“I had a chip on my shoulder about gender in music,” explains Rich Girls singer and bandleader Luisa Black as she relays her musical origin story on the steps of the Bowery Electric before her band's Saturday night set. The three piece, turned duo for the evening, was tapped to play New York’s new Mondo Festival, a celebration of emerging artist and technology held around New York University and the Lower East Side. Black’s musical journey begins with a shitty college boyfriend, the Pixies song “Wave of Mutilation,” and a desire to prove wrong the idea that guitar is too difficult for women, and continues with the release of Rich Girls’ new EP Love Is The Dealer that drops on the September 23. I think it’s fair to say Black won that argument.
Photo by Lauren DiMundo
As it turns out, Rich Girls drummer Gavin Haag was also doing it for the ladies, but for much more specific cause, as he claims, “I started playing drums because I wanted to impress girls. I swear to God.” According to a teasing Black, the jury is still out on whether or not it worked, but it’s safe to say learning how to play worked out well for Haag.
Photo by Lauren DiMundo
The band recently relocated from San Francisco, where Black had been based, to New York, a change that Black maintains has been purely positive. “I feel great in New York because there’s a whole tradition of punk here,” Black says. “It’s just a different scene. The underground is more overground.” The influence of both places, as well as London where Black had been living when the project started, has made a deep impact on their music. “It was meant to take California garage, like beach garage, and cross it with this kind of elevated British punk,” Black explains. “It came out of this combination of West Coast radio pop and British art punk, and those were really the kind of two sonic influences for me. For Gavin I think he’s like a super hard hitting drummer and that kind of came out of Fugazi and hardcore bands.”
As evidenced by their blended genre, Rich Girls is based both on creating new sound, but also honoring their past influences. “I think it’s important to have a theory of art,” Black explains. “To know why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you’re creating certain kinds of sound instead of just replicating what’s out there.” She sums up her point in a suitably punk way. “To me the best music is in conversation with culture or trying to blow stuff up which I think is important, and trying to do something dangerous.”
Photo by Lauren DiMundo
For a band that’s so rich in punk ideology and garage sound, I couldn’t help but wonder where the name Rich Girls came from. According to Black, before adding Haag and guitarist August Churchill to the band, Black started Rich Girls on her own while living in London. “I didn’t want people to know that I was a lonely solo project,” Black admits. “It was a bit of misdirection, like it’s a party band, what’s a party? I know, rich girls. And then the other piece of it was that I was not enriched at the time at all, I was the opposite, I was feeling quite bereft. And now it’s a name that I regret a lot, almost daily. But I can’t do anything about it, so here we are.”
Photo by Lauren DiMundo
What may have started as a lonely solo project has grown into a full-fledged band, within which collaboration has now become the norm. Even though Black creates her own demos in Garageband, she brings her songs to her band mates to “make it better and real-ify it.” As for how the technology side of the Mondo festival fits into Rich Girls, Black admits that they’re “very much an analog band.” However, Black still feels like the festival is right for Rich Girls. “As a festival that’s embracing different kinds of emerging media, great it feels like a fit. Mostly because we’re on the emerging side, not the technology side.”
Catch Rich Girls new EP Love is the Dealer when it drops on 9/23/2016
