Karly Hartzman’s Southern Punks and Porcelain Dolls

Bitch Cabal, the co-headlining tour featuring Wednesday and Mannequin Pussy that hits Nashville with a Nov. 2 appearance at The Truth, made it out of the group chat.

“We started a group chat with both bands, and I said, ‘What should we call this tour?’ and our drummer Alan said ‘Bitch Cabal,’” Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman tells the Scene. “We were like: ‘You know what? It’s got a nice ring to it. Fuck it.’”

Wednesday’s year is winding down after an extensive tour run for Bleeds, the 2025 album and sixth studio release from the wicked Asheville noise-rock band. They’ve been taking some much-needed rest — Hartzman caught up with the Scene by phone, during what she described as “the first little more than two weeks I’ve been off this whole year.” But after Philly punks Mannequin Pussy told her and her band they’d never had a truly successful Southern tour, the North Carolina natives decided to come back out and show them how it was done.

“We always do well here,” Hartzman says. “The songs are about the South.”

She thinks bands tend to avoid the region for a lot of reasons. “I think punk bands are afraid to come down here. ... People that live in the North, commenting on these show announcements, were like, ‘Oh, I’d love to go there, but I don’t feel safe traveling there.’”

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But much of it, she says, boils down to assumptions. “The people that are leftists here — which there are many, because the South is the most racially diverse place in our country — are extra left because they have to fight so fucking hard to oppose the conservatives here,” she says. “The people that are punks here are, like, mega punks, because they stay and fight. ... [Touring bands] consider everywhere to be a C or D market, when really there’s so many schools and young people.”

She describes this tour as a kind of “passing the torch” moment as Wednesday wraps up the Bleeds album cycle. The two bands have long traded said torch back and forth. Hartzman’s favorite song on I Got Heaven, Mannequin Pussy’s 2024 album and most recent release, is “Aching.” As she’s told their frontwoman Marisa Dabice, it helped her find a breakthrough for “Wasp” — a pummeling one-minute wall of noise that appears on Bleeds. Wednesday drawing inspiration from Mannequin Pussy dates back years.

“The first tour I ever went on was right after Romantic came out,” Hartzman recalls, referring to Mannequin Pussy’s second album. “I remember walking through some snow in a Michigan town and being like, ‘My life is changed.’”

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At The Truth, Truth Club — Raleigh indie rockers who Hartzman says should be recognized as “the most famous band of all time” — will (fittingly) be opening, but Nashville’s own Snooper is set to join for most of the tour. Hartzman is holding out for Snooper’s legendary live show to check out their music, but she’s “stoked” to see them play. Also along for the ride should be a few porcelain dolls — a set prop theme that has accompanied Wednesday throughout their Bleeds tour dates, including their June appearance at Bonnaroo. 

The dolls were originally sourced from Hartzman’s childhood collection (“I had, like, a hundred”). But the band is due for a restock, because she’s been throwing them into the crowd at the end of each set.

“I need to get my ass in gear and go to some thrift stores and get more,” she says. “I keep on throwing away our props.”

The way Wednesday performs Bleeds has changed over time. Originally, the opening riff for “Phish Pepsi” was inspired by Dolly Parton’s “Gettin’ Happy.”  As Hartzman explains, “We were like, ‘How fucked-up would it be if we did something like that?’” On tour, it transformed from a quick intro to a one-minute teaser with a keyboard change after a flash of inspiration from bassist and keyboardist Ethan Baechtold. Hartzman calls moments like this “band telepathy,” and has loved watching them strike.

With the sunsetting of the Bleeds cycle, though, comes room for something new. Hartzman has also announced a solo tour of the Southeast starting in December, where she’s promised to try out new songs at intimate venues like Chattanooga’s Songbirds and Athens, Ga.’s 40 Watt Club. “I get the itch almost every year around December to do a solo tour and try to just make it a road trip,” she says. “It’s just a really creative, free time.”

Her go-to album for long drives is The Glands’ self-titled 2000 release — “It’s the best to listen to in the car” — and she’s excited to stop between shows for “weird roadside shit” along the way.

“I love any kind of folk art,” Hartzman says. “There’s so [many] people who have made little museums or collections or statue gardens in the South. ... We found one called Hillbilly Gardens by accident once.”

There’s also no shortage of quirky stops on the road to Knoxville’s Big Ears Festival, where Wednesday will head for a set in April. It’s a drive Hartzman knows well — and another she’s excited for.

“East Tennessee is probably the most beautiful part of our country. Western North Carolina, East Tennessee. It’s my favorite.”

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