ABOVE: Photo by Tommy Calderon // http://www.tcalderonphoto.com
By Erasmus Baxter
Halfway through their set, after passing around a can of Rainer on the living room stage of a Thursday night house show, Babe Waves acknowledged something important.
“Every band that played tonight has at least one queer or trans person in it,” bassist Dylan Kloch announced.
The audience cheered and someone shouted: “I love being queer!”
Guitarist Amanda Hodgins encouraged women, queer people and anyone else underrepresented in the music scene to start a band.
“Pick up a guitar,” Hodgins said. “You owe it to the world”
This is advice that Hodgins has lived personally. In a 2015 profile on the band in “What’s Up! Magazine,” she recalled being discouraged from playing music, and growing tired of being seen as an accessory when she was involved in music.
“When I finally bought an electric guitar, I knew I could fucking do this,” she told the magazine.
The band was originally called Fallopia, and they released their first demo track in April 2015. In May 2016, they changed their name to Babe Waves. In their current lineup, Bryan Hunter plays drums, Kloch plays bass and Hodgins plays guitar. Kloch and Hodgins both do vocals.
They released their first album “Bleed on Everything” in September 2015. With songs like “Never My Fault” about sexual harassment, and the self-explanatory “White People Cut Your Dreads” they delivered straight-forward feminist lyrics backed by fast-paced instrumentation in true Riot Grrrl fashion. They directly acknowledged this influence by finishing the album with a cover of “Rebel Girl” by Riot Grrrl progenitor Bikini Kill.
You can also hear the similarities to earlier punk predecessors like the Dead Kennedys in the vocals that are alternatively melodic and blasting accompanied with jamming guitar riffs. In true punk fashion, no song even reaches the 3-minute mark and the whole 9-track album clocks in at around 15 minutes.
Their latest release, “Just Regular Girls EP,” came out in February 2016 and features a wider stylistic range and an increased vocal presence by Kloch, who brings a rougher vocal styling to the EP.
In “Kiss-6-6” Kloch and Hodgins combine their styles to great effect as Hodgins sets her catchy hook against Kloch’s roaring vocals.
Despite these changes to their style, the political emphasis remains strong, with Hodgin’s singing on “Backstreet Butchers,” a song about back-alley abortions: “When you politicize my body/Legislate my womb …The blood runs in our sewers/Seeps in through our pipes.”
Babe Waves doesn’t just sing their politics. In September, they played a benefit show for Planned Parenthood in Bellingham. At a recent show, they encouraged queer folks interested in starting bands to reach out to them.
“We have a real support network,” said Hodgins.
Helping create a change in scene isn’t all Babe Waves has time for. At their show the week before Halloween they debuted a new song for the audience, and in a Facebook post they promised to share new material soon. Babe Waves are going to keep on rolling and the tide will follow.
Babe Wave’s music can be found on their BandCamp at babewaves.bandcamp.com . To find their live shows, follow them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/babewaves/.