Le Butcherettes Fans
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Teri Gender Bender & Lia Braswell of Le Butcherettes in their trailer at Coachella.
Inside a small trailer backstage at Coachella yesterday, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez was trying to cool down after his first performance of the day, and the dressing room wasn’t much cooler than the triple-digit heat outside. Rodriguez-Lopez pulled double duty on both festival weekends in Indio, California, playing lead guitar with the reunited At the Drive-In on the main stage just hours after a full set on bass with Le Butcherettes, the fiery garage-punk band whose next album he is currently producing in Los Angeles.
Rodriguez-Lopez is a full permanent member of Le Butcherettes, and during the trio’s raging 45-minute set, he stood back with a smile as Guadalajaran singer-guitarist Teri Gender Bender roared through anxious pop hooks with sharp edges, at one point tossing a big Casio keyboard into the moshing crowd. New drummer Lia Braswell slammed a heavy beat from stage left and fans waved Mexican flags, as they would again later for At the Drive-In. Soon after, Rodriguez-Lopez sat with Le Butcherettes for several rounds of bottled water and talked with Rolling Stone about their busy Coachella week.
Is playing two sets a day a challenge?
Rodriguez-Lopez: No, it’s a blessing. Go play music all day? I should be so lucky. Last weekend we played, then we cooled off, we ate, and then just when you really feel like you’re winding down, “Oh, it’s time to play.” It’s perfect.
Teri Suaréz is trying to finish a record. Her phone, however, won’t stop interrupting. It’s her mother. “She’s freaking out,” Suaréz said.
This past Sunday, Suaréz sent her mother into a state of panic when, at the first weekend of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, she walked away from her guitar and keyboard and climbed to the top of a lighting rig. Then she locked her legs around it and leaned over backward.
“That’s why my mom is calling me,” Suaréz said. “She said, ‘Please don’t ever do that again!’ I said, ‘Oh, no, Mom. I won’t do that ever again. I’ll be more careful. I swear.’ But she’s still really scared about it. She keeps calling to see if I’m OK.”
For now, yes, Suaréz is fine. If anything, the 22 year old is a little nervous herself. While Le Butcherettes concerts are known for their unpredictability, Suaréz has no intention of putting her life — or at least a few of her bones — in danger at Coachella on Sunday. On stage, as Teri “Gender Bender” Suaréz, the artist is reckless, abusing her guitar and her voice with delight. Off stage, Suaréz constantly laughs at herself, apologizes after nearly every sentence and admits to being paralyzed with shyness.
“It hasn’t been a hard time,” Suaréz said of harmonizing the two extremes of her personality, and then adds, “but, existentially speaking, it has been.”
Suaréz and her band, which currently includes drummer Lia Braswell and At the Drive-In principal Omar Rodriguez Lopez on bass, is rooted in the anything-goes ethos of punk rock. From Guadalajara, Mexico, and based in L.A., Le Butcherettes are a collision of genres and cultures, as Suaréz quotes from the novels most of us never read, serenades in Spanish, occasionally pretends to be Russian and lashes out at what she sees as political and societal constraints.
When Le Butcherettes opened for Iggy & the Stooges last winter, it was easy to label Suaréz as something of a spiritual heir to Iggy Pop. She’s aware of that, and she hasn’t stopped thinking about it. “I feel like everyone is expecting me to be crazy,” she said of her band’s live performances, and she said Iggy told her the “same story.”
Le Butcherettes
“It’s fitting that Le Butcherettes have opened for both the Dead Weather and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in their native Mexico. To those who’ve never witnessed the fierce glory of female lead Teri Gender Bender firsthand, it’s easiest to imagine her as a cross between Jack…
All Teri “Gender Bender” Suarez had to do was walk onstage. Five steps to her keyboard and one uncomfortable-looking chicken-squat later, and she already looked as if she were in need of an exorcism. Once she struck her instrument and began sputtering in time to the beat in a crouched position, the gentleman standing next to me leaned over and said, “I’m scared already.”
This, as anyone who has seen Le Butcherettes before can attest, is when the fun begins.
The local group came to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in the midst of recording its new album, and were augmented here by mentor/producer and frequent collaborator Omar Rodriguez Lopez. The member of At the Drive-In was the one and only calm presence on stage, his forceful punk-rock bass guiding Suarez and drummer Lia Braswell away from completely losing it.
It’s never just been about the headliners at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. In fact, many of the 100,000-plus fans who bought tickets to this year’s two consecutive Coachella weekends (April 13th-15th and 20th-22nd) signed up before the lineup was even announced. Most…
Le Butcherettes, O’Death & Murder by Death are first bands to be announced to play this years Do Division Street Festival which is set to take place from June 1-3 in Wicker Park. Le Butcherettes will be playing on June 2nd and will also play their own show at Subterranean on June 1.
That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more lineup additions.
(Source: artistdata.com)
It’s safe to assume there are myriad performers in the world that are products of a neighborhood where feeling safe was never an option. For most of them, though, music (or any form of art) was seen by the community as a gift. However, in the case of Teri Gender Bender (real name Teresa Suaréz), who grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, the notion of a female speaking her mind through music were not met with much praise and acceptance.Admittedly shy and timid when not on stage, Teri has been recording with her avant-garde garage punk outfit Le Butcherettes under the Sargent House/RLP umbrella, garnering praise from all directions — something that, at one time, may have seemed unattainable.
Noted by many as a must-see act, Teri is looking at all the avenues that are opening up for her while keeping herself grounded in the reality her rising fame is creating. Calling from a sunny day in Los Angeles, Teri spoke with us to reflect on how all her new options for the future are affecting her art and her world as a whole.
I was thinking about the last time I saw you perform live; it was back at the Highline Ballroom, opening for the ORLG band. I find it amazing how much power you create from such a minimalist setup. Is that something you specifically strive for?
It’s funny that you mention that. For the few people that we have [onstage], we try to push it as much as we can, and it has always been like that since the old days when I was 17 in Mexico. All I could have at my grasp was a guitar and a bass drum, and I guess the fact that I didn’t have much with me made me push myself even further.
I was a little nervous to interview Le Butcherettes frontwoman Teri Gender Bender (real name Teresa Suarez) last October at her Rodriguez-Lopez Productions record label, which Omar Rodriguez-Lopez runs with Cathy Pellow out of a house in the hills of Echo Park. Her stage presence is intense, so I was expecting her to scream at me for asking stupid questions; or not answer them at all. Instead, we vibed off deep discussions on feminism, philosophy and the healing aspects of nature. We were stuck behind this cement truck that wouldn’t move,” Teri’s first words were to me before going in for a big bear hug. “I thought, ‘Oh my God. She’s gonna think I’m a diva.’”The Le Butcherettes creator-slash-singer-slash-songwriter is anything but a diva. She bummed a ride off a friend, who was letting her couch surf in Downtown, to tell me her story. She doesn’t drive and just got out of a seven-year relationship with her very first boyfriend, who just so happens to live down the street from where we were (“I have to be free…know myself…know different things,” she said of the breakup.) She hates social situations and feels most comfortable in nature. Hiking through Elysian Park is her current past time (and mine).
“I like to lay in the grass and just breathe. It’s so humbling. I feel like I’m becoming a hermit. I’ve just been staying away from people. I’ve become so anti-social. I’m dealing with myself for once,” Teri, who doesn’t drink or smoke, said. “I feel like you’re my therapist.”
I’ve listened to Le Butcherettes practically every single day since I first discovered them last year. There are not many bands that have made my daily playlists, especially so quickly. I get the same feeling listening to Le Butcherettes’ Kiss & Kill and Sin Sin Sin records as I did when I first discovered Hole’s Pretty On The Inside and Live Through This as a 15-year-old. Le Butcherettes have become a really important, special band to me in the same way Hole (the real Hole with the Love/Erlandson combo) is. All the things that I love about Hole frontwoman Courtney Love – the intelligence, the love of literature and culture, the introspection and commentary of the female experience in the world, the strength, heartfelt soulful lyrics, musicianship, powerful live shows – I find again in Le Butcherettes’ frontwoman Teri Gender Bender. Le Butcherettes are a band that matter.
TERI GENDER BENDER: I’m nervous because my answers always suck!
No, they don’t! Every interview I’ve ever read with you is so incredibly thoughtful. You answer every question with such grace and no matter what is asked you always answer it really considerately.
TGB: That’s probably because the writer made it sound thoughtful.No way. You’re selling yourself short lady.
TGB: Thank you, you are very kind [laughs].I wanted to start by asking, what does music mean to you?
TGB: Honestly, it means [pauses] aw fuck, it just means so much to me. All these words want to come out but my throat stops them—the act of living and doing, that’s what music means to me. Being able to express oneself, even when you’re not playing it, the act of listening to it makes me feel so alive. It makes me feel like I can do anything, that I can conquer any man or any animal – that I could just go up to any bear and just hug him. Maybe that might not be the case but to me, music is just a big part of my life. Thanks to music, it prevented me from being depressed, or when I was depressed music helps lift my spirits up. I guess it has something to do with the vibes, the vibration, maybe some kind of molecules; I’ll go along with it. Its medicine, music is medicine.
2. Le Butcherettes:
Sargent House’s spaz-blast rock outfit Le Butcherettes have had us by the musical throat for over a year, and we’re chomping at the bit to see them in the blazing desert. Led by fireball vocalist/guitarist/pianist Teri Gender Bender, Le Butcherettes’ songs &…
Since their debut album Sin Sin Sin came out this year, L.A./Guadalajara garage rock band Le Butcherettes have been carving a niche for themselves on stages north and south of the border. Line-ups shift with this band but tempestuous frontwoman Teri Gender Bender (AKA Teresa…
For Those Who Haven’t See It Yet
Here It Is: Henry Don’t Got Love Video.
Enjoy It!
