The girl in the band

I'm the girl in the band.

If you've ever seen us, you know which one I am. I'm not the only one with long hair, but I am a little smaller than the other two, and my voice is higher - though Joe can hit a lot of the same notes I can!

I've been in this band for six years now, and it's been fantastic. I hope for another 60. Well, actually that's not true, because I'd be really old by then, and I don't want to be that super-old lady who can't really sing anymore, but she just keeps getting on stage, and it's sad more than inspirational. But I do hope we've still got a lot of great years in us.

That said, there a few challenges associated with being the girl in the band - things like having to do a lot more primping to get ready for a show (Johnny can be ready in about 15 minutes, and I think Joe usually just rolls out of bed) and not being able to lift some of the gear. The biggest challenge for me, though, is the fact that men feel completely at ease giving me criticism.


I'm not talking about the men in my band. Those guys are supportive and always have my back.

I'm talking about men in the audience - total strangers. They feel completely within their rights to say something shitty to me during a show. Sometimes they wait for a break, but sometimes they just come right up to the stage, say something snarky and walk away.

Now, sometimes there have been guys who have come up to Johnny to make some "helpful suggestions" about the sound. But to my knowledge, no one has ever come up to Johnny or Joe during a show (or after for that matter) and actually capped on them for their playing or singing.

I have. Multiple times. Just a few examples: I've had a guy approach me to tell me that I'm "much better" at playing bass than I used to be, because I used to "really suck." (Thank you?) I've had a guy come up and ask me if I'm a bass player who sings or a singer who plays bass - and make it clear he thinks I'm the latter. And at a recent show, I had a guy walk up to me DURING OUR SET and tell me what he didn't like about my bass playing in the song we had just played.

Who does that? Oh yeah - haters.

I guess they need me to know that they are musicians, too, and they believe themselves to be better than me, so they want to put me in my place - let me know that I shouldn't get too full of myself just because I'm on stage and they're not. I don't know what they think that accomplishes, but I can tell you what it does accomplish. It makes them look pathetic.

And I can tell you this, too: I've never had a woman do it. Not once. I'm sure there have been women who didn't care for my performance for one reason or another, but not one of them has ever felt the need to come up to me and try to undermine me to my face. Just men. And they don't do it when Johnny or Joe is standing next to me - just when they can lob their little grenade to me alone and walk away.

Pathetic.

But here's the thing. I'm not going to stop playing, stop singing or stop writing music because some no-talent ass-clown blows darts at me. If some loser thinks he needs to cut me down to size, I must be doing something right, because I'm making him feel threatened. So, thanks for the validation - and the inspiration. I think I have the subject for my next song.