Jeannie Fry has been a bassist, a singer, a lyricist, a community organiser and through it all, she’s always been a punk! Playing in bands like the all-girl Bad Hair, through to Bad Dreamhouse who shared a stage with Bikini Kill, and then onto Kitty Badass and now My Little Eye and Embarazada…Jeannie has cut her chops on many a stage and now she can add festival curator to the list of punk hats she’s worn!
Punk Rock Philosophy spoke to Jeannie from her home in New York as she talked about finding your voice in music, being a woman in a male dominated scene and saying ‘yes’ whether you’re ready or not!
“We started the BK Muses [a Brooklyn-based artistic collective] because we wanted to get that thrill from being part of a creative community again! It’s been a real group effort.
I was booking DIY shows in Brooklyn at a down and out pub called Rocky Sullivan’s. I started booking three bands every week and like Fugazi, we would only charge $5 and the bands got the money. I wanted to organise people and put on shows and have people support each other in their creative endeavours- not just musicians but artists, poets etc. This is how the BK Muses group was started.”
The BK Muses has the aim of bringing together artists, writers and musicians in the area (and beyond) for mutual support and promotion. Making the most of each other’s networks and opening up opportunities is something Jeannie has learned from her time in the punk scene and it seems to be going rather successfully:
“It grew really fast, we had to slow down membership because we got so many! But now we’ve grown, we are ready for our most ambitious event… We are going to be doing a festival to raise money for domestic abuse services. It is called Smudge Fest and it is on 23rd November at a bar in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
There’s 8 bands playing and whilst we are not exclusively women, we do have a feminist edge. We want to try and help raise money for women’s services, which is super important right now [Jeannie is speaking from the US where the Presidential election that is, at the time of writing, is 29 days away]. It is going to be a great event! We are going to have our first fanzine with a compilation cassette available at the festival. We want it to be an annual thing, so let’s see how this first one goes!”
This is all taking place in New York- the place Jeannie has called home for over 20 years but her story didn’t start there.
The East Coast of the US can boast its fair share of thriving punk enclaves- New York, Boston, New Jersey…but how about Norwalk, Connecticut? Maybe this town- famous for its oysters and beautiful seaside- might not be up there with the likes of DC and LA in the lore of US punk but for Jeannie Fry…this is where it all began.
“A punk rock club called Anthrax opened in my hometown of Norwalk. So, many bands toured and played there! I was lucky enough to have it in my town and I would go every weekend and watch bands play. The Anthrax was thriving, people would come from Boston or NYC to see shows or we would go to NY to see them. There were also clubs in New Jersey people would travel to- we were definitely part of the scene”.
Once this punk rock mecca opened in CT, things started to change for Jeannie. Coming of age at a time punk was exponentially growing in America was useful in a multitude of ways when you’re struggling to find out how to express yourself…and what to express yourself about.
“I was in a large family, and it was hard to get any attention because there were 5 of us. We were all born nearly in a row, so we were all teens at the same time! I really felt it was difficult to find my voice and develop my own worldview. Punk really helped with this.
I was going to the club every week and I got privy to the backstage political discussions that people were having- the club owners, the bands etc. At the time, I didn’t know anything about politics and they would talk about stuff like the Sandinistas and I would be listening intently.
I was influenced by them for sure, but it mainly influenced me to want to learn for myself. Not having a voice in my family and not talking around some of the older guys who were around, I felt a bit intimidated and I started to notice that nobody knows anything I think or feel. It seems like girls don’t matter as much or aren’t expected to have as many opinions. In the club, they used to call the girls coat hangers because the girls would be at the back holding their boyfriends coats whilst the guys went in the moshpit.”
Bubbling over with untapped thoughts and feelings, Jeannie was waiting for an opportunity to get stuck in herself. In the spirit of DIY, ‘having a go’ and girls doin’ it for themselves…it wasn’t long before an invitation to play bass for a burgeoning new band presented itself, and Jeannie jumped right in, ready or not (this would come to be a bit of a theme in Jeannie’s life!):
“I kept noticing this one other girl- Nina Kyle- and she looked so cool to me. One day she came up to me and said ‘I heard you play bass!’ and I was like ‘well, I have a bass, I had bought one with the intention to play’ and she said ‘do you want to be the bass player in my new band’? My mind just raced and I thought ‘say yes- say yes even though you can’t play!’ And it was out of character for me because I was really insecure.
She came over to my house and tried to teach me her songs and I was like ‘can we start with a slow one?’ And she said ‘this is my slowest song’ so my brain was like ‘you better catch up!’ I really wanted to do it, and I thought this is going to give me a voice. I was in my late teens at this point. So that first band, I was the bass player.”
Jeannie didn’t stick with bass specifically, but she did stick with music. Bad Hair didn’t last long, and from the remnants of the band a new outfit- Bad Dreamhouse- was formed with Jeannie taking the mic as a vocalist. But even from those early experiences in the scene and up on stage, Jeannie was conscious that there are different reactions, expectations and opportunities for women in bands. Her encounters were mixed:
“There was a lot of interest in us (Bad Hair) because we were all women but there was also a lot of misogyny in the rock n roll world. Punk embraced us and encouraged us. Guys from the Anthrax would come to shows and be supportive, but some guys whose bands I had seen a million times did not ever come to see us, didn’t show up for us and I made a mental note of that.
But we did get support amongst ourselves which was kind of a new thing. In high school, girls were competitive but in the punk scene we all had each other’s backs.
When we started there were hardly any female people that rocked and I remember experiencing a lot of misogyny in situations like, trying to buy bass strings in a music store. The guy behind the counter would ignore me and then say things like ‘I thought you were waiting for your boyfriend, is it for your boyfriend? Does he want round strings or flat strings?’ One that was really offensive is when Bad Dreamhouse was playing in a small pub and the guys in the audience got up and plugged in the jukebox and started playing songs over us. A lot of it felt like people hated us because we were women venturing into their territory.”
Jeannie was undeterred and used a lot of these experiences to inform her songwriting- a skill she had been keen to develop alongside her singing, utilising new avenues to express herself:
“I started writing lyrics when I was in Kitty Badass and it really built my confidence! It was like I had suppressed all my thoughts and feelings for so long they were now coming out so fast. I had lyrics about how people were always trying to force me to do things and like guys would come into my work and try and force me to be their girlfriend, and I was like ‘you can’t make me’! I felt so relieved that I could do it, and one of the few things that I felt confident I was good at. I’m really proud of my lyrics.”
And it was through the power of writing lyrics and performing them onstage during the riot grrrl years that cemented punk as more than just the music. The community, the activism and the solidarity is the most potent and revolutionary part of the scene and Jeannie has witnessed this intrinsic energy for decades:
“I saw how the riot grrrls were with each other and saw Kathleen [Hanna, frontwoman of legendary riot grrrl band Bikini Kill] and went to some of those early meetings where Kathleen would talk about abuse and she was so supportive and available to the people at the meetings. She would hug them, ask them to get involved in the zines. It was a revelation to me. I had met supportive people before but this was like an organisation with an HQ where people could go. I just loved it- I thought it was a step forward. You can be weak with each other and strong out in the world. The stories shared inspired my songwriting- one story about a stripper who was raped and the Police refused to act on it led me to write ‘Your Word Against Mine’.
I love the idea that people can say things in a song that you can’t say in a pub. You can say it in a song and then other people can hear it and that can become their favourite song. I really think people are not great at communicating; you go out and are expected to keep an upbeat attitude no matter what and only tell problems to close friends. It feels like it could be the other way round- keep your positivity for your close friends and then share your heavier feelings with the world! That’s what music does. You can say it out loud and you are not putting anyone down, the pain dissipates somehow.”
With years of being right in the midst of the punk scene- from Oyster town CT to the Big Apple- Jeannie has a lot of wisdom gathered over years of being active in scenes and building up her network. And there’s some key advice we can all mull over:
“Say yes now and you can figure out the details later! It is not too hard to back out of something if it is not for you, if it sounds like something fun and it sparks your interest definitely say yes and don’t worry if you feel you are up to the task, you can learn as you go. I didn’t think I would be able to play bass and yet I played bass! I didn’t think I would be able to write songs and I wrote songs.
It is not a question of confidence- I never felt like I had the confidence. So I wouldn’t say wait until you’re ready, you might never be ready. Just try it.”
Self -Expression, friendships, support and a decent amount of courage and fortitude are the best elements of punk. But they only exist because the people in punk scenes make it so! Thank you to Jeannie for sharing her thoughts and blazing trails for the generations that come into punk after us!
If you can, support the BK Muses and Smudge Fest- follow Jeannie on Insta to get more information re: the location and how to attend!
You can listen to Jeannie’s band My Little Eye HERE.
