Jennifer Herrema on Self-Mythology, Rock ’n’ Roll, and the Triumphant Return of Black Bananas
Jennifer Herrema has spent nearly four decades making music that refuses to behave.
Long before she became one of rock ’n’ roll’s most enduring references, Herrema was a kid in Southeast Washington, D.C., absorbing everything around her: street culture, all-ages hardcore shows, heavy metal, and records discovered in local shops. By seventeen, she had already released her first album with Royal Trux. What followed would become one of the most singular careers in American underground music.
Alongside Neil Hagerty, Herrema built Royal Trux into a band that resisted nearly every expectation placed upon it. Their music could be abrasive, beautiful, disorienting, or unexpectedly accessible, often within the same record. They signed to Virgin Records, made the uncompromising Sweet Sixteen, and eventually left the major-label system with their independence intact. Across a discography that has since grown to roughly thirty records through Royal Trux, RTX, and Black Bananas, Herrema has continued to follow her instincts rather than settle into a recognizable formula.
Her influence, however, extends far beyond the records. With her unmistakable hair, unisex glamour, and refusal to separate personal style from creative identity, Herrema became a reference point for musicians, designers, and photographers alike. Yet the mythology surrounding her has often obscured the substance of the work. She has never been particularly interested in being understood as a fashion icon, a woman in rock, or a symbol of danger. She was making music, making art, and living her life. The rest was interpretation.
That distinction runs through her latest chapter. More than a decade after the last Black Bananas album, Herrema returns with Bad Bunch, a record assembled from years of ideas, unfinished recordings, and renewed collaboration. Rather than a comeback engineered around the demands of the present, it is the continuation of a creative life that has never really stopped moving.
In an era when artists are increasingly expected to turn themselves into brands, optimize their output, and make every creative decision legible to an algorithm, Herrema remains a reminder of what can happen when none of that is the point. Her influence may be everywhere, but it has never been something that she set out to manufacture. It is the byproduct of a life spent making things, following strange ideas, and refusing to mistake commercial approval for artistic worth.
Nearly forty years after Royal Trux began, she is still making records, still finding new collaborators, and still uninterested in becoming a more manageable version of herself. The mythology will continue to grow around her. Jennifer Herrema, meanwhile, has work to do.
KP: You grew up in Southeast Washington, D.C., in the late ’70s and ’80s, and you’ve spoken about how profoundly the street culture around you influenced your taste. What did that environment give you that you don’t think you could have learned anywhere else?
JH: Well, it most definitely shaped me growing up as a minority as a white kid in a predominantly Black community. Being so young, I didn’t have a lot of experience or a deep understanding of the differences between races. It only really registered as I got older and I started seeing the things that actually did happen in my life. So I really feel like if I didn’t grow up there, I would see the world very differently.
KP: I'm sure of that, too!
And back then, you were going to Bad Brains, Mötley Crüe, Metallica, and Megadeth shows while you were still incredibly young. What did you recognize in those very different worlds that made you want to become part of music yourself?
JH: Well, I guess I never necessarily knew that I wanted to be part of music. I knew that I loved it and I knew that I was creative — I loved art and all that stuff.
But the fact that in D.C., they had those really early all-ages shows where you could be dropped off at 11 years old — that really impacted me. My dad used to drop me off — it wasn't a big deal. You didn’t even need ID because, of course, D.C. was the beginning of a lot of straight edge culture. Of course there were people that would come to the shows that were not 11 years old, were not straight edge, and were totally wasted. But, you know, that was the beauty of it, too — that you could do all of those things.
And then I also had older cousins that lived up in Rochester, New York — that's where the big metal influence came in. All of them played hockey and were into metal. I just thought they were the coolest cousins ever, and we would visit them every year.
And then I also had the recognition of mega, mega radio music — my dad wasn’t putting heavy metal, of course.
But then I also just had the neighborhood that I grew up in, you know? I got roller skates made with skateboard wheels because they had a roller skate store. They also had a gift shop that had 7 inches and 12 inches — everything from the Sugarhill Gang to Rick James and rappers. I just liked to go through them all, and if they had a cool picture that I liked and I had some allowance or something, then I was on my way. I didn't make my own money until I was 12, and I started babysitting.
I hope that answers your question. It's really hard to separate how I’ve been conditioned from the things in my life, but definitely it's just, you know, what makes me me.
KP: I think you were like a perfect melting pot of so many different environments and surroundings.
JH: Right.
KP: And I think that's what makes the richest artists, so it makes perfect sense to me.
JH: I never thought about it like that. You know, it's only until later that you realize you had so many different experiences, but yeah.
KP: And then you moved to New York after receiving a scholarship to The New School. That's where I went, too.
JH: Oh, you went to The New School too?
KP: I did, yeah. Well, actually I went to Parsons. Looking back, I would have preferred to have just gone to Lang, but I got a business degree even though I’m not really the business major type. [Laughs] I wasn't very good at showing up to class all the time, you know?
JH: It’s an interesting place with interesting classes. I really had a great time, but after my third year, I was like, I don't really need a degree. So I just audited for no credit for all of my classes. That's when I ended up studying audio engineering at Planet Sound, where the Fat Boys were.
It wasn’t really ever about a degree for me. I mean, I still don't even necessarily know exactly what a degree gets you unless you're a doctor or a lawyer.
KP: I don't either. And I think that was part of the reason that I just always cut class to go smoke in the park every day.
JH: [Laughs] That's funny.
KP: I smoked two packs a day then. I needed all the time I could get. [Laughs]
JH: [Laughs] It was a lot of work there, though — you’re right. It was cool, but you had to do the work. One of the classes I took was human form drawing — that’s where I met Rob and Sean from White Zombie. They were graduating when I had just started coming in. It’s kind of crazy how many people you’d meet there by chance. It’s a very interesting school.
KP: Oh, right! That’s really so cool.
I think now, Parsons has gotten a little more commercialized. I graduated in 2015, so it got very Project Runway, if you know what I mean, which isn’t very me. But it’s for who it’s for, right?
JH: Yeah, exactly.
KP: But I loved Lang. I loved my liberal arts classes and all of my electives. I took film, photography, a course on the psychology of women… They were all brilliant, brilliant classes.
JH: It was a lot of fun.
KP: And during that time, you initially lived at the YMCA. What do you remember about arriving in New York that young and essentially deciding that your life was going to begin whether anyone gave you permission or not?
JH: Well, about going to New York, I didn’t even really want to go to school, but then I got a scholarship, and it meant that I got to be in New York.
But, I mean, I'm still trying to figure out what defines being an adult and having an autonomous life. When I was a kid, I was just like, Well, how did they end up being like that? About my parents, I wondered, like, How did they get a house? How did they have a car? How does any of this happen?
KP: [Laughs] I think I still want to know that, too!
JH: Exactly, like maybe they should actually teach that. I mean, knock wood — I've been really blessed. I'm not a religious person, but I feel blessed by the universe that things have really come together in such a fortuitous way for me. I'm great; I'm good. And I could have never really imagined that.
But back to then. When I was 15, I had an older boyfriend who was 23. He was a drug addict, and he broke into my parents' house and was stalking me. There were all sorts of threats of violence, so I went to New York. I lived at the FIT dorms while I took painting class at Parsons, and I got to go to that because I had taken summer art classes through the fields of my school, the Corcoran School of Art.
So I went up there to get away from this psycho, older, crazy boyfriend that was breaking in and doing this and that. I was put there for my safety, but it was also an escape. It was this whole other world at the FIT dorms — those were some fashion people, you know? Big time. I met some really cool kids that I still know, like Dsquared2 — Dean and Dan — they were living at the dorms at the time.
KP: I didn't know that! Interesting.
“Aesthetically, I think we became an endgame for some bands, but there was no follow-through with the actual art.”
JH: Yeah, I mean, this was just a little summer when I was 15. But, in retrospect, wow. All of these cool things actually were happening.
I did feel like a child though, since everybody else was in college. I just stayed at the dorms as a summertime high schooler, you know? But I really learned a lot.
So by the time I came back to New York after I left high school, it felt like I already knew it there. Like you said, I lived at the YMCA for the first year.
Nothing and nobody ever gave me permission to do anything. I don't know how I made it. I honestly don't know how I'm here.
KP: But that's part of the magic, right?
JH: Yeah, definitely. And I don't think that I could ever recreate it because it's all about the incidentals that occur between each moment to take you to the place you currently are. It's so fucking weird.
KP: And to keep on the topic of New York, you worked at CBGB when you were young, at a time when the club was still a living part of New York’s underground rather than the cultural monument it has since become. What do you remember most vividly about being inside that world every day?
JH: Yeah, I did.
Well, I was under 21 at the time, so I couldn't work at the bar. It was right when Hilly and his ex-wife, Karen, opened the record store next door. Hilly loved me as well as Louise, the booker. I don't know why, but they just did. They hired me, and I became the record buyer.
KP: Oh, wow!
JH: Yeah! I was a record buyer.
KP: That's so cool.
JH: That was really cool. Then there were two older people who got hired, and I have respect for my elders and experience and all that stuff. So I guess it tempered my buying taste and stuff a bit.
And then, within the first year, the older guy fired me because I was on tour — I could tell he didn't want me there anyway.
KP: What year was this around?
JH: Wow, fuck. This is like ‘88. Before ‘90, for sure.
KP: I remember going when I was super young; I was probably like five or six. It's a very important place for me. That and Trash and Vaudeville. Those are the two places I went to as a kid when I really was like, this is it. That was it for me.
JH: Right, right! Trash and Vaudeville really stands out in your head. It really represents St. Mark’s.
KP: Definitely. I remember meeting Jimmy when maybe I was about eight. That's still plastered in my mind to this day.
JH: Oh, Jimmy. It's so New York. It’s all just embedded in the culture of young musical New York, period.
KP: Yeah, absolutely.
JH: And Patricia Field. I used to go to the first studio that was on the Bowery.
KP: I remember! I started working in fashion when I was 14 — that's how I got my start. One of the first fashion shows that I ever went to was Patricia Field on the Bowery, the studio she had right over there.
JH: That’s amazing.
KP: Yeah. I'm so happy that I got to go and see that before they moved.
Again, it’s just so essential. I'm very lucky to have been here when I was young, having all of these experiences, right?
JH: And then Manic Panic.
KP: Tish and Snooky! I just talked to them.
JH: Right! I mean, how crazy is that? They sell that all over now.
KP: They're the coolest. The real deal.
JH: Yeah, it's awesome.
KP: And, like we said earlier, you came of age during a period when New York, D.C., punk, hardcore, hip-hop, metal, and art culture were constantly colliding. Do you think young artists today have access to that same kind of genuine cross-pollination, or has the internet fundamentally changed how subcultures form?
JH: The internet has really kind of fucked a lot of stuff up. I feel like it's too late now, but supplanting real-life encounters and experiences with online, vague identities of what people wish they were sucks. Everything is so skewed in such a weird, weird way now. I just don't even know what's real anymore.
KP: You know, it's funny, I have to tell you — I ask this question often to those who I consider to be real, true artists that I admire. It's pretty interesting because I have a very pessimistic view of the internet, and I would almost expect these artists that I really love — because I personally invite almost everyone to speak with us for this — to be pessimistic too, but a lot of the times they're actually very optimistic about it. And I never understood that, because I think that the internet has given way to a lot of performative people, you know? And that’s a particularly social media-driven thing, right?
JH: Oh, hell yeah.
KP : Even in terms of style, let’s go back to the East Village. I remember going to St. Mark's as a kid, and every single person that looked like a punk was a punk. You knew you that shared common values and a common belief system simply based on visibility. But today I feel like so many people are just roleplaying these days for attention on social media.
It’s disheartening. I share your viewpoints.
JH: And what’s scary is, in a lot of ways, I believe that it’s destroyed things that cannot be put back.
I mean, there are some positive aspects to it, I guess, if you want to concentrate on those. But I would have to say that it would be better if it never happened, because I think that people would be leading much richer lives. I think that children would be much more intelligent and much more prepared for the actual real world. I believe that people's mental health would be in a much better place. And I also believe that our global politics would be in a much different place. I think that none of this was really needed. Nobody was asking for it. It was fun when it was introduced, but once you realized where it was going and there were no guardrails, it's actually just eclipsing fundamental reality. That's when the brakes should have started coming on.
KP: Yeah, you're definitely right.
JH: And they're just starting to question this shit now, you know? Decades in! It's just too late for a lot of young people. And that’s scary.
KP: It is. Politically too, as you said before.
JH: It's insanity. It's truly just insane.
KP: But to move on to your music, Royal Trux never seemed particularly interested in making music that was easy for people to understand. When you were making those earliest records, how conscious were you of challenging the listener versus simply following your own instincts?
JH: We were never trying to challenge the listener. We were honestly just doing the best that we could.
KP: I figured! Well, there are a lot of theories about that online, so I felt I still had to ask. [Laughs]
JH: No, no, I hear you.
But there's also the fact that our first record came out when I just turned 17. And now I think I've got like 30 records from my different bands, from Royal Trux to RTX and Black Bananas…
KP: You have a huge discography, which is incredible.
JH: Thank you. I think it's just about growing up in that media and kind of flexing certain muscles that you didn't know you had until after the fact.
At the time, honestly, we never thought of ourselves as better than anyone else or self-righteous. I mean, Neil could really play his ass off. He could play anything — even traditional — but he chose not to. He developed his own style, but he wasn't trying to be difficult. It’s just what drew a lot of people to the music.
I grew up playing piano, but I can't play shit. I mean, I can pick it up and play, but when I say that I’m not that instrumentalist, I really am not. I kind of paint with the music, like in mixing and production, and then in writing. My terrain is really about the big picture. I don’t have any particular great skill per se. I just liked writing a lot. I was very into writing.
KP: You’re a visionary.
JH: Well, I also have to say that I don't really sit down and enjoy poetry much today, but back then, Richard Brautigan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, all those writers that wrote simply… I don't know. I don't even know how to describe what was going on in my head at the time, but I was like, I get this.
And I never thought that I would be like that, but I really felt confident in my lyric writing ability, though that didn't necessarily mean that people were going to understand it. I did feel confident that along with the music, we were transmitting something with intention — so that was the intentional part.
The intention was never to be tricky or anything like that. As a younger person hanging out with older people in D.C. and New York, you’re just the kid in the room. I think I started seeing things that adults didn’t see in themselves. I was guided a lot by what I experienced and learned by being around it. I'd say that 98% of the people that I was ever around were between 5 and 20 years older than me, like the Sean or Rob thing.
I remember meeting Lydia Lunch, and she’s such a badass, so I just treated her as if she knows everything she’s got. She just has this confidence about her, and she just created something so real and true.
KP: I have to tell you something funny. Obviously being born and raised in New York and growing up in the fashion industry, I got to meet a lot of incredible people, which never really fazed me. I really don’t care about that stuff; I never really did. But the first time I ever felt starstruck was when I saw Lydia.
I was walking from my ex’s apartment on Rivington Street to Parsons, and I got stopped at a red light on the Bowery —
JH: Oh, Rivington? I used to live on Rivington!
KP: Oh, shit! No way. I spent years and years hanging there.
JH: Yeah, right by Clinton.
KP: I know exactly. She was on Rivington and Suffolk, so very close.
JH: It feels like I spent forever there, but it wasn’t too long. The first year in New York I was at the YMCA, then I lived on Avenue C, I lived on Clinton, I lived on Elizabeth, I lived in Williamsburg, Virginia, on the water by the old Domino's Sugar Factory. I guess it just feels like forever when you’re young. [Laughs]
KP: That’s so cool. It does feel like forever when you’re young.
JH: But you were saying!
KP: Oh, yeah! So I got stuck at a red light on the Bowery, and I started smoking a cigarette. I turned around, and Lydia Lunch was standing about five, six feet behind me, right outside of Bowery Electric. I'm sure she was rehearsing there or something, and I turned around so quickly. I was panicking. [Laughs] I know Lydia now, but then I had never met her before. It was like seeing Jesus Christ. [Laughs] And speaking of Lydia, I just listened to your Lydian Spin episode a few hours ago!
JH: Oh yeah, that was a couple of years ago! That was fun.
KP: It was great.
To talk about your relationship with labels, Royal Trux somehow pulled off the rarest kind of major-label story: Virgin gave you a substantial deal, you made the uncompromising Sweet Sixteen, and they ultimately paid you to leave. Was there any satisfaction in essentially beating the industry at its own game?
JH: Well, they paid for a third album but then just said, “We don't really need it.” [Laughs] But basically, by paying us for the third album but not having to commit to all the contractual budgets, they saved themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars.
When Accelerator came out after Sweet Sixteen, EMI, who only had publishing rights to Virgin release records, took us up, and we had to fucking hash that shit out. Like no dude, you already gave that up.
KP: That's unbelievable.
You’ve spoken about — and often pushed back against — the mythology that forms around bands, including the kind of caravan culture that followed the Grateful Dead. Do you think Royal Trux’s influence has ever been misunderstood because people copied the surface — the looseness, the clothes, the attitude, the danger — without understanding the thinking underneath it?
JH: Oh, I'm certain of it. I mean, not that I've met all of our fans or anything, but the rare sampling of disparate people that do appreciate us — I'm sure there are a lot that do understand the depth of the work. But even then, it’s only as much as we’ve let people in on through interviews, performances, or the writing itself.
Aesthetically, I think we became an endgame for some bands, but there was no follow-through with the actual art.
KP: And speaking of danger, has time changed your relationship to it, or did you simply find different places to put that impulse?
JH: Well, I mean, Neil was just arrested two years ago for attacking the police and put in jail.
I gotta say, though — we didn't ever think that we were being dangerous. We were just kids without a leash. So of course we were gonna do anything and everything that we could get our hands on and have fun with it.
We also just had no fear. There wasn’t a fear aspect. I still don’t have that because of brushes with fucking death and all these trashy things, like homelessness. I just don't feel afraid of much of anything.
I don't see the danger in my life. I mean, the danger part was at one point, when you make a choice and you’re doing drugs and stuff. But then at a certain point when it becomes not your choice, you can't stop that, and that becomes the danger. When the choice is taken away from you and your physical being is reliant upon something outside of yourself, that's when danger starts to enter a lot.
And the thing with Neil a couple of years ago, that wasn't even because of drugs — that was mental health stuff. That, too, is danger. You decide to not take your medication because you just don't want to anymore. That’s dangerous, but sometimes danger is unintentional, you know?
KP: Yeah, I totally understand that.
Something else that I strongly admire about you is that you're very candid, which I appreciate, because I am too. I was always getting in trouble for saying ten too many things. [Laughs]
You've been unusually candid about seeing traces of Royal Trux in bands that followed you. What separates genuine influence from simply reproducing somebody else's aesthetic?
JH: Well, I gotta say, as far as influencing things, it's mostly brought to my attention by other people. Oh God, especially now with so much “content,” cause that’s what a lot of it is. It’s fraudulent music, which is called content.
I remember very early on, one of our A&R people at Virgin would always bring up different people who were biting us, but I’m not even cognizant of that. It was then that I became aware, though, that if I were a more normal person — more appropriate — I could have been handled and directly properly. There would actually have been a way to monetize and have something come of my work. I think that’s what freaked me out the most — that I couldn’t be that person and then also the person that I am.
KP: Those things are in opposition, totally. But if it’s any consolation, we wouldn’t love you so much if you were that other person. I think most of your magic lied in you being an outlaw — in being so free.
“We didn’t ever think that we were being dangerous. We were just kids without a leash.”
JH: Yeah, thanks for saying that.
I mean, we did start a lot of things, like Drag City and Domino, and we worked with a lot of different people — some of them I still know and still glean things from.
A lot of people have made a lot of movement with the information, experience, and intelligence that we've imparted since being teenagers, but there’s absolutely no resentment about that.
The only resentment is that nobody in this day and age gives credit. It's just kind of like pay it forward, motherfuckers. Just be candid, you know? Say where you learned these things; tell people your inspiration. There are just too many weird coincidences, hugely weird coincidences. You're just like, “That's not a fucking coincidence, dude.” It’s really not, but it is what it is.
But at the end of the day, there's no replicant or reproduction. There’s no way that could ever possibly be achieved with us. All of the signifiers and semiotics — sure they can be picked up and used to form a persona or whatever it is, but that’s all it will be.
I just went to visit Sophie Thatcher, actually. I didn't even know her, but she invited me up to her Airbnb about a week ago. I didn’t even know Yellowjackets or anything. She’s a great person, and she reached out. She found me and wanted to meet me because she said that I was so influential to her. I had no idea that she even made any kind of music, and then she showed me a video from like six years ago where she's wearing a t-shirt of my face with Royal Trux.
KP: Oh, really? I didn’t know that either.
JH: I didn’t too, but yeah. I only found out who she was because I asked my manager, Liz, and Liz was like, “Oh, you know, she's a great actor. She's amazing.” I have people around me that would have told me if she wasn’t cool or anything like that. But she’s young, and it was a really good hang. We hung at her place for like five hours.
And I like getting to know young people, because when I was younger, all I ever did was hang out with older people. So it's cool to be the older person that the younger person wants to be around.
KP: That's very much myself too.
When I think of who inspired me when I was a teen, it's Lydia Lunch, it's Kembra Pfahler, it was Wendy O. Williams, you know? All were icons that came decades before my time, and I’m so grateful to call most of those that are still with us mentors of mine now. I’m very much about honoring those who laid the tracks for you — those who ran so you could crawl, you know? To give them the fucking credit, too.
So that's really cool that you got to have that moment with her;, that's awesome.
JH: Yeah, and it just happened in the weirdest way! I have a radio show at dublab and the guy that started dublab works at the LA Philharmonic. One of her friends had done some music with her years ago, so they just wrote him at the LA Philharmonic, saying, “Can you get us in touch with Jennifer?” The fact that she reached out and wanted to talk to me and actually appreciated me — that was really unusual. Most people would be too intimidated to do that or be too uncomfortable. It was a really cool moment.
KP: That's amazing. I'm so happy that you got to experience that — you certainly deserve it.
You've said you never wanted to use sex to draw attention to yourself or the music, despite becoming an enormous style and fashion reference. Was maintaining control over how you were looked at as important to you as maintaining control over how you sounded?
JH: Yes, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was a weird child. I’m dyslexic, I’m ADD. Perhaps I was even on the spectrum back then. And you know when you’re a baby or a toddler, you have those undershirts? I swear to you, I wore those for the longest time. I really just had this aversion to anything that was sexualized, so I would wear those to separate me from any sexualization. So I wouldn’t allow anybody to dress me, even if it was the best stuff in the world, if I couldn’t make it work for me.
KP: To speak on that a little more, you have an interesting relationship with femininity because your image has always been incredibly glamorous while also being tomboyish, confrontational, and resistant to conventional ideas of how a female rock star should present herself. Did that contradiction ever feel intentional to you?
JH: Well, when I think back about it, I kind of just always wanted to be one of the kids, one of the guys, even going all the way back to those all ages shows in D.C. Back then when I was a kid, there were the “Bettys,” as they called them in the Archie comics, the kind of girls sitting on the sidelines? Well, I was never going to be that, so I always just wanted to be one of the skaters. It was always going to be more androgynous or unisex, not aligning with anything in particular. I don’t consider myself not feminine, but I also don’t consider myself ultrafeminine.
KP: I relate to that a lot. I don’t know if I relate to the term “androgynous” at all, but my closet is fully unisex. It's just bikers and ripped-up skinny jeans and moto boots. They're just things that I’ve felt so comfortable in since I was a kid. Like you say, it's not really masculine, but it's also not really feminine — it just kind of just falls within that in-between.
JH: In a human place, yeah.
KP: In a human place, exactly.
It’s interesting, because I read that you said, “I never wanted to be considered a girl in rock; I always wanted to be considered a rocker, period,” and described androgyny as your way of being part of something “bigger than sex,” which was rock ’n’ roll and your band.
Did refusing the category of “woman in rock” give you greater freedom to define yourself, or did you find that other people continued imposing gender onto your work regardless?
JH: I mean, I have no idea what goes on in other people's minds, but I can assure you that there's this super stereotypical dumb fuck telling me, “little missy,” to get off the stage when I’m sound checking. I was like, “I’m not your little missy.” I don’t know. People use whatever they need to use to just be dismissive of women. That’s a lot of weird ego and just not understanding themselves very well.
I really don't know what goes on up there, but I don’t read my own fucking press ever. Like I’ll tell you now, I’m not going to read this interview. [Laughs]
KP: [Laughs] No, that’s a great rule. No offense taken.
JH: I know that Liz will read it and she'll be like, “Oh, that's great!”
I guess it’s kind of like going through your own wardrobe — you don’t want to look at everything all the time.
KP: Well, speaking of, I have a very complicated relationship with the fashion industry, having unintentionally begun my career in it at a very young age and eventually growing to mostly detest it.
You were photographed by Steven Meisel for Calvin Klein during the period that became associated with “heroin chic,” while simultaneously living through actual addiction. How do you look back on that strange collision between an aesthetic the fashion industry was selling and the reality you were living?
JH: I mean, completely, totally, totally different.
But when you're talking about the superficial level of what something looks like, not what something means, reads, or sounds like — just how something looks on a one-dimensional flat page — it's very easy for young people to not understand that they're totally, completely different things.
Trust me, you don’t want to aspire to be a heroin addict. That’s really not good. I mean, if you’re gonna do whatever, then do whatever — I’m not your mom — but I’m just saying that I never wanted it to be misconstrued that if you wanted to have this look, you had to be an actually fucking heroin addict. Maybe some dumb people did that, but that’s just because they’re dumb.
KP: And after Royal Trux, you formed RTX but eventually changed the name to Black Bananas partly because people continued reading RTX through the lens of Royal Trux. How difficult is it to establish a new creative identity when people remain attached to what you did before?
JH: Well, the music that RTX made is very different from Royal Trux — it actually purposely focused on elements that these guys that I met excelled in, you know? We got like a 10 out of 10 in Kerrang! and Decibel, which would definitely not have been the case with Royal Trux. [Laughs]
But I understood the confusion, because some people used to call Royal Trux “RTX,” and some actually still do.
So then RTX kind of morphed when Jaimo left. When Kurt came in, we had different influences that started to become more predominant. So it wasn’t really Royal Trux, and it wasn’t RTX, it felt quite different comparatively speaking. “Black Bananas” was from an RTX lyric, so we just rolled the name onto the next project identity.
They’re all very, very different, but they're all connected because I connect all of them. I guess it’s just like three different stages.
So it's just kind of like three different stages.
KP: That makes sense.
And now Black Bananas is returning with Bad Bunch, which is your first album under the name in more than a decade, which is incredible. You’ve described the project not as a “new direction,” but as “the current state of a system that has been in motion all along.” When you look from Royal Trux to RTX to Black Bananas, what is the thread that you feel has remained unbroken through all of it, other than yourself? Is there one?
“We were never trying to challenge the listener. We were honestly just doing the best that we could.”
JH: Well, I had not communicated with Neil at all for at least 17 years — nothing, nothing, zero. I never expected or even wanted Royal Trux to ever be again, or anything at all.
We had just finished the second Black Bananas album, and we were starting the third when Neil dropped in, totally out of the blue. After talking to him and making the decision to move forward with him, I still never left Brian and Kurt. I brought Brian with me into Royal Trux, you know, but there was always a separation between me and Brian’s imaginations. I guess it was just me and Neil's imaginations again only, but really maybe it's just chemistry.
I’m really glad we made that record together, because I love that fucking record. The whole way it went down, the way it was made, is the most insane thing, but it ended up being worth all the chaos in the end. I really do love that record.
But I’m like a sloth, you know? I just kind of creep through times. I think back to after D.C., New York, San Francisco, all that time, when we first signed to Virgin, living in the countryside of Virginia for seven years, we really weren't around people. We didn't socialize. We were each other's best friends.
I mean, even now, I live by the beach, so there's no, like, hipster neighborhood here. It's just random people. My husband and I don’t not socialize, but I’m kind of an antisocial person. Not because I’m not able to communicate, but I’m just a Pisces, so I'm very sensitive to every fucking thing that surrounds me. I kind of keep myself unless I need to.
So I feel like yeah, there was a big gap there for Royal Trux, but that didn't exclude what I had already built. So to answer your question, it really is all the same, because it's all just my life.
KP: That makes a lot of sense.
“Turkey Burgers” actually dates back to the period when Black Bananas still had its own studio, yet it now introduces the version of the band that exists today. What made that song the right bridge between those two eras?
JH: Well, it was something that was recorded in the old studio, but then we ended up recording a bunch of it in Brian's basement, many other different places, and stuff. When we were in the studio we were recording every day, but a lot of it would get tossed out.
We had a folder of all different sounds, different things that we had started, and we just picked up exactly where we left off when the three of us got back together, working in person again. We would send each other shit, you know? Like I would send Brian stuff, he would send me guitar stuff, and we just did it.
I guess the whole process changed. It had to change because he was down by the beach every day. He grew up in Newport, but then I introduced him to his baby mama, and now he has a baby. He lives up in LA, so he doesn't come down this way; we go up that way. It's just a different process.
I mean, I wish we had the studios still, but I'm also glad that we don't still have that same studio. We had done so much work in it that I feel like it had already accumulated a lot of debris or plaque or something.
KP: There’s something almost defiant about Black Bananas returning after a decade into a musical culture increasingly dictated by algorithms, immediacy, and constant output, with a record that took years to slowly find its form. Do you think the way Bad Bunch was made is inherently at odds with the way music is expected to be made and consumed now?
JH: There is, as a human being — and I don't know if it counts for people that were born post-internet social media, but anything before that — I would say there is something inherent where I’d be watching a TV show and I'd be like, “What the fuck is this music?” Really, if you looked at my Shazam, every Shazam is something that I hate.
KP: [Laughs] You have to hate listen to it.
JH: I only look it up when I'm like, “God, this is horrible. What the fuck is that?” Or if it's really good, I guess I will too, but that just doesn't happen that often.
But anyway, I looked up something that was truly awful, and it turns out it was AI. And I realized that the only way this artificial intelligence has any tools to compose with is because it's all been scraped from everybody else. It’s just junk. It’s total junk.
KP: And similarly, at a moment when so much art is optimized for algorithms, branding, and immediate legibility, what would you tell a young artist who wants to make something difficult, strange, or commercially inconvenient?
JH: As an artist, you can just make your art true to yourself. But if you have a bet with somebody that you're gonna be able to make money off of it to live off, and if you lose the bet, then you're going to die, well, then you're going to have to subscribe to all of these bullshit algorithms and tags. These things that have nothing to do with art are going to have to become your priority. Those, to me, are two separate things.
KP: I couldn’t agree more.
What advice would you lend to women on life, work, or love?
JH: Shoot, I don't know. Just listen to yourself first and foremost, but always have somebody that you can trust in your life. Always ask them for advice, but always listen to what your gut says in regard to it. Always have somebody that you can trust, but always listen to your gut.
KP: Lastly, what do you feel makes a provocative woman?
JH: A confident woman. Period.
Photography: Bunny Biskit
