Gina Volpe – “No Rest for the Ass Kicker”

Whether it’s been as a member of the seminal ‘90s NYC punk rock band Lunachicks, fronting her power trio project BANTAM, or as a solo artist, Gina Volpe has been kicking ass for over three decades, and she has no plans on stopping anytime soon.

“Oh, I am not done yet,” she says, “I’m just getting started.”

According to Volpe, there’s “no rest for the ass kicker.”

Her latest kick ass endeavor is her first full-length solo album, titled Delete the World, which was released at the end of February, and features the single “Drink Me.”

I caught up with Volpe to find out more about Delete the World, and she also shared some Lunachicks stories, as well as some LES music history. Additionally, she discussed the role sexism played in limiting female bands in regards to getting shows, and radio airplay back in the ‘90s, and how it still limits many female artists in the present on streaming services like Spotify.

You just released your first full-length solo album, Delete the World. Let’s dive into that title. Does the world need a hard reset? 

You know, sometimes yes, but it’s more the world inside my own head – the chatter, the traffic, the noise, all the worries, and anxieties, and obligations. I feel like these things get in the way of us being able to truly be in the moment, and live our lives. So it really refers to blocking out all of that crap so that you can get to the good stuff, which is just being, or creating, or truly appreciating the moment that you’re in.

The noise can get pretty loud. Sometimes it’s so much it can almost become white noise, like static. 

Yeah, and when you’re creating, if you have all that noise going you really can’t make anything. There’s just not enough room. You need to get to this clearing of nothingness in order to create something.

Is there any one song on this album that’s especially emotionally intense for you, either from a writing perspective, or from a performance perspective? 

Good question. Actually, the one song I’ve ever written that made myself cry – like, I can’t believe I wrote a song that made myself cry – actually didn’t make it onto the album.

After that, I guess “The Plan” would be maybe the most emotional for me. It’s kind of going back to that theme of nothingness, but it’s about giving up control, and understanding what you can and can’t control. Then there’s a very liberating idea in the thought that nothing’s in control, and that's okay, and being uncomfortable with uncertainty, and maybe there is no plan, and that’s the plan.

I’m an LES music historian, and you have been part of that scene for over 30 years. Having come up in the LES in the ‘90s, which artists play a prominent role in your fondest memories of that time? 

There was a band called Da Willys. Do you know them? That was Lynne Von, who later went on to form the Trick Babys, and they were a Go-Kart Records labelmate of ours. They were friends of ours, and I just I loved that band. I loved going to see them, and they kind of helped guide us, like, this is how you do it. Same with Freaks.

Freaks was Howie Pyro’s band with Andrea Kusten. Andrea was our drummer for a hot second, and they also took us under their wing and showed us the ropes, and really made the idea of playing in a band accessible to us so that we could do it ourselves.

That’s very cool. Do you have any pieces of memorabilia from that time that are especially meaningful to you? 

I’m sure I do. I actually do have a lot of crap.

We just had a documentary – Pretty Ugly – The Story of the Lunachicks – made by a filmmaker, Ilya Chaiken, and I got to hand over boxes and boxes of crap, and get it out of my house. Now she wants to give it back, and I’m kind of like, no, you keep it.

So yes, I had a lot of stuff, and luckily she’s storing it for me right now.

I still have a ticket stub from when we opened up for the Buzzcocks at the Ritz for the first time (in 1989). That was such a monumental moment for us, because they were heroes of ours.

I have a lot of cool ticket stubs. I think I have a ticket stub from The Cramps when we played with them, as well.

Just like all these amazing milestones of getting to open up for your heroes.

Having witnessed the scene, and the area, change throughout the years, what do you miss most about the good ol’ days? 

You know, I think that – and this may be true in some other neighborhoods – I just remember being in the Lower East Side, and the East Village, you would always bump into somebody you know, and there was always something going on. You’d just be walking down the street, you’d run into so-and-so, and they’re going to go see so-and-so band.

And it was this concentrated area that we all lived in. Everything was in walking distance. You could always walk into a bar and find somebody you know, and there was just this kind of rotation of venues, bars, people’s houses, the park … it just really felt like a scene, and that something was going on. It may be that people now would say that Bushwick feels like that to them. I don’t know, but I do miss that.

The East Village is not what it was, and the punk music and art scene that was happening downtown at the time is certainly not what it was. Everything seems to be more spread out because people had to leave Manhattan and go to the outer boroughs, so it’s not as spontaneous feeling, to me, as it used to be.

From being a young woman in the LES scene in the ‘90s, to being one of the only female acts on Warped Tour, you have a history of kicking down the door at male-dominated spaces. Do you realize that as it’s happening, or is it something you only truly appreciate when you look back on it? 

Oh, no, I think we were well aware of it. I mean, how could you not be aware of it?

I think that was always one of the challenges for us, because it was a bit of a novelty, and because we were seen as a novelty it distracted from what we were actually doing, which was making music. It also, I think, minimized what we were doing, because people would say – all-girl band. All-girl band back then was an actual genre in itself. It was just ridiculous, but that’s how it was, so we were relegated to the category of all-girl music.

I noticed when going through some old Lunachicks music videos one comment that frequently comes up is – this band should have been bigger. 

I agree. {laughs}

OK, I was gonna ask, what goes through your mind when you see a comment like that, and see it so often? 

You know, some people just have shitty luck.

No, I don't know.

I mean, we had been told over and over a couple of things – one was because of the gender. There was a certain quota in the industry, it seemed. Radio stations would say, “Well, we already played Babes in Toyland, so we can’t play you, because we can only have X amount of women on the playlist.”

Literally, we were told that, and they thought that was an acceptable answer, which is astounding to us. I mean, even a couple of clubs said, “Well, you know, we already booked L7 here last month, so we’re not gonna book you, because it’s just too many of that all-girl thing.”

Two in two months, that’s just too many! 

Yes, it’s too much.

So there seemed to be a cap on it.

So that was a limitation, and then the other thing was that we had eclectic tastes. Our music didn’t fit perfectly in any kind of exact genre. Nobody knew what to do with us. Some labels basically just came right out, and said, “I love the band, but I don’t know how to market this. I don’t know what this is. I don't know. They’re funny, they’re weird looking, but they’re pretty, but they’re metal, but they’re punk. What’s the deal? How do we market this band? I don’t know, so we’re not gonna touch it.”

I think it’s a combination of all those things.

You mentioned radio not wanting to play more than a few bands with women in them. Another comment I saw on one of the Lunachicks’ videos, and something I’ve noticed just from listening to the radio, is that classic rock stations don’t play a lot of all-female, or female-fronted bands. Are important bands getting lost in history because of programmers, and playlists, and if so, what can we do to bring some of these artists back into people’s minds, and album collections? 

I think that’s a good question, and this is something that really bothers me about Spotify, and the other streaming services, because they are still categorizing artists by gender.

If you were to look at Lunachicks radio, started by Spotify, 99% of all the music on that radio is all women, which is great, but at the same time it’s basically saying – well, this is one kind of music, because it has a female singer, and it’s relegated to this one category.

Conversely, if you listen to a station started by (Spotify for) Offspring, or Rancid you’re not gonna have any females on there, because it’s all like – well, these are male singers, and they go in this category, and female singers go in this other category, and the two should never meet.

It perpetuates division, and this binary thinking of what music and genres are, and their definitions, and it’s really frustrating.

I think we just have to keep making our own playlists as eclectic and mixed as possible, and calling out Spotify.

There was a study that came out a couple years ago about Spotify’s recommendations, and that they were like 80% more likely to recommend a male artist over a female artist. These things keep perpetuating that.

Switching gears, you toured in an era before cell phones, and GPS, so what’s the most lost you’ve ever been on the road, and how did you find your way back to where you needed to be? 

Oh my God, when I think now, like, how the fuck did we do that?

You had to pull the van over at a gas station, get your quarter out, put it in the payphone, dial up the club, get the directions, and handwrite it down while you were on the phone.

One time, it was a really hot day, we got in the van, we were driving through the desert, and we had all the windows open.

Uh oh. 

I had the directions in my hand, and, not even thinking about it, I put my elbow to rest down on the window sill, which was metal, and it was hot, and I went {opens her hand}, and the directions flew out of my hand, and out into the distance.

We were miles from the nearest payphone, or gas station.

That was really fun. Everybody was really mad.

But you somehow made it. 

We made it every time. I mean, we did get lost many times, but eventually we would find it.

A somewhere there’s an armadillo in a desert that has your directions that flew out the window all those years ago. 

Exactly.

During all your time on the road, what’s the closest you’ve come to getting arrested without actually getting arrested? 

Well, I never got arrested, although I did get interrogated the first time we went over the Canadian border.

I was 18. I’d never crossed into Canada before. We were all so young, and we were crossing because we were going to Montreal.

They randomly pulled me and Becky (Wreck) out of the van, put us in separate rooms, and it was the quintessential two guys over the table with a swinging overhead light. They had these thick French accents, screaming at me that they were going to get the dogs on me. I was like, “No, I don’t have drugs. No dogs.”

That was terrifying, but they let us go after a while, and they were laughing as we drove away, because they were obviously having fun with it.

So that was the closest I personally ever got to being arrested.

When we did same thing, crossing the Canadian border, but on the West Coast, Syd (Silver), and our tour manager got arrested at the border because they had knives.

Those Canadians man, are very strict with the border.

Are you gonna tour Canada at all in support of your solo album? Based on your history I’m not sure you should go up there. 

I actually have some good listeners in Canada, and I do love Canada, so I’ve been back several times since. So yes, I would.

Is there a tour being planned in support of Delete the World? 

Yes. It’s not like I’m going to go on any kind of months-long world tour, but I do plan on hitting some major cities, and playing.

I have yet to play any of my solo stuff live, so I’m in the process of getting a band together.

We have a lot of fun in production, and we have layers upon layers, so I’m like, OK, how am I going to recreate this live as close as possible?

So I’m in the process, but yes, shows are in the works.

For more Gina Volpe, check out ginavolpe.com.