Hi. I’m 40. This is a brief comprehensive history of what led up to my starting my band Local Bylaws in 2021. If you just want to skip to the band stuff, keep scrolling down to “The Once and Future Punk.”
Baby Rebel
My childhood home in 90’s-00’s Appalachia was full of love, but the philosophy that boiled under the surface of the culture in my coal-mining town was a fear of fire and brimstone. God was a man-deity who told you The Way, and everything was either black or white, right or wrong. If you weren’t on the right path you would go to Hell. This stuff wasn’t talked about much in daily life (that was full of Gushers fruit snacks, Trapper Keepers, and Saved By the Bell), but hearing it on Sunday was enough to have you lying in bed at night, wondering if your prayer for forgiveness for merely thinking of the “A-word” had saved you from the flames this time. Ridiculous rules were scattered here and there, and questioning them was a punishable offense, which resulted in a pretty disempowering way of life, no matter who you were. (If you are convinced that you were born unworthy and must outsource your intuition, you’ll always be reaching for something.)
All adults I knew enforced The Rules, no discussion needed, “because I said so.” One’s thoughts or feelings were not given much consideration. Kids and teens especially, it was accepted, had nothing in their brains worth talking about, so it was rare to be asked. MTV was the devil. No one cared where your food came from. Sex did not exist if you didn’t mention it. The school dress code did not allow for shorts above the knee. Good grades were a must, so you could break the cycle and get a fancy college education.
As early as second grade, I escaped into daydreams of an abundant, expressive life, like a cross between Jem and the Holograms and a teen soap opera called Swann’s Crossing that my babysitter watched, with Bryan Adams as the soundtrack. I knew there was something more to the world than what I was seeing around me, and the yearning began. I instinctively felt the need for real experience, for magic. I yearned, and I expressed this yearning any way I could— through art, or just my loud mouth, especially in the more stuffy or rule-oriented situations.
I survived (perhaps even thrived?) by creating a hybrid self: my first double life. For my teachers and parents, I was a “good kid” who was kind, involved, and at the top of my class. I accompanied my choir on piano and won statewide essay competitions. But off-duty, I kissed all the boys, said things that made people gasp, and snuck and watched MTV anyway. I followed the dress code at school, but wore plastic silver pants or 30” Jncos, skater tees full of innuendo, and jewelry made from household objects like sprocket chains and soda can tabs. I couldn’t quite put a name the rage or the sadness of feeling like a fish out of water; I was happy for the most part. And, in 8th grade when I found my first punk rock CD (Life in General by MXPX) in a bin at the thrift store, I heard the sound of a familiar yearning (a sound I’d describe as a crunchy, blistering, melodic whining), but hearing this made me feel empowered. I clung to the solace of knowing my people were out there, and went further down the rabbit hole of loud, expressive music, even fronting my first ska-punk band, The Dorks, the summer I was 16.
College Rock
By the time I left my little town and went to college (on scholarship!) a few hours away, the pinnacle of existence was going to late-night concerts in Cincinnati or Louisville, where screaming, pierced youth pressed their sweaty bodies together, emoting in unison. The pit at Bogart’s was an embodied religious experience in a way that the wooden pews at church had never been. As a result, I worshipped false idols. My dorm room was plastered with pictures of badboys and snarling girls, the disciples of punk and grunge. Lyrics that spoke to my soul were scrawled across my notebooks and on my arms. My iPod provided a fitting soundtrack for any windows-down night drives in my Beetle or slog through slushy winter in my Doc Martens. I found friends that suited my tastes, and began to wear this lifestyle as an armour.
Yearning remained a prominent force in my life. I yearned for the love of certain shaggy-haired college boys, I yearned for a perfect body and a thrilling, lit-on-fire life that looked glossy like a magazine spread. I yearned for a culture where I actually belonged. I yearned to be recognized for my art, because that, I thought, would be what it felt like to be really seen and heard. Without knowing it, I yearned for a purpose. In my estimation, nothing could be better than being one of those rock stars, not giving a damn, expressing my entire id onstage while hordes of people clamored for just a glance from the force of nature that was me.
L.A. Consequential
There was a brief interlude in grad school when I fronted my second band, Fearful Endeavor in Restraint Land (haha), but that was cut short by the next episode. I finally left Kentucky and followed my call to Los Angeles. Though I had majored in theater, I was not one of these driven people who had “got bitten by the acting bug” and vowed to become the next Meryl Streep. In fact, it was not a plan I was following, so much as a feeling. I needed to fulfill that lifelong yearn that told me there were other experiences I could have that didn’t include being a nurse or a teacher with 2.5 kids and a modest 3-bedroom house in my hometown (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I just wanted to see what was possible, my head filled with sun-filled crop-top days and exciting Tom Ford cologne-smelling nights, exploring new places and people. After three cross-country days in a Corolla with my then-boyfriend (who later became my ex-husband), I was a resident of Santa Monica, a place so fulfilling to me that I made it my identity for the next 11 years.
Surfing, acting, singing, drinking, making spectacular mistakes, without fear, without guidance, without pressure to stay small, I was unreasonable and unbridled and alive, and the by-product of that? No more yearning; at least not of the same caliber. I had to take off my rock-n-roll rebel armour to immerse myself in the ocean, which quenched my fire. There was simply no outside force to struggle against, so I stopped needing punk rock as a lifeline. I practiced yoga and meditation, I rode the waves, took care of celebrities and their kids, and started to feel at home in myself…while listening to more to Grouplove and Trevor Hall than punk rock.
Surprise Twins
My new partner and I had been together four years, and were enjoying a chill beachy existence when I found out I was pregnant. 13 weeks later, it turned out to be twins, and this considerably shook up our lack of plans. We were both alternately giggin’ and acting (he an ice hockey referee who had “under five” roles on TV, and I a bartending babysitter who did commercials). But Kai decided to go back to college and become an engineer.
In 2017, we got married on St. Patty’s Day in the Beverly Hills Courthouse, and I was off to the races as a new mom of two, in a one-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. Kai slaved away over advanced calculus, while I battled postpartum anxiety and a complete loss of control over my body, my life, and my identity. Suddenly there was no time for music, hobbies, or even a thought in my brain that didn’t include how to better serve the babies or get more sleep. By the time 2020 came in and turned our world into a fear-mongering totalitarian hellscape, I was ready for a big change.
The Once and Future Punk
In search of a better life for our kids, and so Kai could finish school, we moved to an actual house(!) in suburban NorCal, and I was suddenly an uprooted mom in a small, strange land where I did not know the rules. I tried for months to make friends, to move into my new role with wisdom and grace. But this new town was lonely and unfamiliar. The kids were three and in constant need. I was lost. The yearning returned. I felt a the oppression of my youth come charging toward me like a horned herd, and once more I needed an escape hatch.
It started with the thought, “I need music back in my life,” and a posting I saw in a Bay Area musicians group, in which a guitarist was looking to start a punk band. I missed the diversity of people and places that city life had brought, and was keen to get out of here and try out San Francisco, over an hour away. When we had a full roster, the four of us met up at the bassist’s apartment “just to see.”
Kai was fully supportive of my experiment, as he had witnessed the postpartum anxiety follow me from L.A. to Davis and morph into full-blown depression. I loved my kids more than anything, but I was exhausted and felt robbed of joy, with no desire to even wake up in the mornings. I needed me back. I needed my own thing, and friends, and quiet time in the car to clear my overtaxed mind.
In an apartment in San Francisco, over an hour from where I live, we spent the February evening just suggesting and playing covers. It turned out we had largely grown up on the same bands, and there was an immediate kinship. The world was dull in 2021 and most things were still shut down. My new cohorts were all at a place in their lives where they felt similarly. Though I hadn’t listened to this type of music in years, it felt like a return to a version of me who had power. The Ginger from twenty years ago who found joy and connection in this art form was resurrected.
I had tons of fodder for songwriting. The guys sent me some ideas on guitar and drums, and I chopped and rearranged those into full songs with lyrics. We started to meet every Wednesday. I would drive out around dinner time, kissing Kai and the kids goodnight, and I wouldn’t return until after 11. Sometimes, we’d go get tacos after practice. We’d sit around a booth and laugh and people watch, feeling like an invincible gang. We called ourselves Local Bylaws, because of the union thing.
We started doing online “shows,” which, by May, became our first basement gig. By June, a few clubs had reopened, and we began to play around the city. All week, I was a harried mom in Lululemon, making mac and cheese, washing dishes, and reading Llama Llama. The moms I talked to at the park felt totally one-dimensional and content to just be in this role. I felt alien among them.
But through the week I’d steal time to write. I’d enter a flow state that lit me from within, and I’d crank out a new song to send to my new creative partners. Wednesdays, I was not the mom from the park; I had winged eyeliner. I had things to say (in conversation and song) that bridged the gap between my two identities. I had all evening to myself in the city, and three delightfully real and gritty dudes who helped me express it, while we downed IPAs and entertained neighbors and friends.
It’s going on four years of Local Bylaws, and we’ve had many setbacks, restructurings, absolutely insane surprises, and cool successes. We don’t meet every Wednesday anymore. A lot of us have moved. My twins are seven and I am integrated at last in my new community. While it’s been difficult to keep afloat at times, I’ve thought of letting the band go, but I don’t, and I’m glad, because it’s been rewarding to weather the ups and downs with my new friends. I’ve learned so much (which I’ll detail later), and I still enjoy the creation and collaboration process, the people we meet along the way, and the places we get to go. Music is back in my life for good, and I refuse to let it go ever again.
Nice, I am also an old with twin boys that refuses to quit playing music that is supposedly for the young. Sorry kids, punk rock is for the well seasoned!
Appreciate this a great deal. I'm officially old now, but punk continues to inform and infuse everything I share here. Nice to meet fellow travelers along the way....