Girl Trouble Interview - Part 1

It was a big thrill for me to interview Girl Trouble, one of my favorite Northwest bands, even if it was through the mail. The result ended up being the length of a small paperback novel. Due to space limitations I had to break the interview into two parts. Part one will be with Girl Trouble's drummer extraordinaire, Bon. Part two will be in the next issue.

Sean: How long has Girl Trouble been around?

Bon: We've been together twelve years.

Sean: Where and when was your first show?

Bon: Our first show was at a local community college Battle of the Bands in April, 1984. Six bands entered. No band was like ours. Mostly hard rock and heavy metal bands signed up. The winner was determined by audience votes. I think the other bands were kind of making fun of us but I was too nervous to notice. A bunch of our friends showed up, punk rock kids. We were actually all pretty nervous, which is funny to think about now because the whole thing was so silly. All the bands got to play a half hour. Kurt decided we'd get more votes if we threw them something for free. He decided on cans of root beer which was a pretty bold move. We'd never throw anything so heavy now. We've learned this lesson from twelve years of experience. Our gear was also laughable. I played my tiny $75 Sears surplus-store drum kit and Kahuna played through some plywood speaker cabinets he built himself. So we played and the audience went crazy. Okay, it was our friends mostly but other people seemed to like us too. The other bands really stared at us after we were done. I guess they'd never been to the Showbox. Anyway, we came in second. We got word later that there was trouble in ballot-land. The band that won contained the guy who had access to the ballot box. Looked kind of phoney but we didn't care. We felt like it was a big victory to get up there, play for a while, watch people dance to us and not get beaned by flying pop cans.

Sean: What was the first song you came up with?

Bon: The first song we came up with was "Riverbed". We wrote it together. I never thought that we'd be able to write a song. Just because you can play in a band (and believe me, saying that is stretching it) doesn't necessarily make you a composer. To me they are two entirely different things. But we started getting flak for playing all covers and decided to try it. We were pretty suprised actually to write something that sounded okay. Even now we still continue to write as a group. Some of our songs are just written by one person but the majority are a group effort.

Sean: I have a review from Melody Maker for your "When Opposites Attract" single which calls you "Tacoma's oil-streaket Munster-time answer to The Cramps". What do you say to people that carelessly label you Cramps wannabees?

Bon: We used to get that Cramps thing a lot but I've heard it less and less with every year we play. In fact I'm almost amused that anyone would still bring it up. I sure hope that after twelve years we've established ourselves a little more than that. I think there's probably tons of bands playing who'd be more in line to get that comparison now. We think the Cramps are great but I'm not going to dress up in a sexy devil costume so that's going to hurt our chances in the "Cramps wannabee" contest. Of course Kurt might.

Sean: How long have you been passing out toys at your shows?

Bon: Twelve years. It started with that first Battle of the Bands thing to get the votes and we haven't stopped since. Audiences could be a little rough when you were first starting out. We figured if they got a free prize they wouldn't be in such a hurry to beat us up if they didn't like us. Someday we should make up a list of things we've thrown out to people. It's pretty impressive. There are a couple of things we've learned not to throw. Hershey's kisses is one of them. Our last show at the Tropicana in Olympia we passed out Hershey's kisses. Have you ever been beaned by one of those things? They're like little rocks. Then at the end of the show the floor was a sea of sweat and chocolate. It was like a skating rink. So we stick to softer stuff. We don't just pass out toys. We've passed out wigs, bras, Top Ramen, variety pack cereal, pillows for a pillow fight, and lots of other weird junk.

Sean: How is Granny doing these days?

Bon: Granny is doing great. She just went to the cleaners and got her gold lame go-go dress with the black fringe cleaned. This can only mean one thing; she's feeling good enough to dance again. She was sick for a while and couldn't move very well. Now she says she's back to normal and the plan is she's going to dance with us at our show in Tacoma on April 20th. Dealing with Granny is always a day-to-day thing. She's now 85. But she seems pretty determined on this show and we hope she can do it.

Sean: Why the long delay since your last full length release, New American Shame?

Bon: We has to live up to our nickname "the slowest working band in showbiz". After that album came out we spent most of that year touring. We did a US tour, a West Coast tour and a European tour. We don't write when we're on tour. Then we took some time off, played a bunch of stuff locally and spent most of 1994 making a video. We've been gradually writing songs for the last year and working up to another album. We also ran into studio troubles. Our favorite engineer, Brent DeRocher, was moving around trying to find a studio he wanted to work in permanently. We wanted to work with him so trying to fit everyone's schedule together was tough. He finally works at a studio we really like. We've recorded about 10 songs there and only have a few more to write before we have enough for an album. Two of the songs from that studio will be released on an Estrus single in May. Our system of making an album is probably different than other bands who have to keep a schedule because of a contract. We write when the mood hits us and when we realize we have enough material for an album, we release it. We've been feeling pretty good about the latest recording we've done. I think we might finally have the hang of it.

Sean: Why did you create the Girl Trouble fanzine Wig Out? Is it simply a promotional tool? When will the next issue be out?

Bon: We created Wig Out! originally because we knew no major publications were going to be circulating our name in print. I was already in the publishing biz (I help make a magazine for stringed instrument makers) so we decided to cut out the middle-man and do it ourselves instead of waiting around to be discovered. At the time (1984) most of the independent "zines" were so deadly serious it was depressing. It was like this big political thing where if you were putting something in print it HAD to be serious. We saw that the Tiger Beat mentality was sorely needed and we were the band to promote it. So at first Wig Out! was kind of geared to that style of writing. When we'd finally run out of printing our "Hates and Luvs" and winning " Dream Dates", Wig Out! just became whatever we felt like writing about. We always try to feature a movie and snack column in every issue. Other than that it's up to us. The first couple of issues got some flak because not many bands had the gall to publish a magazine featuring themselves. Wig Out! has never been serious or political and that was sort of a different concept too. People started expecting it to be out regularly. That's when we started making records and my time got divided up, so there was less time to do Wig Out!. I got real lazy about it because the last one (#22 which covered all the touring we did) was pretty complicated. I'm working on the next issue right now and hope to have it out this month. The fabulous Girl Trouble four-year calendar is out now and we'll send anyone a copy of that if they send a couple of stamps. We came up with the four-year idea when it was obvious I couldn't make anymore deadlines. So now we don't have to worry about another Girl Trouble calendar until the year 2000!

Sean: Tell me of any unusual occurances you've had at your shows.

Bon: We've had tons of weird stuff happen at our shows. When you invite people on stage there's a good chance things will be more interesting. We always try for the audience participation thing. We used to have dance contests when we first started a nd sometimes we still do, we've made people line up and do a Soul Train dance line, once in a while we bring our go-go girls to do a choreographed dance routine with K.P., stuff like that. I think my favorite was when we decided to have a pillow fight. We played at the Boxing Club in Seattle which had a real S & M dungeon in the basement! You weren't supposed to go in there and of course that's the first place we all headed after the show was over. The club rules were pretty interesting. I should have saved a copy. Anyway the show itself was packed with almost 700 people and the only exit was one tiny door. It was hotter than hell in there. We'd brought about 15 pillows for the big fight. I figured people would just smack each other a couple of times but they went nuts. We played "Batman" and K.P. jumped down into the crowd and fought with them. You couldn't see and you couldn't breathe becuase of all of the foam and feathers. It was incredible to watch.

Sean: Do you have any final words for the readers of Hmmm...?

Bon: We have a single coming out on Estrus (it will be a Crust Club single) in May. We'll be having our first record release party at the Crocodile in Seattle on May 17th. We never had a record release party before because nobody could ever guarantee us that we'd have the record in time. I think the record has to be present in order to have a party for it. We are getting special copies only for that show so people will be able to get something different from both the Crust Club and store copies. Other than that thanks for the interview Sean, and we'll catch the rest of you on the flipside.

*Part 2 of my interview with Bon, Kahuna, Dale, and K.P. of Girl Trouble will appear in the July issue of Hmmm...*

To contact Girl Trouble, write to:
Wig Out!
P.O. Box 44633
Tacoma, WA 98444

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