Joan Jett. Donita Sparks. Ani DiFranco. Theo Kogan. Tina Turner. These are women musicians who rock hard. Milwaukee has a fair share of lady rockers, too, and although arguably gender shouldn’t add or subtract from the experience, it sometimes does.
"The rock ‘n’ roll thing has always been a boys’ club, but it's gotten a lot better since I started playing in bands over 15 years ago," says Wendy Norton, who is currently in the Milwaukee-based band Ramma Lama. "But you'll find that some older rock ‘veteran’ types will still be dicks and assume you don't know your sh*t. But I say, ‘Whateva!’ I am not gonna let the haters get me down."
Prior to Ramma Lamma, Norton -- who plays mostly guitar but also bass, drums and piano -- was a part of Plexi 3, The Flips, The Spectras, Plastic Pets, Reacharounds, The Monitors and The Lookers. Also, she once had a vinyl-only label called Kryptonite Records.
Ginny Wiskowski has played in numerous local bands, and she is currently in the all-girl rockabilly band Crazy Rocket Fuel. She agrees that the local music scene is improving for girl rockers.
"As far as prejudices go on the outside, I think the gender thing is implicit as an all-girl band. For the most part we are treated as equals, but it wasn't always the case in my experience," she says.
Katy Rich has played guitar since she was 10 years old and has been in three bands: Never, Dos and Wild Tribe, but she has never played anywhere other than a basement or a garage. In her world, comprised mostly of early-20-somethings living in Riverwest, Walker’s Point and Bay View, she gets a lot of credit for being not only a girl who knows how to rip it up on guitar, but simply a good guitar player in general.
"A lot of times someone will say to me how cool they think it is that I play guitar so hard, and that kinda annoys me because I think they are saying it’s cool because I am a girl. It’s just plain cool," she says.
But Rich also believes that female musicians need to support each other.
"A lot of boy musicians want to talk over me. Or set up my equipment. Or impress me with what they know about different kinds of guitars. Model blah blah blah,’" she says. "I’m not sure if they are threatened or impressed and trying to show me how cool they are, but it gets old. Girls in bands aren’t usually like that."
Eve Curtis has been the guitar player for her band, Fake Goddess Friday, since 2004. Her band plays mostly cover songs by bands like The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The White Stripes and Hole, but they have a few original tunes in the works.
"We just want to play and we love to rock," she says.
Curtis says gender does matter to her and her band mates.
"For us, gender matters given how the band originated. We wanted to prove that we could jam just as well as the boys. When one of the original members of the band left early on, we waited over two years for the right gal to come along to fill her place. She was well worth the wait, too," says Curtis.
Kristen Kakatsch played guitars with the all-female band Dropmore Scarlet from 1999 to 2009. She says gender was an issue, but only because there were five women playing together.
"Being in an all-female band is wonderful at times and impossible at times," she says.
Most women musicians dig a variety of both male and female artists, but do these ladies find a little extra inspiration from the girl rockers?
"I feel inspired by a female if she isn't afraid to rock out. I find that a lot of females tend to like ‘prettier’ or more pop styles of music and it seems as if they're always holding back on stage a little bit," says Norton, who cites Lili Zeller, Suzi Quatro, Margo Guryan, Irma Thomas, Bonnie St. Claire and Tina Turner as some of her favorites.
For Wiskowski, inspiration comes from a place extremely close to her heart.
"I am directly inspired by my mother, and seeing her in a band when I was a kid definitely made an impression on me," she says.
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.
