At the age of 14, while eating amid the chaos and clatter of lunch trays and teenagers in the cafeteria of Illinois Valley High School, a song I had never heard made its indelible mark on my future.  It came across the auditorium via my classmate Chuck G's boom box.  Chuck was at the forefront of NEW in our tiny town of Cave Junction (pop 870); he and his brother had appeared sometime in middle school wearing checkerboard Vans, riding skateboards and writing the mysterious word DEVO on walls and peechees. He played trombone in band (I played flute- somehow not my instrument) and seemed to know about all the cool stuff. He was maybe from California. He had sidled up to me back in 7th grade, put his arm around my shoulder casually and said "Hey baby- go with me?"  Having none of that, I blushed deeply and promptly punched him in the gut. That was that: from then on he bothered me daily, which was easy since his last name and mine were conveniently contiguous in alphabetical seating charts.  He foamed at the mouth, made ridiculous suggestions and leaned his chair back on my desk regularly. I kind of hated him, but I was also intrigued- his dad played in a band and he knew about music I'd never heard of.
   I vaguely aspired to be a musician from the age of 5, dressing up in bellbottoms and guatemalan belts to lip synch Beatles songs with my cousins and sisters in a 'band' we called Hot & Cold.  I talked about having a band that was female(naturally!) all the time, despite disparaging comments and no real role models of such until high school. My grandparents were musicians who met in college, Grandpa Pete being employed by several Big Bands touring the country  when my dad and aunt were babies.  He later had his own radio show in Los Angeles. Grandma Martha was a singer and pianist who had put her music career aside, taking on full-time motherhood when her kids were born.
  So, on this day in 1981 or thereabout, my cousin Jennifer and I were eating our lunch (cafeteria food/ brown-bag hippy, can't recall which) and talking about how we wanted to skip class to take mushrooms and walk the serpentine hills behind the school.
Then this music drifted into our consciousness, arresting our conversation. Coming across the echoey auditorium in a wave, it washed away everything else all at once.
The guitar and drums urgently announced something important, the bass coming in and punctuating, the beats worldly and polyrhythmic.  The guitar soared, the bass throbbed, and something about the sound was circular and siren-like. The vocals, high and almost shouted, with harmonies- told a tale of loneliness and exile on an island lost at sea, "sending out an S.O.S", crescendoing triumphantly with "a hundred million bottles washed up on the shore".  We stopped talking and listened hard; we were entranced.
 I boldly walked over to Chuck (my nemesis!) and asked him who it was.  He showed me the cassette case and told me the name of the band: The Police.


Jennifer and I started talking excitedly- Wow- Yes, Yes! the music almost sounds like a siren! Who are these Police? We looked at the cassette case but couldn't really tell  who played what- their names were listed above the tops of their blonde heads on the back cover, with very little information to satisfy our desire to know who made this amazing music.  We had to get this album, and soon. We made plans to travel to the cool record store in Ashland (almost an hour drive) and find it.
  That was the moment I knew what kind of music I wanted to make, because of how that song made me feel. A moment of awakening and longing, and the pointed first step on my journey to become a rock musician. They became my favorite band, and I avidly purchased all of their albums, requesting  nothing else for christmas or my birthday(well- I also begged for a Sony Walkman). I decided to play the bass and sing, like Sting; I identified with the songwriter/frontman role and his unabashed intellectuality - he was always championing literature and using it as inspiration for his songs.  As it turned out, I learned guitar since my dad had a classical I could use until I saved up $70 to buy a little Harmony electric from a junk shop when I was 17. (My sister started playing bass later and played with me in Calamity Jane and Semisweet, but this is much later in our story.)     In 1983, we went to the see the Police at the Tacoma Dome on the Synchronicity tour. My mom took me, Megan and Jennifer and had as much fun as we did, I think. We held hands and screamed for most of it, unable to contain our joy and excitement at being in the same building as our heroes.
   The song was 'Message In a Bottle' and it always provides that immediate rush I had the first time I heard it, even when 27 years later, the opening guitar riff blasted through the sound system at the Police's reunion concert (2008) and I was compelled to run - yes, RUN back from the concession stand so I wouldn't miss a second.
  I still aspire to write a song that good.
​

 Jose Bellas interviewed me via mail for an article published in ClarinsX (Nov. 2015) on the audience response to Calamity Jane opening for Nirvana Oct. 30, 1992 at Estadio Vélez Sarsfield Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Jose Bellas is in bold print.  The fine print is what I wrote in response.

-I will like to know about your first steps as a musicians and early influences. You felt related (or an influence) to the Riot Grrrls?
   I started playing guitar in 1983 and started my first band in 1984 in Ashland, Oregon before I went to college. I moved to Olympia, Washington in 1987 to attend The Evergreen State College and started playing around town in performances with Eugene Chadbourne Orchestra and started a band called Sister Skelter in 1988.
  We played a show at my house on May 14, 1988 for my 21st birthday party with Nirvana. It was really crazy- the front window of our house was broken out by people slam dancing! Kurt sang a song with our band- a cover of “Greatest Gift” by Scratch Acid.
  
  I started Calamity Jane the following fall of 1988 when I went back to school in Olympia. I asked my friend Slim Moon(who later started the label Kill Rock Stars) if he knew any female musicians and he connected me with Lisa Koenig(drums) and Ronna Era (bass). We played a few shows under another name before Ronna decided to leave and I asked my sister Megan Hanner to play bass. We decided on the name Calamity Jane and started playing shows with bands in town and recorded a demo with Patrick Maley at YO YO Studios where I was working.
  We moved to Portland, Oregon in 1989 because we were playing many shows there and liked the audience more than the Olympia crowd. We played some shows with L7 and Babes in Toyland and I would say that their sound influenced my music as well as bands like Sonic Youth, Mudhoney, The U-men, Naked Raygun, X, and the Police. We toured the U.S. extensively in 1990 and recorded our album Martha Jane Cannary in Seattle at Reciprocal Studios in early 1991 with Brad Wood engineering.
  While we were friends with Kathleen Hanna and Kathi Wilcox who later started Bikini Kill, Calamity Jane’s sound was formed previous to the Riot Grrl movement, and we were on our own musical path. Calamity Jane toured in 1992 to support the album with a new drummer(Marci Marintez/Beesecker) and added a second guitarist(Joanna Bolme).
  We had planned an extended U.S. tour and were invited to open for Nirvana both in Portland, Oregon and in Buenos Aires, Argentina. -

Back in 1992, you were not in the trendy alternative rock circuit. How it was that you ended up playing with Nirvana on those shows?
  I knew Kurt and Kris from Olympia and had played with Nirvana in my previous band at my 21st birthday in 1988. I also was friends with Courtney Love and had been touch with her from when Calamity Jane played shows with Hole in L.A. on our first U.S. tour in 1990. Kurt wanted to have bands from his old life in Olympia play some of the big festivals and shows and he called me up and asked us to do those shows in Portland and Argentina. 

Before the show starts... had you any intuition that the crowd could be so agressive?
  Well, we had encountered plenty of aggressive crowds but on a much smaller scale. When we played in the states and the crowds were rough, we were able to ask the crowd to calm down or we would stop playing until the slam dancing big guys moved to the back and let the women up front. When we were about to go on stage in Buenos Aires, we witnessed the aggressive rowdy crowd and were definitely nervous about going on. We had a language barrier and we were playing a much bigger venue than we had ever played before. We were definitely out of our element and offended by being pelted with coins, dirt, spit and detritus as well as being flipped off and shown penises from the audience members.

-How do you remember that night- is it a recurring image or a blur?
  It is a recurrent blurry image of bright lights, yelling, and chaos. We were so
unprepared for the way we were treated both by much of the audience and later our assistant/handler who was very unsupportive and told me that I had acted “ugly to the audience” in response to what happened that night. It was culture shock magnified 100 times. I wish we could get a hold of footage of our set and see how it was from the audience’s perspective, but we were not allowed to have anyone film the show and were told we would be able to have footage from one of the videographers later. That never materialised.

- Did you feel that you were attacked by a gender issue? Just for the fact that you were female? -
  There were men yelling “Putas!”and showing us their genitals, so it did feel gender based. On the other hand, we were not a well-known band and everyone had been waiting for Nirvana to come on for some time, so there was definitely impatience and pent-up energy there too.

- Kurt came after his show? He said something at the time? -
  He apologized for the crowd’s behavior, and said he had considered refusing to play, but was concerned that breaking his contract would be bad for his bandmates and crew. Courtney came up backstage when we went off the first time and told me to “Go back out there, that’s punk rock! They love you!” and encouraged us to keep playing, which we did for a bit before we smashed our guitars and left for good.

​-How do you reacted when saw those liner notes about the incidents, in the booklet of Nirvana's Incesticide, just three months after the show?
   I was grateful for the incident being acknowledged, as it was the last show Calamity Jane played together for another eighteen years.

-Something that very few people know is that this was your last show. You took the decision exclusively for what happened that night?
  It was our last show, due to a variety of circumstances. That show had a huge impact on our self-esteem. Combined with the fact that we returned to the U.S. with broken guitars, a broken down tour van, and couldn’t get paid for the Argentina show for another 3 months due to a merger of the management company that handled the show.
  We were basically without money to continue our tour and were not getting along with each other; we had broken spirits and decided to return home without finishing our tour. When we were back in Oregon, we decided to break up. There were hurt feelings and a degree of animosity for years. 

-How was you decide reunite in 2010? What can you tell me about that reunion?
  We had gradually become friendly again over the years, and had all been playing music
in various bands since Calamity Jane ended. We had been approached a few times to play
shows or festivals, but were not ready. Then in 2010, we decided it was time; Megan and
I really wanted our kids to be able to see us play. We started practicing and booked a
couple of shows in Portland. Unfortunately, Megan was unable to keep practicing with us
so Joanna learned the bass parts and we played the shows as a 3-piece.

Post Script: In 2016, the band played an all-ages reunion show in Portland, Oregon as a 4-piece with Megan Hanner on bass, Gilly Ann Hanner on guitar/vocals, Joanna Bolme on guitar, and Marceo Martinez on drums. All of our children were able to witness their moms onstage rocking the punk!
The show was to promote/benefit the making of the film  'No On 9 Documentary'. 

All you beautiful girls 
Lyrically young
Long hair shining in the wind
Short shorts baring those
Thighs 
blowing minds 
in the lateday sun
Helping the children wash the sand from their hands and feet 

I have never been you
Blinded by the setting sun
Hair cut boyishly short 
and thighs sheathed unassailable 
in jeans
But I can admire you 
along with the rest of the world 
As I wash my daughter’s feet from the very same fountain 

July 18, 2018

When she doesn't have a place
to live her inner life
she will carve a cave in her body
to live it in
and
chew off a limb
to escape the trap of the quotidian
the mundane

She absolutely exists 
inside her own head
And on a page
Onstage
Sweating inside her skin to speak the truth she creates
So that someone will hear
a murmur
A lover talking in their sleep telling you what you 
really wanna hear all night
And forgetting as soon as they wake

And the waiting the waiting
Always enduring the lines, the minutes, the days
the longer it takes
desperate details to impart

The importance of embellishments
memories of the night
blurred into brilliance
burn so bright

​May 30, 2018