear that I was playing guitar, or that
Rachel was playing guitar, or that some other musical instrument
other than the drums was going on, because he can just make them
talk that much."
"He knows me better than I know myself," she continues.
"We have this psychic connection that's just weird. I'll just
think something and he'll do it. When I write a song, I know
exactly how he's going to play it. And it's been like that
since we started playing together."
When Rachel Hall joined on two years ago, she was still
finishing college, but the Damsels picture was complete.
"Adding Rachel to the mix changed our sound a lot. I play
a 12-string acoustic, and I've always played unplugged. All
the gadgets that she uses, I don't even know what they are.
She brings the electric to the Damsels. And when she brings
the electric, it just goes right into that sound," Sabrina says.
As solo artists, both Rachel and Sabrina played more covers
than originals. As a result, the Damsels has an extensive repertoire
of cover songs to draw from, while their original songs have a c
hance to flourish in the band setting.
"Both of us have our own originals that we both wrote separately,
"Sabrina says. "We've had a couple that we've written since we've
been together as a band. As we start playing them together they
become Damsels songs. Most of my songs come from some type of
heartache. Mine are all very personal. I normally find inspiration
when I'm upset about something."
"When I write an original, it's just magic," she continues.
"It's like all of a sudden a song just comes out of nowhere.
I have no idea where it comes from and some of them I have no
idea what they mean when I write them. It feels like magic."
"Rachel has a song called 'Oblivious,'" Sabrina adds.
"When she does it acoustic it's this very pretty, slow mellow song,
and as soon as we started playing it, it became this totally
punk kind of song."
"'Oblivious' is kind of a sarcastic song, It's personal, but
it's very sarcastic. It's funny that the shy one has the more
sarcastic lyrics and the bigmouth has the sensitive lyrics,
"laughs Rachel.
The drive of the Damsels has not waned, despite an
eight-month hiatus after Sabrina's neck surgery in January of
this year. They confess to keeping their gig schedule light
through the rest of the year in order to record and to set
their sights on playing regional gigs.
"We're planning on recording before the end of the year,
"Sabrina says. "We're shopping around for a studio, and we're
probably going to lay down ten songs. Rachel will do half of them,
and I'll do the other half. We've been playing bars for a long time,
and I'd like to get out of Baltimore. Get up to Philly and D.C.,
really promote the CD and stay focused."
Maintaining focus can be a struggle when all the band members
are working day jobs in addition to playing multiple weekend shows.
But the end result seems to be that the Damsels are tighter as
friends, and as a band.
"It's hard to progress and write songs when we're always gigging,
"says Timmy. "But having (the Damsels) makes it easier to deal with
getting up at 6 a.m., knowing that we are doing this."
"Whenever we've played a lot in a row together, I always feel
like we're really tight by the end," Rachel adds, "After three
nights in a row, we can kind of look at each other. We don t even
have to talk to each other to know where we're going to go.
We just kind of get in sync."
"We all do genuinely love each other, not only as musicians,
but we're friends. We like to hang out together. We love to play
music together. I wouldn't play with anybody else. Before I sang
with Rachel I always felt kind of competitive when I tried to sing
with somebody else," Sabrina says. "We're not just a band.
We're like family."
"This is the first band I've ever been in," says Rachel.
"They've both been in bands before, and I feel like the luckiest
girl in the whole world that my first band is such a cool band.
This is exactly what I want to be doing. I'm in a place where
I can do everything I want to do, and I don't feel like I'm being
held back."
Posted September 30, 2005
Rahne Alexander - Baltimore Gay Life (30 Sep 2005)
The Music of Baltimore Pride 2006
The Damsels
Ashes
Local heroes The Damsels released their album Ashes this year,
and it really captures aspects of the bands songs that may get a
little lost in the bars where they usually play - especially their
vocal harmonies and the cleverness in their lyrics. There's a
little something for every mood on the CD, ranging from pensive
ballads ("Ashes," "The Crying Tree") to driving raveups
("C7," "Oblivious"). The CD is only a taste of what this trio
is like, but the flavor is pretty tasty.
Posted June 9, 2006
Rahne Alexander - Baltimore Gay Life (9 Jun 2006)
