Recently, I met with GirlSpit, a band composed of Sera (they/she) on vocals and keytar, Harley (she/her) on bass and lead synth, and Rosa (she/her) on drums, who create slightly gothic, synth-punk music in Richmond.
Birthed out of connections from queer bike ride nights and kink clubs, GirlSpit embodies what it means to be musicians who know their community and always give back. We met at Rag & Bones, a collective DIY space that is a passion project for the band members, for the interview. Working at a bike shop collective space also proves beneficial for upcycling their one-of-a-kind concert and day wear.
During the interview, I was met with distinctly GirlSpit attire—a Dyke t-shirt, leather hat, chains, and even a handmade harness made out of recycled bike inner tubes.
Lucien: Could you tell me more about Rag & Bones?
Sera: The space prioritizes people sharing knowledge and accessibility of bikes – the point is to make bicycles as transit universally accessible to anyone. We’re also trying to make a showcase of other local art and zines, but Rag & Bones has been around for twelve years and I’ve been involved for a long time. We also recorded most of the album here.
Rosa: We literally mixed it upstairs.
Harley: Sea Erickson (they/them) did all of the mixing for us. Huge shout out to them.
Lucien: When you were recording, what was the process like? Did you already have songs ready or was it a more freeform recording process?
Rosa: We knew that we didn’t have the time or resources to record all of the songs that we had written, so we wanted to record a few of them and get versions out there to let people hear it and share it. We had songs that represented different parts of our sound, but we’ve had, for a while now, ten plus songs ready.
Harley: The point of the demo EP (GIRLSPIT FOREVER) was to get it out there so people had an idea of what we sounded like.
Lucien: How would you describe your sound?
Sera: When Harley and I began making music, she was already doing the double synth thing, but I also wanted to play a keytar, so we have three synthesizers and drums, creating a new-wave goth sound. Overtime, my voice has gotten a bit lower, too, so I wanted to incorporate a vocal pedal too to make a kind of ethereal sound.
Harley: The three keyboards and the vocal pedal together make so many layers of sounds – so many options, so you can go from something very straight forward, catchy, dance pop, to heavy ethereal, bombastic, and anywhere in between. A lot of dancy synth punk meets 80s synthwave-esque.
Rosa: Definitely on the drum side, I kind of like to think if I was a human drum machine…. so bands that are more electronic like Boy Harsher, but also queer punk like Mannequin Pussy…leftist bands that are involved in their community.
Harley: I love the Faints, LCD Soundsystem, a lot of hyperpop like Kim Petras, super unapologetically queer or trans or femme – sexual energy. You know we just want to bring as much energy to performances as we can.
Lucien: What are your goals as musicians?
Rosa: For us, this band is as much as something we are involved in our community with, trying to be a
part of something. The music is obviously central, but we also wanted to mean something and stand for something apart from the music. We also played a lot of benefit shows – more than I can count. Raising money for abortion funds with the RRFP, Stop Cop City…”
Sera: We raised money for RRFP (Richmond Reproductive Freedom Project), some of the merch Rosa’s partner has been making has also been going to RRFP… before that we played a benefit show for DC Dyke March. They’re also doing Dykes Against Genocide this year, so we did that, and before that was Camp Spokes that we did a fundraiser for. Just allowing people to grow their skills, get tools, for things they need.
Harley: It would be great to do this as a full time job, but this money isn’t for us – we think ‘why not put this money towards places we care about? Why not use our influence and privilege so that we have a band to good works?
Sera: I feel so lucky to be able to play music – that people want to see random shit we write.
Harley: We just wrote a new song and debuted it this past weekend and everyone was hype that there was even a new song to hear. Looking up and seeing that everyone loved that new song we just wrote between the three of us, and seeing the crowd go wild over it is such an amazing feeling.
Rosa: From the perspective of being a trans person in a band in Richmond and that the community is so cool… You know, in other places that would be a big deal having two transfemmes and a nonbinary person in a band called GirlSpit. But in Richmond that doesn’t really come up, we’re able to be musicians and artists first.
Sera: Being able to discuss things through music that are happening politically and being able to advocate for them is also very important.
Lucien: Why “GirlSpit”?
Rosa: I had thought about using the name ‘GirlSpit’ for a while…you know I thought of it a little bit
before I met them, and we were debating band names but I had it in my pocket and was waiting to see if they liked it. We had been going around in a circle asking about what was everyone’s best band name and finally I said ‘you know, I’ve always wanted to call a band GirlSpit.
Lucien: What could I expect at a GirlSpit show?
Harley: You’re going to leave very sweaty and you’re going to leave with a bunch of new friends.
Rosa: It’s a lot of queer people, but also a lot of people from different communities too.
Harley: Baby punks to metalheads, literally everyone. We want to make a really welcoming and inclusive space for everyone to have fun.
Sera: Like we were talking about with the name and the goal of the band, I feel like what I want to see is that space created where everyone can participate in it – like a good community space.
Harley: And at the end of all of our shows, people come up and ask us to spit in their mouths. All about consent, but that’s a part of it, too.
Rosa: That’s another thing, being body and sex positive. Consent is first, of course – but we like to say that it’s okay to be hot and sexy… We’re trying to put together a tour in the near future to bring that Richmond DIY queer-punk energy to everywhere we perform.”
Lucien: : What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
Harley: The first thing in my head is: ‘if you make a mistake on stage or just in your life, just keep moving.’ No one wants to hear you complain about the one bad note in your whole set, just pretend you didn’t make a mistake and even if you did it’s so minimal, just focus on the big, more important things in life. You just had an amazing set, don’t focus on the one percent.
Rosa: One piece of advice that you (Sera) gave me is to be proud of what you did. You want to look back on something and be proud of the decision you made – to think, like, I have values.
Sera: I feel the same way, in reference to music, I try to remember to play like it could be your last show. With COVID-19, it really was my last show for years, and I think about that show and I feel like I was proud of it. So just play every show like your last.
A big thank you to GirlSpit for their time, Rag & Bones for hosting us, and be sure to check out GirlSpit at their next show. They are playing on October 5, 2024 at the Broadberry in Richmond, but if that’s too far away, you can always listen to their online discography now!
Main photo by Jake Mayday
