True Grit – Angel Grit Frontwoman Melissa Schainker Talks Punk Rock, Fine Art, & Motherhood

Melissa Schainker is one of the coolest people you could possibly meet.

The frontwoman of the rock band Angel Grit, she’s also a fine artist whose paintings have appeared in galleries around the world, and she’s been doing it all while raising two kids in the heart of NYC.

“I’m definitely the only tattooed rock n roll mom at school pickup,” she says with a laugh.

The rock n roll aspect of her life has been gaining quite a bit of momentum of late, with Angel Grit making a name for themselves in their first year together performing at venues like Arlene’s Grocery, Baker Falls, and Lucky 13 Saloon.

Schainker is still a bit in awe of everything the band has accomplished in its infancy. “I kind of pinch myself every day when I get to follow, or go on stage before, some of these bands that have been doing it a hell of a lot longer,” she says, “I just feel really lucky that people seem to be enjoying what we’re doing because we’re having a ball.”

Angel Grit just released their debut single, “Bad Mommy,” which has a punk rock take on other people’s views of single motherhood, and the artwork for it was done by Schainker herself.

I caught up with Schainker to find out more about Angel Grit, her artwork, and the very unlikely person she says she’d love to be “all day, every day.”

I hear you’re a bad mommy. Tell me about the debut single from Angel Grit, and what inspired it. 

I’ve been playing music a long, long time, but I was always scared to be in a band.

So I had a friend, and I went to an open mic he was performing in, and he handed me his acoustic guitar. He was like, “Get up there, sing something.” I was like, “I don’t do that.” He’s like, “Yes, you do. You just only do it at home. Sing something.”

This was maybe 2023.

That night I met a fellow musician who I’m not going to name for the purpose of her privacy and mine. We started to go to open mics together, and play music together. We had a band very briefly for like two shows. It just didn't work out. We had fun when we played separately, but when we played together, it didn’t work. But she and I are both single moms, and she wrote these really formulaic songs that followed a pattern. It was classic rock n roll – you have your chorus, you have your verse, you have your bridge, you have all of those things put together. I always wrote meandering artsy songs before “Bad Mommy,” but I wrote “Bad Mommy” because I was watching how she was doing her songwriting.

I’d written it originally to be performed with this first band, and I wrote it kind of tongue in cheek, like, hey, being a single mom is hard, and everybody’s going to say you’re a bad mommy if you are working, doing rock n roll, doing art, doing basically everything that makes me, me, or everything that made her, her. It was a sarcastic commentary. I was like, well, I’m a bad mom because I make music. I’m a bad mom because I do art. I’m a bad mom because I want you to commit to me. All of these excuses that we get as women because we’re not fitting a formula. 

I’m hoping that people understand that it’s like a cry of, hey, I’m not trying to meet your expectations of what this should look like, but you need to meet mine. That’s why the chorus is, “I’m a bad mommy, but I’m not going to tolerate shit.” I’m like, listen, you think I’m bad? You haven’t seen bad yet. You’re not going to get away with anything with me.

Talk to me about the single artwork, because I know you did it yourself. 

I did. I’m a professional fine artist by trade. I’m one of the few people that when you ask what they do for a living, and I tell you art, I actually mean it.

I’m represented by three galleries, I’ve exhibited all over the world, I’ve been in some pretty major publications as a painter.

I do a lot of paintings that revolve around anxiety. I am the lucky owner of an anxiety disorder. It’s super dope, I don’t recommend it, but a lot of my art centers around that, and a lot of me coming to terms with motherhood is like, OK, how do you become a mom, but also keep those anxieties at bay so that the kids are calm, stable, happy, healthy?

(The single art) was a painting that I did about anxiety. It was a piece that I did maybe a few years ago, and it’s been exhibited a bunch. I think I painted it out of anxiety of something with one of the kids. It is a self-portrait, very loosely, of me sobbing into my hands, but like trying to hold it together.

After your previous band didn’t work out, how did Angel Grit come together? 

Eduardo (Palacios), my bassist and co-songwriter, was in that other band with me.

He and I had a good rapport on stage, and I was like, “Listen, I’m sorry, I can’t do this project anymore.” The egos and everything else, it just wasn't working. There’s no hard feelings. It’s just, music’s supposed to be fun.

He reached out to me a couple of weeks later. He was like, “Hey, don’t quit music just because this band didn’t work. I like your songs, they’re really cool. Would you be willing to play in a show with me? Let’s hire a drummer.” I was like, “Are you serious?” He’s like, “Yeah, don’t quit this. You’re good at this.”

I kind of just assumed I’m a punk rock singer, and clearly if I can't work with this person I shouldn’t be in a band, so I’m just gonna go back to my art, tail between my legs. I was ready to be done. Eduardo was like, nope, you’re not done. You get back here.

We started Angel Grit with a drummer that I had met through the open mic circuits. I had met Louis (Iacobelli) at a bar in Bay Ridge where I’d done a couple of open mic nights.

With the three of us, Eduardo, Louis, and I, we’re three different generations. We’re from three different boroughs. We have pretty diverse backgrounds as far as our musical tastes, but we also have a lot of similarities.

We are all old school metal heads. Our nerdism in metal music in particular is insane, but I gear a little more to alternative, with some soul, and some jazz. I was a horn player, so I have weird influences.

Eduardo is a classically trained composer who plays six instruments, and speaks five or six languages, so he pulls in his influences.

Then Louis is a veteran drummer who has been on some crazy stages, played with a lot of bands, and is deeply invested in 2000s metal. His favorite band is Sevendust. You will never see that man without a Sevendust shirt on.

So all three of us are coming at music from a very experienced, but very different place.

When we started playing music together, these guys are music nerds at heart, and so am I, so we just have a lot of fun writing together.

The chemistry, I think, is very apparent when you see us on stage. They’re like my brothers.

You mentioned your inspirations having a little more soul in them, but I know you’ve done at least one show where you were performing as Hole, and covering their songs, so are also drawn to bands who have kick-ass front women? 

My favorite bands are Tool, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie. I love Garbage. I grew up on ‘90s grunge, and alternative, and rock, so I tend to listen to less female fronted band than you would suspect, but I did love Hole growing up.

The reason I did two shows as Hole was because a friend, and our mutual colleague, Christian (Dryden) from The Ritualists was like, “Melissa, you need to cover Hole.” I was like, “Are you sure?” He's like, “Yeah, you gotta do it,” and, you know, 13 year old Melissa really resonated with Hole, so I was like, why not? Let’s give it a shot.

We ended up getting a lot more gigs after we played a couple of Hole shows because people want to grasp onto something that’s familiar, especially with new music. They need to know – who are you influenced by, and what makes you tick? Then they can kind of get an idea of what you are.

I feel like given the option, I would be Isaac Hayes all day, every day.

You know, when I first saw you, I absolutely thought – Chef from South Park. That was the first thing that came to mind. 

Yeah, I mean, absolutely.

I swear, looking through my record collection would confuse most people.

I feel like people want rock musicians to be like, OK, you’re influenced by this rock musician. I’m a classically trained trumpet player, so I’m not going to make sense for most people if they start to really dig into my influences.

You’re like, Al Hirt is somewhere in this collection. 

Dude, I’ve got a couple of Al Hirt records. No joke.

I mean, Louis Armstrong, I can scat with the best of them.

Nice. Since you do both fine art and music, which aspects of yourself come out in your paintings versus your music? 

Visual art and music are kind of like cousins, except in how you present them. With a painting you get the distinct pleasure of making sure it is the absolute most perfect version of a piece when you present it to somebody. So I can stand, not even in the same room as it, and I can be like, I did my absolute 1000% best, and that’s why it’s on the wall. Music ain’t like that. Music, especially live music, you’re like – here I am, I’m naked, I missed this note, and my hair’s a mess. Do you like it?

It’s much scarier to do music than it is to do art. That said, they’re both mediums that really define me, and I found that they kind of inform each other in how I present them. I’m more willing to show people the messy parts of art because I make music, and show people the messy parts of performance. I feel like I’m getting better the more I do it, but if you mess up in music, you just keep going. You mess up in art, I can go over an oil painting for two months until it’s good, and then I can show people.

So it’s immediacy versus refinement.

You are a ball of energy when you perform. Do you feel that’s your full time vibe, or does something special come out of you when you hit the stage? 

I am a very energetic person, I always have been, but the secret is this – I wake up really early. I’m a morning person. That doesn’t seem very rock n roll. I work really hard all day, and then if left to my own druthers, I’m asleep by 10pm.

If I’m going on stage, it’s like, alright, I’m going to need some coffee. I’m going to need to slap myself a couple of times. I got to make sure that I’m ready for it, because I’m not really a night owl.

That’s my personality, but it’s obviously amplified on stage because that’s your time to be a complete ham. Maybe other people don’t want to do that, but I think it’s a lot of fun to just be the most exaggerated version of yourself, and I think that’s what happens on stage, I get to unleash those tendencies that we would hold in otherwise, but that’s what performance is.

Despite the title of your single, in reality you are not a bad mommy, so how do you balance art, music, and being a mom of two, because it seems impossible. 

If you overthink it, you don’t do it. So there is that. But I will say this, my kids, and I’ve always felt this way, they’re part of my life. My kids are literally sitting around making music with me, making art with me. They’re coming to art galleries tonight. I have to drop off a hand painted bass guitar at an exhibition, and my kids are going to come with me, and they’re going to talk to the curator, and they’re going to look at the art that’s going to be hung.

My kids are my life, and they’re in my life. So my kids get to make art. They get to make music. They have the weird mom that’s standing outside of pickup listening to Amyl and the Sniffers.

What are your goals for Angel Grit for the rest of 2026? 

We recorded a three song EP. We’re going to be releasing the second single at the end of the month.

I put together this EP, and we worked with a studio called Greylock Records, in hopes that once we presented it to people, and they got to hear the studio version of us, and the live version of us, that perhaps somebody would take interest in wanting to help us produce a full record.

All I know is this music gives me life in a very real way, and making music with these guys is the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Whether or not it goes somewhere, I’m not making music to be famous. I’m making music because I love it. If somebody wants to pick it up, if somebody feels something because of what we’re writing, if it resonates with someone, then we’re creating meaningful art.

That’s how I feel about painting, too. I never went into art school thinking, oh my God, I’m going to be a famous painter, because that’s just insanity. I do it for the love of it.

I do art, and music, because I can’t not do them.

For more Angel Grit check out angelgrit.com.