THRWD : An Interview With Mydolls: Houston Femme Punk Pioneers

 An Interview With Mydolls: Houston Femme Punk Pioneers

n the late 1970′s, when punk rock was still young, Mydolls were the first feminist punk band in Houston. From what I gather, things were different back then. Most people didn’t appreciate women playing rock music like they do now and the band was from Texas nonetheless – where it wasn’t exactly a nice place to be a misfit punk rocker with offbeat political beliefs.

In those early days, Mydolls played shows with their Texas punk counter-parts like The Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, and Really Red at now defunct venues like Raul’s in Austin and The Island in Houston. What’s great about the scene back then is that there was never just one definitive sound and Mydolls were no exception. Their music was a scope of biting, intelligent and raw color, texturally varied among noise rock guitars and tribal rhythms.

To my surprise, they’re still playing and recording new material in 2015. Two of the members, Dianna and Linda are big fans 35 Denton and they decided to bring the band up to play a show. I had the privilege of interviewing the band after their Rubber Gloves show at 35 Denton where they shared their tales of the punk rock heydey and the struggles of being a mostly female punk band in a scene dominated by men.

Who are you and what do you do in the band?

Linda Younger – Guitar

Dianna Ray – Bass

Trish Herrera – Guitar and Vocals

George Reyes – Drums

 

For people who don’t know who y’all are, can you tell me about your sound and about the band history?

Trish: Dianna started and I together and then we looked for someone to play with us and we knew Really Red, Ronnie from Really Red had a record label and he was like “You should have my wife in your band” and so I said “Well, does she know how to play anything?” And she did so we thought that was cool. None of us really knew how to play, I mean I had guitar lessons and I knew how to play guitar but we didn’t really know what we were doing so my cousin George, we’d been playing together sine we were kids just pretending we were Sunny and Cher and things like that. He said he would play after we tried out a bunch of girl drummers that honestly, back in 1977 and 78, there weren’t many of them. We like waited through a lot of cow girls and girls that played little hand drums and things like that and we didn’t and so we wanted to have an all girl band and so we didn’t know what our sound was going to be. It just developed into making noise.

Linda was new on guitar so she’d play the bottom three strings and I would play the top three strings. Then we would switch off and I’d play the bottom and she played the top three strings and people would hear what we were doing and they’d say ‘Oh my god that sounds like such intricate guitar work!’. And we wanted to sound really strong so we didn’t want to yell though, like, all the boy bands were yelling but we were angry and we had a political bass and what we were angry about. Women had a really hard time in fact, they wouldn’t even pay us, we had to have a male manager that went with us and they would only give him the money and it was just, strange things were going on.

Our sound came from pure innocence – and just realizing that punk rock to us was having a voice and just saying what we needed to say and not be afraid. We don’t care if we make mistakes that much on stage, we work really hard and practice to make our music. It has a form but if it falls apart a little bit, we come back together. Our sound is just created every single time we do it.

Linda: And influences, God we have a lot of influences!

Trish: Influences! We started off with like, late 70′s. For me, it was like listening to bands like Siouxie and The Banshees…

Linda: Patti Smith

Trish: Oh yeah, Patti Smith and you know, a little bit of the Stooges. I love the Stooges.

Linda: Velvet Underground.

Trish: Then later, I discovered MC5. You know there’s bands that have really strong voices that were just coming out and sang.

Linda: The Raincoats!

Trisha: And the Raincoats, we went to London and met the Raincoats and saw them play.

So about how long were you a band? Up to ’86?

Trish: We played from 1978 to about 1986 or ’87 and then Linda had a baby and Dianna and I had other projects and Linda would sometimes sit in on those projects. In fact, one of the new songs we have coming out on our new album is a song that I wrote with an artist in Houston that Dianna played bass on and Linda came in and played violin on. We had other bands while her kids were growing up but we were still a band. Mydolls really never broke up, we just did what we could. We really worked hard to stay together because we love each other so much.

Linda: We just took a sabbatical while we each did our own parallel play and then we got back together and we got real involved in girls rock! Helping young girls…

Really? Was that recently?

Linda: We’ve been doing it for about five years.

Dianna: Yeah, five years ago.

Linda: We were the founding group that got together and formed girls rock camp in Houston.

Trish: We’re not exactly traditional punk rock which I think has a sound now like blues or, you know, I think it’s got a sound. We were influenced by bands like the Marine Girls, Raincoats and bands like that, that we felt were punk because they were doing something so different and so we developed our sound through our male counterparts who had very strong energy and our female counterparts who were coming from this very general energy, honoring both of them.

Dianna: A lot of the female bands or some of the female bands, much like us, still had a very punk ethos and message…

Trish: Like Frightwhig.

Dianna: A lot about politics…

Trish: And women’s power and things like that, that we’re still working with.

What other bands did y’all play with?

Trish: We played with Minor Threat, Really Red, The Judys, Siouxsee and The Banshees, Big Boys U.K. Subs, that was a great show!

Dianna: We saw a ton of bands. Those were the bands that came from Houston.

Trish: We played in San Antonio and the Butthole Surfers opened for us and we thought that they were such a cool band that we invited them to Houston. They had this movement called the ‘Kung Fu movement’ so all the bands that were friends with them would stay at our apartments. The Butthole Surfers stayed at our apartment, their first show in Houston and we opened for them in Houston. And so, they just like took off… They got on stage and they just like took off…

Dianna: I could give you a whole interview about the Butthole Surfers though.

Trish: Oh, I could give you a scatalogical review about them. They came to our apartment and we were like ‘Holy shit!’ and we don’t mean that lightly. [To George] Oh and your apartment…

George: It was haha.. even worse!

Everyone:  Yeah.

Linda: It was great.

Trish: So we loved them as people when we met them and Gibby came to our apartment and knocked on the door and he was standing in the hallway and there was a basket full of laundry and his clothes were packed in a laundry basket. His hair’s like shaved on one side and a part of long hair covering the other side. Because he was a CPA and he used to like cover his bald part… Anyway, he was standing there with a policeman. You know, back in those days, you did not want a policeman standing there at your door and Gibby is standing there with his basket of clothes and the policeman goes: ‘This guy was walking around outside your apartment and he said he belongs here!’ and I said ‘Yeah, he’s cool, he’s cool.’ And he was like ‘Well, he was just looking kind of suspicious!’ So that was like Gibby’s first time in Houston, you know. He was a CPA! He came in after work with his laundry basket! I don’t know!

George: The Butthole Surfers came to stay at my house and that was the first time I actually saw a fart lighting contest.

What!!

George: Haha! I told them I was working and they could stay at my house and so I went back. We had to get a ladder to get into my house because they had locked the doors and so I lived on the second floor and there was a terrace and I had to get a ladder to climb back into my apartments.

Trish: We’re sorry we’re talking too much about the Butthole Surfers.

It’s okay. When you were on a hiatus when did y’all decide to get back together? Or did y’all just play every now and then?

Dianna: Yeah, that’s kind of what would happen. We played a reunion show for the Island, which was the punk rock club in Houston. That was in 1990. Trish and I were in like three bands together along with Kathy, who was my wife and played on some Mydolls songs. We also played for our sound guy, Phil Davis, who was our soundguy and he died. He was in a hit and run and we played a benefit. Anyways, so these two young women in Houston put together The Noise and Smoke festival which was their second year to do this. So they reached out to us and said, hey would you play? And we said okay, why not and that kind of started us a lot more regularly.

When was that?

Trish: Noise and Smoke was in 2008 and I know that because I was very sick at that time and now I’m well. So, I know that.

Dianna: So we started playing again at that time and before that Brian from GTA got in touch with us about releasing a catalog, comprehensive release.

And oh, how was the show tonight?

Dianna: Oh, gosh, we had a blast!

Trish: The show was really fun tonight! And I love that there were so many men because a lot of times at our shows we have predominantly women so it was really cool to see men supporting us and enjoying us and actually enjoying what we’re doing, understanding what we’re doing. That’s also sometihng that we’ve had some problems with over the years and I think it’s because maybe we didn’t understand what the fuck we were doing and now it’s kind of more clear – oh yeah that’s what we were doing, oh yeah that’s what that song was about. Hahaha!

Mydolls have a new record coming out that was recorded at the legendary SugarHill Recording Studios in Houston and it’s called ‘It’s Too Hot For Revolution’. While they’re still mastering the songs,find out more on the album and Mydolls by checking out their band page and look out for the  full interview in the next issue of THRWD!