Team Dresch on Chosen Family, Community, and 30 Years of Defiance
There are bands that document a moment, and there are bands that help create one. Team Dresch did both.
Formed in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s, Team Dresch emerged from the overlapping worlds of punk, queercore, riot grrrl, and zine culture, creating music that was unapologetically lesbian and feminist at a time when such visibility could still come at considerable cost. Across their seminal albums Personal Best and Captain My Captain, the band transformed queer isolation, desire, anger, and the search for belonging into ferocious punk — helping build the very community they had once struggled to find themselves.
Their influence would ultimately extend far beyond music. Team Dresch became a lifeline for young queer people who saw themselves reflected in the band, while members used their labels, zines, touring networks, and projects like the self-defense-focused Free to Fight to create spaces for others to find one another. Three decades later, that community remains at the heart of their legacy.
Now, Team Dresch return with Furthermore, their first full-length album in 30 years. This time, they are writing from the other side of those decades — through parenthood, grief, aging, survival, and a changing understanding of queer identity — without losing the urgency that made the band matter in the first place.
For Noir, Donna Dresch, Jody Bleyle, and Melissa York reflect on queer punk, community, and 30 years of defiance.
KP: Your latest album, Furthermore, has just arrived 30 years after Captain, My Captain. There's something almost absurd about calling it a follow-up album, with three decades in between. But it is!
MY: [Laughs] Yes, it is!
KP: When you first began writing these songs, did you know that you were making another Team Dresh album altogether, or did the record reveal itself more gradually as you went along?
MY: We had the goal of making a new record for sure. Donna, I don't know if you want to take it from here — you always tell the story really well about Jody basically table flipping. [Laughs]
DD: Oh, yeah! Well, we were playing a show in Oakland at — what's that club called? It’s a super punk rock club in East Bay.
MY: Oh, right, Donna! It was really low capacity. I forget.
DD: Well anyway, we went off to get some vegan food at a restaurant nearby. And Jody all of a sudden just slapped her hands down on the table and went, “I'm not playing another show until we write a new song or until we write a new record.” And that's what happened. She just put down the hammer. If we wanted to play more shows, then we had to write some more songs.
KP: [Laughs] Well, we're very fortunate for that ultimatum.
DD: Also fortunately, Melissa has a bandmate from Vitapup, Greg Griffith. He has an amazing studio in Connecticut that has bedrooms for all of us — it's in the woods. We just went there and put aside all of our normal home and work life issues. We just sat there and focused on writing new music together.
KP: That's amazing.
MY: It was totally incredible. It was really the best experience. And zero distractions. Except for maybe when Jody did a spoonful of Vegenaise. I mean, that was distracting. [Laughs]
JB: Oh, yeah. I kind of had a meltdown.
MY: I mean, what made you just want to eat a spoonful of Vegenaise?
JB: Do you want to know what I did yesterday? I was making dinner for Cynthia, our friend who broke her leg. A very healthy sheet pan dish. The number one New York Times veggie recipe of the summer with broccolini and lemon slices. I was so hungry, though, that I just got out the Wasa crackers, and I slathered each one in Vegenaise. I ate like seven of them. I wasn't even hungry for dinner anymore! No tomatoes, no nothing.
I think I'm going to get in trouble from these guys like, “Why are you telling Kristin this?”
KP: [Laughs] It’s all welcomed!
DD: [Laughs] We're trying to get a Vegenaise sponsorship.
JB: Yeah, that's what it is.
KP: I’ve never had it! My girlfriend is now a raw vegan. She’s trying to convert me, but I've never tried it. Do I need to have Vegenaise? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? [Laughs]
MY: It's so delicious.
JB: It tastes exactly like mayonnaise! If you like mayonnaise, you'll like it. But I guess people either love or hate mayonnaise — it's kind of as simple as that.
MY: It's delicious. And I too would do a spoonful of it!
JB: But man, raw food, that's hardcore!
KP: It is! It’s intimidating. I’m not sure I ever could. [Laughs]
To look back at your music, your first two albums were made when you were young women trying to articulate queer lives that mainstream culture — and often punk culture itself — gave very little room to exist. What can Team Dresch write about now that you simply couldn't have written about at 20 or 25?
JB: Well, that's a good question.
MY: I can dive in.
JB: Do it, Mel!
MY: I think really one of the big things is that we couldn't talk about having kids, just because we didn't have them yet! Jody and I are the only band members with children. Before, we couldn't talk about the loss that we feel when they move on and leave the home, grow up, and figure out who they are. We couldn't have talked about that yet.
And my mom passed away. So there’s just been a tremendous sense of loss within those 30 years. When you're younger, you don't really pay attention to it — ignorance is bliss. You're just kind of going through life and you're like, Fuck it, let's just go. But my mom passing away was very unsettling for me.
JB: Yeah, definitely. Unless you're a kid who's unlucky enough to have experienced the loss of a parent when you're young — which one of our big losses was my friend, Anna, who also became my sister-in-law — she left behind a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I was also thinking of that.
But, besides loss, I just also think the entire landscape of gender identity and expression has expanded so much.
MY: Totally.
JB: We were in the van on one of our first tours when Stone Butch Blues was published, and it was just going around, passing from person to person. I think it affected all of us pretty profoundly. For a lot of people, there was this element of seeing yourself for the first time in whatever way. Culture has shifted.
KP: It certainly has.
I feel that your earliest music often carried enormous urgency — the belief that finding one another, finding community, or even just surviving until tomorrow genuinely mattered. What felt urgent enough to make Team Dresch music about in 2026? I think it’s a great time for it.
JB: Yeah! I mean, life still can be really hard and challenging. And, I know that for older people, middle-aged people, whatever, you're still struggling with mental health, just pulling yourself through the day-to-day. But I also feel like, personally, I'm in such a more solid place than I was when I was that age. Even if it's just because I've been through and survived so many cycles of grief and pain and loss and mental health issues and feeling like I want to die — and then knowing that hopefully I’ll come out of that and pull myself out of it in all the different ways that we do. I feel like I want to be some kind of anchor or to provide some kind of joy. I just want to be able to tell the younger people — and the old people like us — that you guys are so beautiful. You are so wonderful and perfect and amazing. There are just all of these messages about how fucking horrible all the young queer, trans, and LGBT kids are. We really want to counteract that. The world in general is really hard. As an older person, you just have this feeling of just wanting to take every thirteen-year-old kid who just feels so awkward and ugly and whatever, and you just want to be like, “You have no fucking idea how beautiful you are.” Just as an example of that.
MY: Jody, I love you.
JB: And I love you!
MY: Everything that you said — copy and paste.
KP: Definitely. I think this world sadly needs a lot of that right now.
Before Team Dresch existed, all of you already had lives within underground music — Donna had played with artists including Screaming Trees, Dinosaur Jr. and Fifth Column; Jody was in Hazel; Kaia had Adickdid; Marcéo had Calamity Jane. What did you recognize in one another that your previous bands hadn't given you?
JB: You take that one, Donna! What's the difference between us and being in Dinosaur Jr. or Screaming Trees?
DD: I mean, when I was in those bands, I loved being in those bands so much, but I also was desperately trying to find my people. I knew that they had to be out there somewhere. I was looking for girls who liked music the way that I do, who wanted to write songs the way that I do, and who had the same passion for all the same stuff that I do. And I was living in Olympia, which is, I don't know where you are right now!
JB: Kristin, are you in New York?
KP: I'm in New York City! I'm in Brooklyn.
JB: Yeah.
DD: Yeah, well, luckily my dad got a job in Olympia when I was in my senior year of high school — it's just like a small town full of artists and freaky people. There were lots of bands there because there's nothing else to do in the Pacific Northwest besides play music, because you can't really leave the house! We’re a bunch of indoor people. And Hazel, Jody's band, came through town, and my friend was also in that band. He introduced me to Jody. And I said, “There's my person.” And then we met Kaia. And from then on, we've been a band! That good, Jody?
JB: It's great, yeah. I mean,, we're all playing music. It's exactly what you said, Donna. You're playing music and you love it and you love the people that you're playing it with and you love the music itself. But then there's this other part of yourself — that's an equally deep part of yourself — where you just have this sense of needing to be able to have both of them in that same soul place.
DD: Yeah, exactly. I never knew that I could take these two parts of myself and put them together.
KP: And I was reading about that meeting after the Hazel show — Jody, you had recalled meeting Donna after that and immediately talking to her about wanting to play with all dykes before you knew that Donna was gay? Is that true? How much of the band began with the simple desire to finally just make music in a room where you finally weren't the outsider?
DD: Maybe you didn't necessarily have to keep explaining yourself. I mean, I did.
JB: Well, I knew Donna was gay.
DD: Just look at me! [Laughs]
KP: Oh! The source was wrong. [Laughs]
JB: I mean, everything's a game of telephone, but I think that's really funny.
And that reminds me — I started growing my hair out in the pandemic, and I was like, People are really freaked out by my long hair. I'm going to keep it growing. I was just so into it. But then I got into my phase of always coming home and telling my family, “Nobody knows that I'm gay! Everyone thinks I'm whatever the fuck.” So fucking funny. They're like, “Oh, that's hysterical. You think some guy's going to try to fucking pick you up in Safeway?”
“Everyone has the right to their own body... to their safety, to be able to defend themselves, and to have that strength.”
KP: [Laughs]
JB: And I'm like, “Well, I think someone was! I think he was hitting on me.” They're like, yeah.
MY: It happens, but it's rare. It's a confident man.
JB: Yeah, that's a confident man. But you know, a lot of men love butches — it would be really fun because they're basically gay, and they just don't know it yet. But I think they're all starting to realize that they would really rather be gay. But anyway, that's another topic.
Back to Donna, I think it was everything about starting this particular band, because we really did like our other bands and the music that we were playing. But we all had that drive at the same time to just combine these parts of ourselves. I guess there was always something missing — this concept that there was just something that wasn’t enough. So yeah, I think that drive was really at the heart of starting Team Dresch.
KP: And I was reading as well that Kaia said that punk appealed to you as a young queer person because it seemed to permit you to be whatever kind of “freak” you wanted to be. Do you remember the first time being different stopped feeling like a liability and started feeling like a superpower?
MY: Good question.
JB: Great question.
DD: I mean, moving to Olympia for me — that was easy. Before that, I was just off. I was turned off until I moved to Olympia.
MY: I definitely felt it was a liability when I was in high school. But I think after high school, I just really discovered myself — I was involved in Riot Grrrl New York. I'm from New York, New Jersey, too. And finding my people was incredible, because Riot Grrrl New York was very queer. It was like my Olympia, like Donna was saying. Just a ton of freaks. And that is just when I felt myself, and I just kind of never stopped. That was the start of my authentic self.
JB: Yeah, I don’t know. I didn't listen to punk music. I mean, I was aware of it, I'm sure, because we had a good high school radio station. But it wasn't like a cultural identity thing for me when I was younger.
It's a really good question. It's hard for me because I don't know if there was one particular moment. I feel like when I think back to earlier childhood, before going through puberty, there's so much freedom — riding my bike, playing outside. Mel and I have spoken about this. So much of that is rooted in just feeling like yourself. I mean, “One Song” kind of has that essence to it — like, how do you reconnect with that part of yourself when you're older and you've gone through all of the things that you've gone through?
But also, those early puberty years are hard. It's just kind of the standard arc of growing up. But later in high school, I definitely found some people that helped me start feeling like I could connect those weirdo parts of myself. And then I ended up at a college where there weren't a lot of out gay people. It was 1987 when I went to college, and I came out early in that year. But there were a lot of weirdos and people from all over the country and world who would bring different information about their music scene. They're from DC, they're from Madison, they're from LA, and obviously there was no internet. So that was such a beautiful place to be. Johanna Fateman from Le Tigre was at Reed also — not at the same time as me; she's younger.
MY: Oh, that's cool. I have a Johanna connection too, just from New York.
JB: Yeah! But anyway, there was actually so much going on there. And it's still underground enough, I guess, even though it's huge. But yeah, I ended up at a good place. I just kept evolving, right? In those moments before Team Drash, I was crying on Anna's shoulder, saying like, “I love all of you guys, but I have to find more gays. I just have to find more gays.”
MY: For me, punk rock was definitely high school, but I just really didn't find who I was until after high school. But I loved goth, punk, all of it. My friend, Andrea Dalton — she has passed away — but she was so inspirational to me since she turned me on to such amazing music.
KP: That's so cool. I think we all need that, especially when we're younger.
JB: It's the radio stations. The radio stations really are everything, aren't they? My high school radio station, the college radio station — I mean, fucking KAOS at Evergreen is the locus of so much of the scene. Sorry, I know I just interrupted.
DD: No, I mean, it's good to remember how important radio was in our upbringing.
JB: Yeah, so important. And it still is! It was just the other day I was listening to the radio. Every time I listen to our local FM radio station, every single time I'm like, I should be listening to this all day. I always get turned on to new music. I learned that Haircut 100 just released their third album after 42 years, which I'm obsessed with. And they play local bands! They play local high school bands. It's still the key.
KP: Yeah, and also public access TV. As I mentioned before, I was born and raised in New York. I remember this show that always used to come on, New York Noise. God, it might've been 2003 — I was only nine at the time — but that's how I got introduced to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs here in New York so early on. That was like such a wealth for me, too. We just don't have great public access the way that we used to.
JB: Well, Kristin, I saw that you just went off Instagram, or that you're trying to go off Instagram to do more on your own site. But it just reminded me of that, though, just all of fucking years of people having their own spaces where you could actually get to know them.
KP: Yes! This is a whole other interview, right? I'm sure we could go so in depth about it. But you know, in a sense, what I was just thinking when I said that was that social media kind of killed all of these incredible, inspiring shelters that we had.
It's great in some ways — it can give us community, it can introduce us to people that are like us from across the world — but I also think it has totally demolished these enclaves of culture that we once had. I don't think that New York Noise would exist today because it's now just some Instagram account somewhere. It doesn't feel as rich, and it definitely doesn't feel as enriching, right? So that's unfortunate.
JB: It really is.
KP: But there is tremendous musicianship beneath the cultural mythology surrounding Team Dresch. Kaia has said that making genuinely good music was an explicit priority because you wanted to combine identity with music, rather than be defined only by identity. Did you ever resent critics who understood the politics before they understood how good you were as players?
JB: I've talked too much. I'm letting you guys take this one.
DD: I mean, I've always been all about the music because that's my laser focus. So of course I'm always like, But what about the song? I thought the song was amazing. [Laughs]
JB: I don't know what verb you used, Kristin, but I guess I wouldn't say that I was resentful, however I wish that they would include both. I really wish they would; I wish that they could include it all. Because it's all so important. It's like, we never don't want to talk about anything.
MY: That’s true.
JB: Like, we do want that. We want all the queers to be at our show. We want all of that. But like, is it fucking awesome when straight dudes who just got back from the Built to Spill show are at our show too? Yes. Is it awesome when people talk about the music too? Yes.
MY: Talk about both, right? Don't pigeonhole us.
But also pigeonholing too — to what Jodi said — we're never not going to want to talk about that side of us either.
JB: I mean, we did it on purpose. We did it on purpose at the time to be like, If we don't say this out loud, no one is ever going to assume it — even though, look at us.
MY: [Laughs]
JB: Like, it was just a time where there was no assuming. There was no anything. There were not very many gay people out or hanging out or in public places. Like you had to actually say, “Hey, we're gay! If you're gay, come hang out with us. We want friends. We want gay friends — come to our show. Let's all hang out.” I mean, it was really like that.
MY: But also, I feel so fortunate all those years ago to be asked to play with these amazing people, because just they're so inspiring. They were just unapologetically themselves, wanting to create amazing music and just be totally out and proud. This band has totally inspired other people like Indigo Girls to come out. I think if we didn't exist —
JB: They came out before —
MY: No, no, no. Like to talk about it? To truly talk about it. They weren't doing that when we were a band. There were so many people that were fearful of doing that. And also Brandi Carlile with all those steps. It's like, who knows? I'm not saying that it's because of us, but I think it was the start of being proud and out.
JB: No, I mean, I'm happy to be part of the lineage of people who are just being out and talking about it.
MY: To not just say, “This is my roommate.” To be like, “No, this is my partner.” It was different back then for people who were mainstream.
DD: The guy at the corner store still calls Becca my roommate, my ex-girlfriend. “I saw your roommate the other day.” [Laughs]
JB: Oh my God, that's so cute. It kind of takes me back to the old days. Like, no one ever assumes that Nina and I are sisters anymore. I totally forgot about that. Or like, just when you're in public, people are always like, “Two checks or one?” We're just living in this utopia in Portland now.
MY: And really unfortunate for me, they don't ask if we want two kids’ menus.
DD: [Laughs]
JB: I know, it sucks.
MY: I'm just getting older. [Laughs]
KP: Donna, a question that's close to my heart. Before Team Dresch, you were already making Chainsaw and participating in the network of queer zines that helped queercore exist before it had anything resembling mainstream visibility. Did publishing give you a way to create the community you couldn't physically find around you?
DD: Definitely. I mean, that's the reason why we did it. My first zine — I was in a printing class in high school, and we got full access to the presses and stuff. So my first zine came out in 1984 using the school's printing press with me and two guys in the class.
MY: I didn't know that, Donna! I knew of the zine and everything, but I just assumed Kinko's.
DD: That's how I know how to letterpress!
MY: Oh my God, I love it.
KP: Very cool.
MY: You know, my first job was a printing press. And then I worked at Kinko's.
DD: Really?
JB: Donna, do you have it?
DD: I'm looking to see if I have the first zine somewhere around here. The cover is missing, but this was printed on a printer, not a Xerox machine.
KP: Oh wow! That is so cool.
“There is real power in being authentically yourself and accepting that this is me.”
JB: Donna is just — it was even before she got to Olympia, just some of the stories, Kristin? It's just wild how she had this instinct to go to each of these places, like with punk and record stores, then with something like this, this print class. She just had these instincts to go. She just followed her intuition. I ask her about this all the time. Like, how did you have the guts to go into the thing, and what drew you there?
Like, I loved Kiss more than anything in the world, but it never occurred to me to write a letter to join the Kiss Army.
MY: [Laughs]
JB: Like if that had been Donna, she would have written a letter to join the Kiss Army.
DD: I did try to call Olivia Newton-John. [Laughs]
MY: Well, I was in the Barry Manilow fan club.
DD: I called Australia. [Laughs]
JB: You called Australia; that's what I'm talking about! It's the initiative.
MY: But also, Donna has always been at the forefront of tech, even if it was analog tech. But like printing presses, getting her hands dirty. She's just so brilliant. Now she like made a tour app that I just can't get enough of. She had message boards. I mean, brilliant.
JB: Wait till we go to the Gutenberg Museum in Germany, Dreshy. We're going to get some major social media content with you in front of the printing press.
KP: It's so cool.
And speaking of that, your first tour in 1994 was partly booked through AOL message boards, allowing you to reach queer kids and unconventional venues that traditional touring networks wouldn't necessarily have reached. Looking back from the era of social media, do you think the primitive internet actually created a more intimate form of community?
JB: Definitely. I think it's what you were talking about before. Back then, there were so few people on it. It’s funny though, because AOL was a walled platform, right? People didn't know the difference between the actual internet and the web and AOL. Your whole web experience was inside AOL, which is kind of the problem now, except that within that world, you were totally free to communicate with whoever you wanted to — they weren't controlling it. There was no algorithm that was hiding things from people. And so in that sense, yeah, it was just a way to communicate as you wanted to with other people. If you found it and you got on there, there was nothing mediating your communication.
MY: Yeah, totally.
DD: There was a whole network of bands — like you would talk to godheadSilo, because they just came back from their tour in North Dakota, and they had an email address and a phone number for some guys in Minot who were putting on shows. And so you'd be like, “godheadSilo told us that you were putting on shows. So there was also the band network of passing out the email addresses since there was no place to search for them.
JB: Yeah, that was definitely good. And then it was a combination of those two — the regular word-of-mouth band network and then the AOL thing could be a little more targeted.
KP: And I think message boards too. I mean, I'm 32, so when I was kind of coming of age on the internet, message boards and forums were still huge. I think there was something definitely more personal about message boards and forums than social media fields today. Maybe they were a little more insular, maybe it was a little more clandestine, maybe not everybody knew about it. But I think once you did know about it, you really forged deeper connections with people than we do, let's say, because somebody saw your reel or something today.
JB: Oh yeah, definitely.
KP: So I understood the message board thing because it really does foster a community.
JB: Yeah, you're creating your own world because you're creating your own space. I mean, I guess Reddit is the closest in a way today, but it also just seems so huge. It’s still just the giant Reddit, whereas on a smaller message board, people are creating their own vocabulary and their own shorthanded mini culture.
KP: Definitely! I think that’s the closest thing that we have on a macro level.
And on the topic of community, people began approaching you very early and saying the band had changed their lives or made them more comfortable with who they were. Kaia has remembered people saying, in essence, that the band was why they were still alive. How do you absorb that kind of responsibility when you're barely an adult yourself?
MY: Gosh, great question. Another great one. It's intense, especially when maybe you're questioning it too. But I do have to say that finding others — it's all about mirroring, right? It's like, even with the band, them asking me to join during the Captain My Captain years — the mirror that I had when I was seeing myself and Jody and Donna and Kaia and then, also being, like, “Oh, you're going through that too?” I know, for me, like the bands that saved my life were so important to me, which is very intense. So to be on the other side of that is pretty cool, and it's also just kind of what Jody was saying at the beginning of this interview. You just want to go and hug all of these people, like just give them a hug. It's amazing, it's partially scary, and it's intense. It's kind of a lot of emotions, to be honest.
JB: Yeah, I mean, for me, I didn't have the skills to handle it in my 20s. I was just so young. And so, I was trying to save myself, but I actually thought that I could save other people too. I felt that it was my responsibility. People moved to Portland. People lived in our attic. People were young. People were actually leaving home and getting away from terrible family situations. After shows, people would come up to us and tell us these really intense stories. We definitely felt a responsibility to say that we were actually here. You can write us and call us. Like, let's do this thing. It wasn't a metaphor.
I personally ended up having a nervous breakdown of sorts where I just hit a total wall and completely collapsed. It was during Hazel's tour with Veruca Salt. I mean, I love them. It was a great tour. It wasn’t something that came from them; it was all coming from me. But watching the way that men treated them at the shows, people just had no awareness of it. Security guards just let guys just come on stage and grab them. And I would just be standing there for the whole show, throwing guys off stage. It's not something that they asked me to do or even wanted me to do. I was just taking on way too much and seeing the world as it was, but actually feeling like it was my responsibility to change it, feeling like I actually could. I took on too much. But then I climbed out of it and went on tour four months later. The things you do when you're young. People are always like, “How long did it take to recover from that?” I'm like, “Well, I couldn't really walk. Donna, like, wheeled me into the ER in a wheelchair, and they said that there was nothing wrong with me, and three months later we were on tour again.”
MY: Let's go to Europe! [Laughs]
JB: Yeah, so like five minutes maybe? [Laughs]
KP: And Mel, I think this kind of goes back to what you were saying a little bit before.
You guys were unapologetically lesbian and feminist at a time when being that explicit could narrow your commercial possibilities considerably. Other artists took a much softer approach. Did you ever have conversations about what that visibility might cost you professionally?
DD: No, we're too punk rock. [Laughs]
JB: I think we can see it in other people, but sometimes we just be like, “We're just a bunch of fucking dykes and a trans man just doing our fucking thing.” We can't be any other way. It seemed clear that it was going to play a role.
MY: Yeah. And I don't particularly want to be bitter.
JB: Oh no, not at all.
MY: We’re doing this for a particular reason. Yeah, it sucks that we’ve always toured in a van and hauled our own stuff and didn’t have buses — the easy life of tour. I don't want to be bitter about that. And I still want to have a great time and write new music and work with these guys.
JB: That's so funny, Mel, because I think of the buses. I mean, when we play a show with The Breeders, you just have so much fun. You're like, “Oh, I kind of wish that instead of going back to work, we could go play another 15 shows and get on the bus.” But at the same time, I'm also like, “Man, I'm glad I'm not sleeping on a bus tonight.”
DD: And at the time, especially in the ‘90s, being on a major label was the worst thing that you could do. And everything that was major, corporate, or whatever — well, at least me, I didn't take any part in it. We put our records out on our own labels, and we hired the publicist and did everything ourselves. Anything like a major label or anything corporate at all was not in the cards.
JB: No, it was really intentional. I remember my parents being like, “Well, maybe you guys will blah, blah, blah.” I'd be like, “We're never doing that! That won't happen! We won't let it happen!”
MY: But then we're also like, “Oh, we're poor.” [Laughs]
JB: Yeah, that’s true. There was some money that came in through publishing, through Hazel, but you're always trying to get that money and channel it through Candy Ass. We were fucking hardcore. The kids have let go of the “selling out” thing — it seems funny and quaint now. I think the kids make fun of us for having felt that way.
KP: And speaking of, Chainsaw and Candy Ass also released Free to Fight, the 1995 double LP and accompanying project addressing harassment, rape, and women's self-defense. You toured with self-defense instructor Alice Stagg, who gave demonstrations before Team Dresch performed. Also being the founder of Uppercut, this question means a lot to me. What made you believe that music and physical self-defense belonged in the same room?
“The younger me would be happy to know that the community we were building... we’re going to still have it 30 years from now.”
JB: I think I've mentioned her a couple of times, but Anna LoBianco was one of the main Free To Fight people. And then there was Stosh Cotler — they were good friends with Alice, and they were good friends of all of ours. Donna and I lived with Anna for a while, and Anna is who we lost to breast cancer when she was in her thirties. They were all self-defense instructors and martial artists. They worked in the domestic violence space at, like, Bradley Angle House in Portland, with different organizations like that. They were just super badass, doing the real work. We were just in a band, creating space for queers and whatever. But I felt like we were just playing rock music, like, trying to get girls.
MY: [Laughs]
JB: We saw them single every day doing this very hard, important work. And because we were living together, we just felt the need to combine these things. We were all doing feminist work — it was all related to self-confidence and self-esteem.
And there weren't as many female, non-binary, or trans people playing music then, right? Today, a young band of young girls, the way they can play now — it doesn't even surprise me anymore how shreddy they are. But that just didn't happen back then. We were like really trying to encourage people. Just play — even if you didn't play when you were little. Of course you didn’t play when you were little — none of us did. None of us were given the chance to do that. Just start now. So that feeling, I think, combined with their approach of learning to defend yourself — that DIY spirit — combined all of these elements of feminism.
KP: And, unfortunately, it’s still so needed. What do you think that project understood about women's autonomy that still remains relevant?
JB: That it's critical, that it's everything. Everyone has the right to their own body, to what hormones they want to put in their body, to express themselves, to their safety, to be able to defend themselves, and to have that strength. And I think the thing with the self-defense instruction was that we felt so badass, but unless you practice it, you just don't know what's going to happen in the moment. And all of these types of practices, like expressing yourself physically, feed into each other and make it more likely that you're going to be able to be present in that moment and have the self-confidence to believe that you are worthy of your own body, of owning your own body, of owning your own space, and telling someone to actually just stay the fuck back. Just knowing that, like, this is my space and I'm allowed to basically do whatever the fuck I want to keep anyone out of it is — I mean, I almost just started to cry. It seems so simple, but it's just so, so hard and so profound.
KP: Everything that you just expressed is exactly why we’re building what we’re building at Uppercut. I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
But to turn back to the music! “One Song” is explicitly a love song from your present selves to your younger selves. When you look back at the women who made Personal Best and Captain My Captain, what do you feel towards them now that you perhaps couldn't have felt ten or twenty years ago?
MY: Yeah, so, wow, another thing that I've experienced since the ‘90s to now is therapy. My therapy really helped me get through a lot of trauma that I had in my life as a kid.
JB: Mel, if you want to keep thinking about that, I would say to my younger self that she was doing great. To trust myself. To keep listening to myself and believe in myself because you’re going to figure it out. You’re going to find people and also to not listen to the haters — that just popped into my head because I'm old. [Laughs]
DD: The younger me would be happy to know that the community we were building now, we’re going to still have it 30 years from now. Yeah. Like, these are my best friends.
MY: And I think I would probably tell myself that you don't have to be so angry. I think I was really angry back then. But if you're around these people here, you're going to be all right.
JB: Yeah, I agree with so much of that, Mel. It's weird, because “One Song” is about us as older people trying to remember that essence of freedom. If you were lucky enough to feel it at whatever point when you were a little kid, you’re fortunate.
KP: And we kind of touched on this earlier, but there's something wrenching about a band that once provided a lifeline to young queer people returning 30 years later and needing to write directly to them again. Do you feel more protective of young queer people now than you did when you were among them?
MY: A hundred percent.
DD: Well, yeah! We’ve got some parents in the band now.
JB: Yeah, very protective. I mean, I think we felt fucking protective then, but it was different.
MY: It was peer protection then. That is the difference, right? It is motherly. It is that — or butcherly. [Laughs]
KP: Much of the music industry measures legacy through sales, charts, awards, and scale. Team Dresch's influence seems almost deliberately resistant to those measurements: a kid didn't kill themselves; someone came out; someone started a band; someone found their people. Has the band changed how you personally define success?
JB: All of these questions are so good. What do you think, Mel?
MY: It’s possible. I really think that it possibly did influence being where we are now because there is real power in being authentically yourself and accepting that this is me. There is a power in that. I work in a corporate environment. So many people who are women feel so self-conscious about how everybody feels about them. You know? Like they've got to make sure that they're wearing the right stuff. I think being queer — having been in my 20s and aggressive and so “fuck them” — I'm like, “Who gives a shit?” Really? So I don't know if this answers your question, but I do think letting go of the need to fill that ego made things a little bit easier — this acceptance. Like, you don't need to win the lottery because people that do win the lottery have a really hard time in the world.
JB: At a deep level it's like, yeah, money is money. Money is amazing. Money makes life safer and a lot of good things. But like Mel said, people that win the lotto also have higher suicide rates. But I think for us, it's all about being part of your community and knowing that you're actually helping people. I think having musical peers that respect us or like us or appreciate us is also amazing. Like when Jawbox, Jawbreaker, or The Breeders invited us to play with them, it just means so much. But anyone who actually feels like we were there for them in that moment when they were at their lowest? That's number one. I mean, if we ever actually made some money off this band too, no one would complain. [Laughs] But I don't think that anybody thinks about it. You just throw wildflower seeds into the field and see what you reap — we all do. You never know if something's going to hit.
I mean, you obviously are more business-minded than we are. None of us have that going on, unfortunately.
MY: I do wonder, though, if things got bigger, would I have as much fun? Because I think for me, it really is the connection — the direct connection to people that matters most. And doing this together. Because I do feel that, yes, we're on stage, but gosh, their energy really does inspire me, and just the closeness and community and love and all that. And if it got bigger, I don't know. I think I'd just be weirded out.
KP: You make a great point. I don't go to big venues, even for any type of concert. I've never been to a festival. And I think the reason for that is just because I want to really feel it. So that speaks to what you're saying. And I think there's a lot of credence to that.
To close, what general advice would you lend to women on life, work, or love?
JB: Donna, go ahead. Give some advice to the women.
DD: I just, nothing came to me.
JB: We're like, we're like idiots. Ask our wives what kind of advice we should give.
DD: Exactly.
KP: We can leave it at that, actually. I kind of love that. [Laughs]
And, lastly, what do you feel makes a provocative?
JB: All we're all thinking right now is — provocative women are hot.
DD: Exactly.
JB: That is literally all that's going through our heads.
MY: Strong women.
JB: …Might date me? Maybe? [Laughs]
MY: Listen, so I met my spouse now during the time I was in Team Dresh, Captain My Captain, and we're still together, and now we have a child. And I often joke, it's like, “Just tell me what to do.” That's what I find hot.
JB: I know, but I feel like we're doing a little bit of the masc thing of just being like, “We're just idiots, and they do all the work!” We're just dumb and, well, I don’t know. But yeah, I do know that provocative women are hot.
KP: That's true. Look, I’m femme, and I'm going to agree with you. So we can shake hands on that.
Photography: Twylo Landey
