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Where Are They Now? Two Nice Girls

Before the term “riot grrrl” was coined or Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang came out of the closet, Austin band Two Nice Girls wrote songs about women falling in love – with each other – and the joys of being queer. The group first formed in 1985 when Gretchen Phillips set out to create what she called a “particularly lesbian band.”

This past June, 15 years after the band broke up, Phillips reissued the band’s debut album, 2 Nice Girls, on her own Seasick Sailor Records. Her decision to reissue the album, she told AfterEllen.com, was prompted by seeing the album sell for $69 on eBay and thinking, “No one should have to pay that much!”

Back in the mid-1980s, she initially hooked up with local musician Laurie Freelove, and they later asked Kathryn Korniloff to join. Even after adding a third band member, they decided to keep the band name, Phillips explained, because they didn’t want to be like the “Jackson Five going to The Jacksons.”

Inspired by radical indie-punk bands like The Slits, The Roaches and The Avengers, among others, the trio shared all songwriting responsibilities. From the beginning, each member brought a distinct sound to the group, which musically is often described as folk in melody and harmonies, but punk in lyrics.

Korniloff credits Phillips and Freelove’s different songwriting styles as one of the band’s greatest strengths. “Their writing style is polar opposite,” she told AfterEllen.com, “but somehow it all came together through the arrangements and harmonies. Gretchen’s sense of humor was the counterpoint to Laurie’s deeply introspective style.”

The band’s unique sound took off, and after playing at the first South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, they began working with manager Jim Fouratt. When Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records heard their rendition of “Sweet Jane (With Affection),” a rare and beautiful mash-up of Lou Reed’s “Sweet Jane” and Joan Armatrading’s “Love and Affection,” he signed them immediately.

Two Nice Girls’ popularity quickly soared, but it was not entirely a smooth ride. The recording of their debut album was stalled when the IRS closed down the studio because its owner, Willie Nelson, owed back taxes. Then, in 1989, just as they were finishing, the Cowboy Junkies released their own version of “Sweet Jane.”

Even so, the release of 2 Nice Girls received wide acclaim, and the band traveled the country on tour. Though they graced the covers of LGBT publications such as Lesbian News and Out Week, they garnered a strong following with gay and straight audiences alike. “The crossover happened immediately,” Phillips recalled.

Austin during the mid-1980s to early ’90s was brimming with female-led bands, and lesbian clubs such as Chances created a “brilliant community center,” said Korniloff. “It was a place where straight people were coming to see queer bands, and straight bands were playing for [queer audiences]. It was an ‘anyone’s welcome’ vibe. If you had some chops and you had something to say, you could get a gig.”

After the debut release, Freelove left to pursue a solo career. She recorded Fifty Words for Snow and then signed with Chrysalis/Ensign Records, which released her celebrated album Smells Like Truth. She later started her own production company, Nineline Productions, with Bill McCarely.

“I had strong ideas about what I needed to be doing as a musician apart from what we were doing as a trio,” Freelove said to AfterEllen.com. “I didn’t have the maturity at the time to manage myself well enough to do both my thing and the second thing. [I was] just too young to know I wasn’t in competition with either myself or the band.”

After Meg Hentges and Pam Barger stepped in, Two Nice Girls released two more notable albums, including Chloe Liked Olivia, which won a GLAAD award. When Rough Trade folded, however, the band’s new configuration and the overall stress from years of touring ultimately led to the band’s breakup.

“It was another one of those sad but very common stories of bands who fall apart because of a lack of infrastructure,” said Korniloff. “The pressure was just too much for us to do everything ourselves.”

“We toured a lot, and that can really take its toll,” added Phillips. “It’s a weird way to live: drive as fast and as far as you can.”

Though once an asset, it became trying to navigate all the members’ different musical tastes. “It’s certainly a factor in democratic bands,” Phillips admitted, “when you’ve made an agreement to share songwriting.”

Plus, they simply stopped having fun. “We did a lot of processing,” Phillips said, laughing. “I don’t know if this is true for all lesbian bands, but in our lesbian band, there was much discussion of our feelings – and we had big feelings.”

After the group broke up, Phillips “vehemently declared” that she would never join another democratic band. She released a solo record, Welcome to My World, a spoken-word acoustic album, and then headed into “the most forbidden music I could possibly think of: gospel.”

“Singing gospel music at the Michigan Music Festival can really divide a crowd,” she joked. “Some people can’t stand it, and others are glad to hear it.” Gospel music, she believes, plays a different role for Southerners than for people on the East Coast. “It’s how we were raised.”

The genre also allows her to explore different musical connections between lesbians and gay men — one that does not include show tunes. A prolific songwriter, she founded her own record label, Seasick Sailor Records, and began playing with the gay duo Y’all, singing “gospel disco.”

She also started the band Phillips and Driver, with friend and musician David Driver. “I really wanted to know about the intersection between fags and dykes musically,” she said.

Korniloff left Austin for Los Angeles to be with her family. She landed a job doing sound design for commercials, integrating her film education and the knowledge she gained while working in the studio with Two Nice Girls. Though she enjoyed performing in front of live audiences, she was actually more interested in studio work.

“Recording, learning about the mix, were my favorite parts,” she said. In addition to commercial work, Korniloff now does sound editing and composing.

Meg Hentges has released three solo albums, and Pam Barger joined the Billy Tipton Memorial Saxophone Quartet and now plays with the Seattle-based band Weary.

Years ago Phillips began receiving fan letters on her website with people asking how they could find a copy of the album. The requests usually accompanied a story about “how much they loved it and how they lost it when it melted in the car or their girlfriend took it in a divorce settlement.”

Though she is primarily interested in moving forward with her music and “wants to live in the present as much as possible,” Phillips was moved by the letters. She had been contacted by different record companies willing to release 2 Nice Girls but knew that she was the only one who could possibly “do it justice.” After taking out a loan from friends, she packaged the album the way she would want “to see it done with a band I loved whose work was only available on vinyl.”

The reissue contains all the original songs, including the hilarious “I Spent My Last $10 (On Birth Control & Beer”) and “Sweet Jane (With Affection),” plus two bonus tracks, a 24-page booklet including an essay from Phillips, liner notes and newly released photographs.

Though the music industry still has a long way to go in supporting queer artists, Phillips said, it has improved significantly in the last 15 years. The industry is less “ghettoized” and musicians can make quality recordings for far less money than previously required. “You don’t have to be in a relationship with someone who is telling you to tone down the ‘queer stuff’ just because of money.”

Though the focus was always on the music, reaching out to young lesbians was an important part of the band’s objective. “It was so important to be out that it wasn’t hard,” said Phillips. “It meant everything. I wanted to do whatever I could to make it easier for people coming out. I was on a holy mission.”

Their attempt to reach out to both gay and straight communities, however, was never calculated. “It was very intuitive,” Phillips said. “It was always about pleasure. [We wanted to show] that being a lesbian or even knowing a lesbian is fun.”

In fact, being out was so integral to the band, said Korniloff, it simply was not an issue. “It only seems amazing in retrospect,” she said, “but I didn’t know any better. I didn’t know that it should be difficult. I don’t recall ever having a sense that being comfortable in my skin as a lesbian or as a performer was ever in question.”

At the time, of course, there were other lesbian bands, but many did not publicly admit their sexuality or allow it to seep into their lyrics. It was frustrating, Phillips said, to later see these musicians heralded as heroes when they did finally come out. “But that’s the nature of criticism,” she said, “‘Let me tell you how I would do this.'”

Ultimately she understands that many musicians who decided to come out later in their careers did so because they “had their own reasons for not wanting to be out and then finally feeling safe enough.” Still, she is proud that Two Nice Girls took a stand from the very beginning.

Because of the overall progress in the music industry, it is a good time to look back, said Korniloff, referring to the reissue of 2 Nice Girls. The album, the only one that features the three original members of the band, is “a document to a very unique combination of people. We predate what we now think of as queercore, but we postdate women’s music and the lesbian separatist scene. We were a bridge and historically occupied an interesting niche in terms of music.”

Phillips hopes to release the other Two Nice Girls albums in the future — “In my dreams, one a year,” she said. Though there are no plans in the works to tour for the reissue or to record a new album, all three have considered the possibility.

“Never say never,” Phillips said. “I don’t want to relive something that’s over, but I have been thinking more and more about how it could work and how it would be good.”

Korniloff agreed. “This is a metaphor, but I was in love with and felt married to my band mates. That’s how bonded we were.” She can imagine just about anything, she said, “and I’m happy to say I have a completely open mind.”

Even Freelove could see the trio getting back together. “That would be a really cool thing to do at this point,” she said. “It would be so different — still so unique, and I’m sure still ‘us.'”

For more on Gretchen Phillips and Two Nice Girls, visit her website, her MySpace page or the Two Nice Girls website.

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