“We got hit with a brick in the face,” said Meghan Galbraith, the front woman of queer band 8 Inch Betsy. It may sound like she’s recalling a fight she was in, but she’s actually speaking metaphorically. The music industry is the brick, and 8 Inch Betsy is a punk rock trio of out lesbians who recently released their album This Time, Last Time, Every Time. Getting industry support hasn’t been as easy as it is for their straight counterparts.
“We were submitting our demo and we’re pumped up, ready to move, ready to tour all over, hoping someone will sign us,” Galbraith said. And then 8 Inch Betsy received a reply from a large indie label: “Sorry – we don’t do the gay thing.”
Based in Chicago, 8 Inch Betsy, comprised of Galbraith and bandmates Liz Burke and Stephanie Levi, play an edgy form of queercore tempered by a bit of pop accessibility. They’ve opened for the Gossip several times, and after Amy Ray was impressed by their performance at the Estrojam music festival, she invited them to tour with her.
That constant touring has made their new album a long time coming. But now that it’s been released, fans will not be disappointed – Amy Ray included.
Onstage, Galbraith is intimidating. She usually wears sleeveless T-shirts cut low enough to reveal the tattoo across her neck. Her gruff voice is punk, loud, yet perfectly on pitch. She has sported a Mohawk for much of her time in the band, but recently she has worn what’s left of her hair in a short, dark ‘do.
Offstage, Galbraith isn’t as brash as her stage persona. She refers to herself and her bandmates as “the Betsys.” To them, “the gay thing” may be obvious (“Dogs can smell it, you can see it from space,” Galbraith jokes), but they don’t see themselves only playing for a gay crowd.
Meghan Galbraith (left) and
Galbraith with bandmates Levi and Burke (right)
“We thought, ‘Do we want to try and give ourselves a little foothold in the queer scene because there’s a big audience where we might get to go further faster?'” she said. “But then even though we might move faster, our career would be shorter if we tried to only reach that amount of people.”
There are plenty of recognizable themes on This Time – Galbraith’s lyrics are eerily right on for the times you want to be honest with yourself. “It’s easy to picture your demise, and it’s better if I’m planning out my revenge, I’ve got nothing to do better with my time,” she croons on “Bender in Hell.”
The energy at an 8 Inch Betsy live show is infectious, but on the album, it’s easier to appreciate the way the band works together in creating their songs. Galbraith’s vocals shine on the song “Train,” which switches tempos throughout. There are plenty of bands with singers who do their damndest to make themselves heard – whether it’s by way of screaming or unintelligibly mumbling – but Galbraith is a vocalist, and her vocals become much more isolated on the record, standing out over the roar of the guitar and bass.
Their sound – and perhaps because the number of other well-known queer female punk bands can be counted on one hand – has garnered 8 Inch Betsy comparisons to Team Dresch, but she is quick to shrug them off.
“We played with Team Dresch, and we don’t sound anything like them,” Galbraith said. But when forced to choose comparisons for their album to be listed on CDBaby, she admitted that they struggled to come up with any.
“For some reason we never f—ing thought of that,” she said. “We tried to bounce some around and we’re like, ‘OK, we got nothing.’ After like a month we realized, ‘OK, now [that] the CD is ready to be shipped out, we need to move on this. I’ll say Alkaline Trio, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts for the girls in there.’ So we’re like, ‘OK, we need another one, we need a third.'”
So they chose Green Day, and given the pop-influenced, hard-hitting rhythms about everyday struggles in songs such as “Unemployable,” it’s a fair comparison.
Without any support, the Betsys might still be unheard of. Luckily, they’ve chosen to embrace their “gay thing,” and the band is better off for it. At the end of 2007, they established a deal with Queer Control Records, and one of their fans with promotions experience became their manager and set them up with an entertainment lawyer and their own publishing company.
“If we wanted to shop around for a big deal, we’d pretty much have to hide the fact that we’re gay, or sign with Music With a Twist,” Galbraith said. “And of course you have to stand in line for that because it’s really that one company that does that, and we wanted to stay super indie, which is the main reason we like Queer Control so much: We don’t lose any creative control, they’ve got our back, and we’ve got their back.”
Queer Control is a small but able San Francisco-based label that has also signed punk rock bands Fruit Punch, Oi-Gays, Pariah Piranha and Tough Tough Skin. Galbraith said the label can give them distribution and promotion opportunities that they would never be able to handle on their own.
“They could put us out where we’ve never been,” Galbraith said. “If they wanted to they could put us in stores in Pennsylvania. I don’t think it would sell” – she laughed – “but they could put a huge promotional push behind it, and that would be something the band would never and could never do. Now it’s all about getting us out there and pretty much starting to get a little more recognition, get a little more word of mouth going, and you know, push that MySpace, because it helps.”
But they’ve done well promoting themselves so far, which Galbraith said is largely thanks to their drummer, Stephanie Levi. “It used to be that she was always out there – even working at her full-time job – calling people, emailing people and emailing people, we’re talking about like second-day callback. She’s not on your ass, she’s right up it. She’s very dedicated and on the ball. I can get completely sidetracked like, ‘I got a ukulele and didn’t leave the house for four days.'”
With a manager, a lawyer and a record label, it seems like things are falling into place for 8 Inch Betsy. The next step might be the licensing of their songs through the publishing company, but Galbraith said they plan on taking it “on a point by point basis.”
She asked rhetorically, “Can you license something to make money while, dare I say it, not selling out? And then once you’re out there, you’re out there – you can’t choose.”
For now, 8 Inch Betsy is focused on touring in support of This Time, Last Time, Every Time and losing their day jobs in the process. “The big stepping stone now is to get out on the road and see how long we can stay there,” she said. “And if we come back, we keep planning tours.”
The record label that turned the Betsys down might live to regret their decision when they find out what kind of crowd they turn out.
“We found one of our greatest – well not our greatest demographic, but it’s up there – [demographics] in competition is straight dudes, because they’re not like men and they’re not guys – they’re dudes,” Galbraith said. “They’ve got their backwards caps on and they come up in disheveled drunkenness and they’re like, ‘Hey man, you chicks rock! I don’t usually like chick bands,’ and ‘You can really play!'”
She continued: “Taken out of context I could really get offended about that. But it’s really kind of cute. I’m just like, ‘Oh, you’re just a little puppy and I think you’re nervous right now.'”
8 Inch Betsy: bringing lesbians and frat boys together through punk rock – a broad audience, indeed.
