Lita Ford and Joan Jett with the Runaways are the forerunners to the band we’re about to hear from. So, get your glitter punk on!
Sydney Dolezal (vocals), Alex Snowden (guitar), Nicole Rich (bass), and Meghan Herring (drummer) are making a lot of buzz and a fair amount of mess with their glitter punk style of self made music. Doll Skin is the next big band that still can’t stay in the bar they just played yet.
The girls talked to National Rock Review about their producer and mentor, David Ellefson, about their reissued enchanced Ep, In Your Face (Again), and about why toll road booths in Texas aren’t to be trusted. So, get your boots on, grab something black and studded to wear, and hold on. You’ll regain faith in the next wave of chick rockers.
And like always, head over to Facebook and oy! your way to hitting ‘Like’ or get sedated as you hit 144 characters to us on Twitter. We’d like to hear what’s on your mind about the band, the interview, or the tour coming up.
NRR: Thanks for taking some time out to answer some questions for National Rock Review. What’s been going on with the band, Doll Skin, so far in early 2016 besides showing me love on social media posts, (laughing)?
Meghan Herring: We’ve been touring extensively in the Midwest for the month of March, and then we hop onto OTEP in the beginning of March! It’s our first national tour, we’re getting into the swing of things and learning all about life on the road!
Nicole Rich: We’ve also been working on a re-release of our EP In Your Face, called In Your Face (Again), being released on Apr 15, 2016! Just today the announcement came out for preorders, and we’re doing vinyls for the first time ever which is really cool!
Alex Snowden: We’re basically just continuing writing on the road!
NRR: Have you guys heard one of your songs on the radio unexpectedly yet and if so, what was the feeling like hearing yourselves come out of the speaker?
Meghan Herring: We’ve unexpectedly heard that its playing somewhere but we haven’t heard ourselves on a local radio yet! We’ve had family call us up and tell us they’ve heard us playing! It’s a really cool thing to know that we’re being played in other states and random people are hearing us.
NRR: What’s been the hardest thing to adjust to playing shows away from home so far? Does it interfere with school for those still in or us everyone already done with high school now?
Nicole Rich: We’ve all actually just recently made the transition to online school! I’m graduating this year, Sydney took her GED and passed. She’s only a sophomore in high school, (laughing). Alex is in her junior year of high school, and Meghan is in her freshman year of college. For me, it hasn’t been too bad because I only need one more credit. I love being away from home so I’m really enjoying being on the road.
Alex Snowden: Personally, it’s been really hard for me to do school. We have to go in person to take our ï¬nals so it’s been weird to ï¬gure that all out with touring. I don’t sleep at all. I love being on the road though and seeing new places.
Meghan Herring: I’ve had to deal a lot with anxiety from being away from home for so long, but it’s been going really well and I’m started to get used to life on the road.
NRR: You have gotten a pretty big number of eyes on you since the ï¬rst video for “Family Of Strangers” came out. What was it like to make the video, why that song ï¬rst, and does 40k+ views mean anything to the band?
Alex Snowden: It was a lot of fun but at the end of the ï¬lming it made us hate the song. We had to play to it one million times.
Nicole Rich: We chose that song ï¬rst because it was actually the ï¬rst song we ever wrote! Meghan wrote the song about what it’s like to come together with a bunch of people at a concert and it’s been pretty symbolic to our fans so it was a natural choice for our ï¬rst music video.
Sydney Dolezal: There’s 40 thousand people that know about us, (laughing)?
NRR: Give me the one guilty pleasure someone listens to when going from one city to another while out on tour that might surprise us?
Nicole Rich: Nicki Minaj, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Death Grips.
Alex Snowden: Cosmic jazz.
Meghan Herring: Jonas Brothers.
Sydney Dolezal: Really stupid emo music.
NRR: Did you know who David Ellefson was when you met him for the ï¬rst time? What was he like being on the other side of the glass for your album work?
Meghan Herring: Of course we knew who he was! He’s been really awesome to work with.
Nicole Rich: He’s been a great mentor for us and has helped us so much with business and music related things. We always say he made all the mistakes for us already so we don’t have to, he really knows the music industry inside and out.
NRR: Being in a band is like being a pro athlete, you need a certain amount of conï¬dence in your sound or ability. What would be one or two things that you’re really proud of in how your vibe comes across?
Alex Snowden: We’re really conï¬dent that our sound is unique and diverse, our musical diversity deï¬nitely comes out on stage. I think we’re all pretty proud of our stage performance and sound. We always get complimented on our energy which is really cool that people pick up on it.
NRR: I know you mentioned it a bit ago, but why re-release your debut EP so soon after its initial drop?
Nicole Rich: We had a lot more material we wanted to get out there soon after the release and our sound has honestly already started to change. But it was too soon for a new album, so we came up with the idea of a little “tie-over album†almost.
NRR: Have you had a moment in the your career, with the band, that you can’t help but still feel a tad bit embarrassed about, makes you laugh about despite yourself, or just still makes you shake your head in disbelief? A Spinal Tap(or surreal/goofy) moment if you will, that you’d be willing to share with me?
Sydney Dolezal: We have lots of internal inside joke kinda stuff… nothing that’s been too noticeable to anyone else though!
Meghan Herring: Actually wait, we just had one yesterday. We were driving in our RV on a toll highway in Texas and got stuck in the toll booth! We were in between two huge cement pillars and ended up calling the police to get us out. We were in there for over an hour and traffic stopped to get us out of it… pretty embarrassing.
NRR: You have a pretty hefty tour you’re about to go out on with some big names like Otep and Lacey Sturm. Are you nervous at all or do you have everything under control?
Alex Snowden: I don’t think any of us are really nervous, more just excited about whats coming up! We’ve played with big names before, but never on tour so we’re not sure what to expect but we’re looking forward to it.
NRR: Okay, tell me about glitter punk. What is it exactly and how does one know it when it is listened to?
Nicole Rich: We came up with the name because we feel like we don’t ï¬t into anything else! We don’t sound punk, we don’t sound metal, and we don’t sound like pop, but we take influences from all of them. We feel we encompass the punk attitude, the technicality of metal, and the catchiness of pop. Glitter punk sums all of that up to be honest. We didn’t really realize it would start to become something we’re known as! It’d be really cool if other bands started classifying themselves as glitter punk too, (laughing).
Meghan Herring: Our guitarist, Alex, hates the name kind of because she feels we aren’t punk at all. Which we aren’t, but we use the name to create our own sound and genre, not to classify us as classic punk. It’s our own brand of punk, without being punk at all.
NRR: When you guys ï¬rst started playing together, you were pretty young. In the three or so years of playing music as a group, has much changed in the band or evolved, you could say, in how you do things?
Alex Snowden: We’ve come a long way with professionalism. From everything from practice to recording, to setting up and tearing down gear, we’ve learned a lot. We no longer feel like just a teen band doing this for fun, we’re being taken seriously and we’ve stepped up to the plate in a lot of ways.
NRR: When you are out on the road, have you picked up any good habits to incorporate in your own routine from David?
Alex Snowden: Stay positive and give everything a chance. We’re learning a lot about ourselves and he’s been an amazing mentor through all these foreign experiences.
NRR: When you’ve played venues that were bars, we’re you ever told you had to wait outside or in the kitchen until your set time and if so, what do you do before/after you play since you can’t get the full experience of the club just yet?
Nicole Rich: We get kicked out of bars all the time! Usually we have to wait around in the parking lot until our set, and immediately leave the venue after we’ve played. There’s even been venues that will only allow one of us back in to hang out by the merch table to meet people. We know the venues can’t do anything about it, but it happens all the time and kind of feels insulting, (laughing). We try to hard to be treated just as any adult band would, so it’s hard when you get treated like kids over stuff you can’t control.
Doll Skin
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Ellefson Music Production Label Group
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