Meet the Butchies - Brief Article

They've opened for Indigo Girls and perked up TV's Party of Five, But this is one band that's still more punk than pop

Cuter than the Backstreet Boys and ten times as smart, the three women known as the Butchies are the thinking girl's pinups. Indeed, although singer-guitarist Kaia Wilson, drummer Melissa York, and bassist Alison Martlew rock while the boy groups simper and primp, they're all surprisingly after the same demographic. The Durham, N.C., trio's noble mission: to offer hope and comfort to lesbian teens doing time in small towns to a groove that mixes punk and Fleetwood Mac-style anthems. And the campaign is clicking. "We get lots of mail and E-mail from kids, and we meet a lot of them at our shows," says Wilson. "It means a lot to them that we're so out."

But for the Butchies--whose second album, Population 1975, was released October 11--being political does not translate to being humorless. For every manifesto the group bangs out, there's a goofball moment like its Devo homage on the cover of last year's Are We Not Femme? album. "Our shows are about what's fun about being a lesbian," says Wilson, who'll be touring through November with her band mates. "We want a young audience." She dons a sarcastic smile and laughs, adding, "That way, it's easier to recruit--the younger they are, the more impressionable."

Although the trio has pointedly targeted a narrow audience, it has had some surprising bursts into the big time this year, most notably when its tune "The Galaxy Is Gay" was heard in the hyped "lesbian kiss" episode of TV's Party of Five earlier this year. "We got paid!" marvels Wilson. "It seemed like a lot of money to us, but it's probably nothing to them." Actually, she says, they would have preferred putting the beat into another angst-ridden show: "Dawson's Creek is shot in North Carolina. I thought, Put us in Dawson's Creek. The girls in the audience will just think we're guys!"

The band's recent heat has also included a string of opening dates for the Indigo Girls, which has brought Wilson's life in rock full circle; she remembers an Indigo Girls concert as a high point of her own small-town adolescence in Jasper, Ore. Even though Indigo members Amy Ray and Emily Saliers were not out at the time, "they were obviously lesbians," says Wilson. "`Gaydar's a good thing."

At first glance, the two bands don't seem like much of a match; Indigo Girls has scored hits with its catchy, gentle rock, while the Butchies--which Wilson and York spun off from the legendary queer rock group Team Dresch in 1997--has toiled for years in relative obscurity, honing its punkrock vision. But its new album (on Mr. Lady, the small label Wilson owns and runs with girlfriend Tammy Rae Carland) reveals the group's budding interest in the band Boston and Joni Mitchell; much of Population sounds ready for classic-rock radio.

But the members of the Butchies are still pretty butch. New cuts such as the fast, loud, and political "More Rock More Talk," in which the band mates proclaim with a thunderous squall that they are pro-queer youth, pro-union, and pro-choice, keep the group close to its roots. "People always ask, `Why do you have to be that way--so political?'" says Wilson. "I say, maybe it's because we're so openly hated every day, maybe because one in three teens who commits suicide is gay. I say that the people who come to our shows are glad that we are that way."

Find more on the Butchies and links to related Internet sites at www.adovate.com

Sanchez also writes for The Village Voice and Index.

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