Lauryl Sulfate is a 34-year-old mother and activist who also makes 'zines, creates art (her "peace flag Wisconsin" illustration is featured on the Riverwest Co-op's travel mugs) and keeps the fire blazing beneath her musical project, a performance band called Lauryl Sulfate & Her Ladies of Leisure.
Sulfate is currently working on a new album, but plans to leak a song at the Riverwest Follies on Sat., March 3 at the Polish Falcon, 803 E. Clarke St. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the alt variety show starts at 7 p.m.
Sulfate, who is working with local producer Mark Zbikowski, plans to finish her album this summer and will play a few gigs in support of it this fall.
"If I can make something that makes other ladies sing fiercely into their hairbrushes in front of the mirror in the morning, then I would know I achieved something grand," she says.
Sulfate's music is a flavor of electronic dance that's clearly infused with '80s pop, new wave and early hip hop. Lately, Sulfate says, she has been writing and recording a lot of raps.
"I think my rap style is charmingly whack," she says.
Prior to The Ladies of Lesiure, Sulfate had another group called Dites Donc! This band was a theatrical, feminist, electronic, performance art dance band.
"We had a lot of complicated dance routines, including one where we would invite all of the male members of the audience onstage and give them tree costumes to wear while we pantomimed being lost in a forest," she says. "There were a lot of sequins and tear-away costumes. It was a really fun band to be a part of."
Sulfate is a completely self-taught musician who says she listens obsessively to pop music of all kinds. She started writing songs as a kid and wishes, in retrospect, she would have studied an instrument. She plans to "force" her sons, ages 4 and 2, to take music lessons when they are a little older.
"They'll thank me for it later," she says.
As the mother of two small kids, it's not always easy to carve out the time to work on music projects. Sulfate says she carries an iPod with her all the time and is diligent about recording melodies and lyrics that come into her head when she's with her kids so she doesn't forget them.
Sulfate says she convinced herself in high school that because of her lack of formal musical training she wasn't meant to make music.
"I loved singing, but I wasn't in choir like a lot of my friends were. So, I was very shy about singing in front of anyone – even though I craved it – because I thought that I wasn't legitimate somehow," she says.
As an adult, Sulfate learned more about early punk and new wave and finally wrote herself a permission slip to make music without having a clue as to what she was doing.
"Even if I totally bombed at it, it's a totally valid way to work," she says. "Even the Beatles started out having no clue what they were doing. And I may never be the Beatles, but even if I'm just The Slits, that'd be OK with me."
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
