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If you haven’t been following Black Girls’ ascent to the forefront of Richmond’s music scene, this opportunity may seem sudden. In less than two years, they’ve become one of the city’s most buzzed-about bands, garnering “Best Of” superlatives, landing on a bevy of year-end lists, and earning one-off opening spots for national acts like Fucked Up, Wavves and Alabama Shakes. While a passerby might be tempted to chalk up the group’s success to hype or good luck, the truth is that a powerful combination of hard work and ingenuity runs throughout their past and present. It was visible everywhere I looked when I recently spent some time at the Oregon Hill row house known as “The Jazz Lounge.” The Jazz Lounge is part practice space and part living space (three of the five members of Black Girls live there), and a quick look around reveals homemade speaker cabinets; a velcro-dotted wooden pedal board that lead singer Drew Gillihan stained, cut, and sanded to fit atop his Moog Little Phatty synthesizer; and a stack of t-shirts that are-you guessed it--homemade. But it’s easy to scan past what may be the most significant example of Black Girls’ homegrown sense of initiative: concert tickets for shows at The Jazz Lounge, which the band made, sold and collected themselves, with a little help from their friends. “Over a year ago, we started doing those,” drummer and backup vocalist Stephen Farris says of the house shows the band hosted. “It was kind of out of necessity, because we were writing these songs and putting them together. We wanted to play to a crowd, but the only places that would book us were shitty bars on a Monday night.” Out of that lack of opportunity came a series of successful shows -- he notes that “they always were packed” -- complete with those homemade tickets, some of which hang not far from where guitar and keyboard player Mike Bryant sets up for practice. “My favorite thing about Richmond,” Bryant explains, “ever since even before we were in bands, when we were just freshmen in college here, was the amount of house shows going on. I feel like in a lot of ways we’re deeply rooted in that scene.” And Black Girls weren’t the only ones gracing the stage at the Jazz Lounge. Bands from near and far joined the fray, including Richmond’s own White Laces, as well as groups from as far away as New York.
MUSIC BLACK GIRLS
“That’s when I first met all these dudes,” guitarist and backup vocalist Fletcher Babb recounts. “I would come to these shows in the basement all the time. First time I ever came to this house, there were probably 40 or 50 people out in that front fenced in area, and they [had] our friend Josh at the front gate taking tickets. I’m like, ‘What the hell is this? A house party that charges people and takes tickets and everything? This is craziness.’” While he started as a spectator, Babb soon joined the band, along with guitarist and hype-man Harrison Colby, when Mike Bryant went overseas to study music. Mike returned a few months later, and though both Babb and Colby stayed on, briefly turning the band into a six-piece, Colby left the group shortly thereafter to pursue a career in film. But the band’s knack for creating goes back even further than their house shows, to when Gillihan, Farris and Bryant, all of whom were attending VCU, played in a band called River City Choir. “We were just playing music together, living together, playing in different bands and not taking it very seriously,” Gillihan remembers. Even though he wasn’t an official band member, Black Girls bassist Jeff Knight was already in the mix at this point -he reminds his bandmates jovially that he “played percussion at the Triple for one show.” And while River City Choir’s style was, according to Farris, “more Americana kind of stuff,” the time they spent playing music with one another in college helped them start to develop the loose yet upbeat ethos of “snuff rock” -- the name the band has given to their blend of southern psychedelic soul. “As far back as we’ve been playing music together,” Farris says, “it was always sitting around with a guitar or something, just hanging out and playing around with songs and vocal melodies and lyrics. The whole falsetto thing and the whole call and response thing really stem out of sitting around making each other laugh, and doing this and that, but then being like, ‘Well you know, actually that sounds pretty sweet. Let’s try and do that for real.’ It came out of a totally real place. “We just decided to make it our own thing -snuff rock.” When you see them live, it’s impossible to miss the distinctive swagger that comes with the selfdetermination of the snuff rock brand. After all, “What kind of music do you play?” can be one of the most difficult questions for a band to answer,
especially for bands that have diverse influences. Black Girls have a definitive answer and, much as they did with their house shows at the Jazz Lounge, they seem to revel in the idea of creating something where nothing previously existed. Given this appreciation for all things homegrown, it should come as no surprise that when it was time to start committing the songs they’d been working on to tape, Black Girls rolled up their sleeves and turned the Jazz Lounge into a recording studio. Their self-recorded, self-titled first album was released early in 2011 on Worthless Junk Records, with a liner note that reads, “these ten songs outline more than two years of musical evolution, with each one representing its own unique chapter.” “It was fun,” Farris recalls. “We got to really put a lot of personal touches into everything, and spend a long time doing it.” The amount of time spent on this self-titled first record was partially a product of their environment, as the group didn’t have the means to record live at the Jazz Lounge. “We didn’t even have the inputs or cords or anything to do that. I would record drums, then someone would record something, and they could be days or weeks apart.” Nevertheless, the album does a fantastic job of capturing the band’s charisma, eclectic tastes and creativity. Tracks like “So Sorry,” “Club Bangin” and “Broadway” have grown into trademark anthems at their exuberant live shows. “Broadway” has even taken on a vibrant second life, thanks to their collaboration with another of Richmond’s highest-profile bands, label-mates No BS! Brass Band. “It was huge for us, linking up with them,” Farris says of No BS! “It just seemed right off the bat like the perfect combo.” Released in July and christened by a two-night stint at Black Girls’ favorite Richmond venue, Balliceaux, the No BS! Brass Band vs. Black Girls split 7-inch features a revamped cut of “Broadway,” with five members of No BS! adding powerful swells and expertly executed punctuating harmonies. The track was recorded at Minimum Wage, the home studio of No BS! drummer Lance Koehler, and the experience left a strong impression. Fletcher Babb recalls that “they would listen to the song twice and figure something out right away -- faster than any of us could hope to do.” They also fell for the flexibility that recording at Minimum Wage
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