I am huge into all kinds of music. My father is a talented singer/song-writer and guitarist, so I grew up listening to him. I played the clarinet and a bit of guitar when I was young. Even though I understand the dedication and passion it takes to be a musician, I unfortunately lack the discipline it takes to develop and perfect such a craft. But that does not mean that I don't keep trying.
Naturally I would marry a musician. Matty has been playing the drums since he was a teen in various punk rock bands and a self-taught classical guitarist. He is admittedly a "hobby musician" and balances band activity with his career and the rest of his life.
A while back, after getting into The Horrorpops, I expressed my interest in learning how to play the upright bass. My husbunny thought we could learn together, so he bought a barely used, beautiful upright bass (Knilling, Bucharest). I practiced and learned how to properly slap. But man did it kill my fragile fingers and bruised the palm of my hand. Therefore I practiced less and less until finally quitting altogether. Those kind of things you have to keep at regularly or each time it's like starting all over again. My Matty, however continued and, as I expected, got pretty good.
Fast forward a couple years-- Matty voiced to me that he was thinking about starting a band with him playing the upright bass. I replied, "If you do, we need a female singer." [Our town's local music scene is a total boy's club, and I am a HUGE fan of female fronted bands, especially punk bands] He agreed and so began the search for our dream team. However, finding the right woman to have the ability to front a band, show presence -and most importantly being able to really sing- proved to be a challenge.
We still hadn't found a female singer after a couple of months. Then one fateful evening I met up with Matty at a show he was playing with a number of other bands. The last band was doing their final song and up comes Ariel, this beautiful rockin' chick. I didn't really know her but was aware she was pretty bad-ass as I screamed my face off for her while she skated on our local roller derby team as Annie War Doll. She got up on that stage like it was no big deal and just belted out this crazy song. I was blown away. I grabbed Matty and said "I think we found our girl!" After the show ended we walked up to her outside and asked if she would be interested in joining the music project Matty was working on and be the lead singer. She was like Fuck Yeah! And thus the band was made.
So as Annie War Doll says,
