Girlz to Go Wild in Tour of Their Own
Vans Warped Tour founder Kevin Lyman decided to establish his annual punk, metal and indie music and skate fest in 1995 "because no one paid attention to punk-rock music other than the core fans. We had to go out and show that we were a force. We were a bunch of little bands, all touring clubs and cannibalizing each other's audience. So when we would combine eight or 10 club acts on the Warped Tour, all of sudden we became more than a club act."
Nine years later, the show has become a summer ritual and has been credited with helping to grow the scene as a whole and directly boost the careers of participants such as the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, No Doubt, Kid Rock and Blink-182.
Lyman now hopes to do the same for the bands playing on his Warped offshoot, the Girlz Garage Tour. As its title implies, the tour, kicking off its inaugural run here in Boston on Monday at Axis, features a multi-artist lineup of all-female or female- fronted groups. Adhering to the Warped rules of democracy, on any given night smart and smart-alecky hip-hoppers Northern State and Brassy, Canadian pop-rockers Lillix and new-wave popsters the Start could find themselves opening or closing the show.
"It's not going to be some preachy, like, `girls do rock!' tour," says Lillix keyboardist Lacey Lee Evin, 19. "It's just bands that have females in them, going on tour together."
The concept worked well for Sarah McLachlan's similar, if larger- scaled, Lilith Fair for three years. But it still retains the whiff of ghetto-ization, which brings up complicated feelings for some of the participants.
"To be honest it is a little of an oversimplification," Northern State emcee and self-described "hard-core feminist" Julie "Hesta Prynn" Potash says of the idea of marketing bands whose common link is ovaries.
"Sure, we fit into this bill in some ways, but I think when we view ourselves, if we had to pick five bands to tour with, I don't think these would've been the bands," Potash said. "Not because we don't respect them or like them, but we toured with De La Soul and we toured with the Roots. We're a hip-hop act; we want to play with hip-hop acts."
But, by the same token, Potash likes the idea of getting her Latifah-meets-the-Beastie Boys trio in front of fans who she believes could benefit from their comic but politically astute rhymes.
"We really do want our music to reach young girls. That's a really important part of our mission statement," says the Long Island native and former intern to Sen. Hillary Clinton. "Hip-hop fans are important; we're hip-hop fans. But you know 15-year-old girls aren't going to a Talib Kweli show, so it's really important that we reach this audience in any way possible, so if it's the Girlz Garage Tour that's going to take us there, then we're on."
For her part, Lillix's Evin is bewildered as to the continuing dearth - proportionately speaking - of female rockers, punks and hip- hoppers.
"Most women that you see in the music industry are always solo artists; you don't see many together," Evin said. "It's different, and I don't know why there aren't more female bands. Because I know there's lots of female musicians out there."
And female music fans as well.
Lyman points out that since the Warped audience is now "48 percent female," the time is right for the Girlz Garage. He's hoping this tour will help these acts achieve stand-alone drawing power.
"My problem was that all the guy bands get all the recognition on the Warped Tour, even though we've had the Distillers and the Donnas and all these female acts. But the guy bands seem to go on to the next level. That's what I'm trying to build with the Girlz Garage. I want to build a brand where it's going to be quality music and to grow the scene so then all of these artists will start growing on their own from that."
