Thelma and the Sleaze Leads the Charge at Bitchfest 5

For five years now, the annual Bitchfest has counterpointed the pervasive “Women Who Rock" theme nights at local venues with an empowering and celebratory mini-festival championing “true road-dogging, hard-rocking, and good-timing women” of Nashville’s rock scene. The Spin trekked down Gallatin Pike Saturday night to divey makeshift venue Turn One — giving us a nice respite from the ever-changing faces of East Nashville’s near-constant round of revamped and rebooted haunts. We walked into a roomful of folksy regulars hooting and hollering at mismatched tables in mismatched chairs scattered over old carpeting, sipping cheap beer (which would have just been regular beer just about anywhere else). In what appeared to be a storage room that hosted the “stage," Bitchfest had set up a table offering free hot dogs and sweet corn, a keg behind the bar and locals like Savoy Motel’s Jessica McFarland spinning records. Though they were promised free entry, ladies riding motorcycles were in short supply, but a Wendy O. Williams female impersonator was in full effect as the show's emcee.

We couldn’t help but groan a bit under our breath (perhaps unfairly) when singer-songwriter Kyle Numann took the stage with just a drummer in tow. We had no previous experience with Numann, but the past dozen or so folk-punk duos we’d seen had definitely soured us. Nevertheless, Numann’s folky, sentimental croon went down easy and eased our minds soon enough, but it was drummer Amoretta Taylor’s fluid, intuitive percussion that really sold this routine. Using a variety of sticks, mallets, bongos and shakers to be as quiet or loud as needed, Taylor ebbed, flowed and cascaded with Numann’s occasionally noisy interludes and punched up his woeful delivery with an invigorating backbeat.

Next up, the overhead light attached to the ceiling fan was cut off, leaving fledgling punk trio Daddy Issues to wail about in the darkness. Fueled by the same raw potential and minimalist ingenuity we love in early K Records and Bikini Kill recordings, the band's roughly hewn chops lend an endearing sense of immediacy to scrappy grunge-pop tunes that waver from primal, angsty burners to melodic drones stacked with sweet hooks and sour notes.

Local garage-punkers Tennessee Scum have been hovering near The Spin’s radar for a few years now and now fate had finally pulled us into the same room. A lesson in efficiency on all fronts, the band is a lean trio boasting one guitar, drums and singer Christmas Scum, who together ripped through about a dozen or so songs in a roughly 15-minute whirlwind of snotty, dirty South hardcore. It’s a sound we’d sooner expect to dig up in the outer reaches of Memphis, but The Spin can rest easy knowing it’s lurking in our own backyard. 

Next up, Mouth Reader delivered an equally raucous but considerably more psychedelic set of sludge rock. It’s the first time The Spin’s caught MR since it added bassist Olivia Throckmorton to the mix; she added some welcome low-end to the band’s blown-out, fuzz-mangled mix of surf, blues and face-melting punk riffs. Also worth noting was the surprisingly disaster-free guitar solo that singer Kyle Frary played from atop one incredibly shaky table.

For the main event, Bitchfest organizers Thelma and the Sleaze closed out the show. With drummer Chase Noelle front and center this time, singer-guitarist Lauren Gilbert howled and shredded from the back of the makeshift stage. Though, with their energetic concoction of power pop, bluesy glam and stoner rock, a trio of A-plus performers like Thelma and the Sleaze can easily rock rooms the size of Exit/In, they're in their element at a tiny anti-venue like Turn One. This is a band who likes to look their audience right in the eye from mere inches away.

According to a post later on the Bitchfest Facebook page, the event raised $200 for Planned Parenthood and another $100 to charities devoted to helping women in developing countries, proving it was not only a triumph for local rock 'n' roll, but a ripple that was felt around the world.