Screaming Females
New Jersey power trio Screaming Females has made it 18 years now without a single hiatus or lineup change. Singer-guitarist Marissa Paternoster credits the group’s longevity to the same punk-rock spirit that binds together the disparate outsider music scenes she’s encountered alongside drummer Jarrett Dougherty and bassist Mike Abbate.
“DIY’s been really good to us,” Paternoster says. “We really value cultivating community and bringing people together through music and making sure it’s inclusive and accessible. Music is a wonderful thing, and it can really take you all around the world if you’re lucky. We’ve managed to last this long because of DIY, so we’re really grateful to have found it and allowed it to be part of our lives.”
As for Nashville memories, Paternoster recalls the connections that landed the group a split 7-inch in 2009 with local indie legends JEFF the Brotherhood (on the latter’s Infinity Cat Recordings imprint). She also has memories that might be a little less significant in the grand scheme of things, but are nonetheless indelible — like multiple shows at The End, where the band’s name is spelled incorrectly on the wall inside: “Screaming Feamales.”
“We haven’t been [to Nashville] recently, I feel like, but when we first started touring nationally, we were really good friends with Daniel Pujol and JEFF the Brotherhood,” Paternoster says of Music City. “We did a lot of traveling and tours with those two respective groups and played at their houses.”
Screaming Females return to town on Halloween night for a show at Drkmttr. The much-loved all-ages venue is the type of performance space that accommodates fans who weren’t alive yet when the group debuted in 2005.
“We always try to prioritize playing all-ages shows whenever possible,” says Paternoster. “But unfortunately, as time goes on and Live Nation buys up more and more venues, it’s harder and harder to find viable all-ages spaces. So I’m sure places like Drkmttr are important to the Nashville community.”
Screaming Females
Despite getting their flowers over the years as guests on Last Call With Carson Daly, collaborators with Garbage and recording clients of Steve Albini, Screaming Females remain fiercely independent. The group’s hard work and the consistent efforts of label home and fellow New Jersey punk institution Don Giovanni Records made staying small in a grandiose way possible — as did the ever-changing state of the various scenes in the Screamales’ touring network.
“When you get older, it’s really easy to get sour about what the kids are doing, and I’ve always made a point as I grow older to know that the kids are always going to be OK, and they’re going to make new, cool stuff,” Paternoster says. “And they’re always going to create spaces for each other so that they can be together, because that’s what we did. It really seemed like it was against all odds, even back when we were young. They’ll always figure it out. DIY will always prevail.”
Though critical acclaim for the band’s February release Desire Pathway and their prior seven albums rightly played up Paternoster as a dynamic, compelling vocal powerhouse with memorable guitar riffs for days, the band’s always been a sum of its parts. Thus, they’ve cheated the odds and stayed together this long without taking a break, trying to expand to a four-piece or relying on the occasional fill-in member.
“We all have our unique styles of playing, and those have always been important to what makes the band sound the way it sounds. We write very democratically. Everybody contributes their thoughts and ideas to songs. So I think if it was a different combination of three people, it’d sound different. And therefore, it wouldn’t be the same project. It’d be something else.”
