Female-fronted bands prove the Fest is not just for dudes

October 31–November 2, 2008, in Gainesville, Florida

By Sarah Collins
Published: November 6th, 2008 | 4:30pm

The Fest is well known in the punk community for drawing thousands of bearded, beer-bellied, and balding men to Gainesville, Florida every year for three days of PBR and punk rock. With headliners like the Bouncing Souls, Dillinger Four, and Less than Jake, what it’s not known for is providing a stage to dozens of talented women.

“Before we got to the Fest, well, I was kind of dreading it,” said Marissa Paternoster, guitarist-vocalist for Screaming Females. “My perception of the Fest was it’s kind of like a frat party.”

I also arrived at the Fest fully prepared for a dude fest with extra hand-sanitizer and deodorant. Then I started looking around. Everywhere I went there were girls rocking out as hard as the guys, both in the pit and on the stage. As I tried to decide between seeing Little Lungs and Lemuria, I realized that it would be impossible to see every girl playing in a band at the Fest in just three days.

Screaming Females were the first band I saw that shattered the image of the Fest as a strictly beard-core event. When Paternoster took the stage Friday night, there wasn’t a frat party in sight, instead just a room full of men and women hanging on to every wailing note from her guitar. Screaming Females lived up to their name: Paternoster shrieked and howled like a miniature Carrie Brownstein over a heavy rhythm section provided by drummer Jarrett Dougherty and bassist Mike Abbati. The band brought to mind an earlier, fiercer Gossip: a swinging blues with unearthly guitar solos running all over it. The packed room watched in amazement as Paternoster fell to the ground and pulled notes out of her guitar with an intensity rivaled by no man I saw the entire weekend.

Paternoster seemed unsure about her place in a largely male scene. She acknowledged facing sexism by saying, “It’s weird when you’re done playing and then some guy comes up to you and says, ‘Oh, you’re pretty good for a girl.’ It’s like, well, should I be insulted or not?”

One of the greatest things about the Fest was the camaraderie among women musicians. When I told Sheena Ozella, guitarist-vocalist of Lemuria, about Paternoster’s detractors, she was quick to defend her. “She’s really fucking good because she’s really fucking good,” Ozella said. “She’s probably one of the top guitar players at the Fest.”

The community spirit was one of Ozella’s favorite things about the Fest. “It’s crazy here,” she said. “We’ve met so many people because we tour all the time, and the amazing women that I have met are here. It’s really awesome to be surrounded by the women that I think are phenomenal in one place at one time. That’s a part of the weekend that I look forward to now coming to the Fest.”

There certainly were a lot of people there who looked forward to seeing Lemuria. The indie-rock trio completely packed music venue Common Grounds on Saturday. The band’s sound — indie-rock full of unexpected stops and turns that makes simple-sounding songs so much more — doesn’t lend itself to mosh pits and stage diving, but this was the Fest, where every song is worthy of a mosh pit. They no sooner started playing than men began jumping off of the stage, fist-pumping along to all of their songs and shouting the lyrics in time with Ozella and drummer-vocalist Alex Kerns.

Though the set was clearly loved by the men in the audience, Ozella had to deal with sexism herself when a male audience member shouted a marriage proposal to her. The band quickly went into another song, but she admitted that she has to ignore the impact of comments like that. “I play music because I want to be playing music and I’m a musician, and I choose to ignore things like that because I don’t want to make it an issue,” she said. “I want to continue doing and I don’t want to get upset, I just want to forget about it.”

Lemuria was followed by friends and fellow New Yorkers Bridge and Tunnel, who kept Common Grounds packed for their punishing set.

The half-female band draws frequent comparisons to beard-core favorites Hot Water Music for its post-hardcore sound, but it’s a bit more difficult to define than that. Bridge and Tunnel consciously attempt to challenge punk-rock conventions with sweeping melodies and brutal breakdowns. Guitarist-vocalist Rachel Rubino admitted this. “Bridge and Tunnel, particularly, I don’t think caters to any one gender or set of people, hopefully also not just one musical preference either,” she said. “I think we cover a lot of ground.”

Bridge and Tunnel’s audience was a cross-section of the Fest, from old hardcore dudes to young pop-punk girls (this reporter included). It was clear that gender was not holding this band back, as Rubino and bassist-vocalist Tia Meilinger got into the songs with a raw athleticism rarely demonstrated by their male counterparts.

Bridge and Tunnel are one band that seem to consistently escape being defined by gender, despite playing a traditionally male genre. The loving welcome they received and the high praise they garnered from both men and women proved that even at the Fest female bands can be received with open arms.

The Fest gave Rubino a chance to reflect on the unique position of women in a male-dominated genre. “Being a girl playing music is something that matters to me a lot,” she said. “I really feel like it’s really important to sort of connect to that, and be a part of a network of not just bands but women supporting each other, and showing people that your gender is not what defines you.”