personal best liner notes

Team Dresch was an emo-core band of the mid-Nineties which achieved near-legendary status as the first lesbian "queercore" band to make a fairly big name for itself, with a plethora of recordings, a devoted legion of young fans, and a fair share of credit for the momentum of the "post-riotgrrl" movement. Though the short-lived Sister George was the first band actually termed "queercore", when lesbian punk rock or queercore in general is referenced, it's generally Team Dresch that comes in for the most references, and the queer kids who rock out to the Butchies, Tribe 8, and LeTigre today were cranking Team Dresch yesterday. The band's official break-up occurred in 1998 or so, following the de facto breakup of 1997, but it lives on as the next generation of young queercore bands will often cite it as a seminal influence.

Team Dresch (l to r): Melissa York, Jody Bleyle, Donna Dresch, Kaia Wilson

Team Dresch radiated youthful utopian passion raging against social injustice. And they backed it up with something more sophisticated than run-of-the-mill punk and more listener-friendly than the grating, distorted sound of many of their contemporaries: songs that fused churning guitars and furious drum lines with rich, emotionally compelling melodies, and sophisticated but anthemic lyrics. Despite the volume and energy of the instrumental backing, the powerful vocals came across clearly: Kaia "Kangaroo" Wilson rocketing from a piecingly sweet croon to a roar of raging angst without a moment's pause, and Jody "Coyote" Bleyle's throaty voice, clear and strong as a bell, full of desperately honest, passionate energy.

Team Dresch's albums sport a lot of variety in the topics and ambiences of the songs, running the range from defiantly queer punk anthems against hate and injustice, to more personal tracks dealing with love and other relationships; from full-throttle rockers to semi-ballads sung with a fierce sort of tenderness. The attitude often altered within a song itself, as they charged forward furiously, only to suddenly ease smoothly into a patch of comparative tranquillity.

Team Dresch had impeccable indie cred, releasing its recordings first through the ubiquitous punk label Kill Rock Stars, then later through two indie labels started by a couple of the band members themselves, Donna Dresch's Chainsaw Records and Jody Bleyle's occasionally defunct but perennially resurrected Candy-Ass Records. Even though these labels were a labor of love and just scraped by financially, they've actually gone on to a fair bit of success, releasing fabulous recordings by a lot of the most talented lesbian rockers playing today. A bunch of the very best-known queercore groups around got their start with Chainsaw, including infamous outer space queer aliens, The Need, the short-lived but much loved Longstocking, the vitrolic Excuse 17, and the (now in the big-time!) Sleater-Kinney. One of Candy-Ass's biggest claims to fame was releasing the famous Free to Fight self-defense compilation (empowering feminist and lesbian rock by various artists + a big booklet on women's self defense techniques).

Team Dresch has had too many incarnations to keep track of, but the core of the group was Donna "Shake the Guitar" Dresch (bass, guitar), Jody "Coyote" Bleyle (guitar, vocals), and Kaia "Kangaroo" Wilson (guitar, vocals). Other members of the Team at various times were: Marci Martinez (drums, Personal Best), Melissa York (drums, Captain My Captain) and Amanda Kelley aka "Jack" (guitar). Donna was the Captain, but never sang. Jody and Kaia were dueling vocals, or traded off. They posessed styles very distinct from one another. Jody's was a deeper throaty voice, projecting fierce honesty and reckless passion. Kaia's was a more enigmatic voice, somewhat softer & higher, but the emotion of her singing would shift around much more within a song. She was the one who tended to get the lion's (kangaroo's?) share of the attention, the group's hunka-hunka burnin' punk. There was this Kaia Krush Anonymous group...

Our fearless heroes were battle-scarred vets even before the birth of the Team. Donna particularly was all over the place: Dangermouse, Lois, Rastro!, Nisqually Delta Podunk Nightmare, Fifth Column, Screaming Trees and Dinosaur Jr. Kaia was in Adickdid. While she was in Team Dresch, Jody was also in the awesome, the incredible... the deceased... Hazel, where she played drums while singing, dueling vocals with Pete Krebs. And Melissa York (who came along later, joining the band for their second full-length) was in Vitapup.

(l to r): Melissa, Kaia, Donna, and Jody

The band got together in December of '93, and played their first show on January 1st, so the story goes. They released a number of 7-inch vinyls, then the immortal Personal Best in 1994 and the political, aggro, even better Captain My Captain in 1995. Then followed just one more 7-incher, plus a huge number of appearances on V/A comps.

The title, not to mention, the cover, of Personal Best is a wink-wink, nudge-nudge to the groundbreaking movie of the same name. It is the more personal (some say, the more romantic..) album of the two Team Dresch full-length recordings. Captain My Captain, being a sophomore effort, is a more mature album and focuses much more heavily on the political. It's also longer by quite a bit and has one more song than Personal Best. Only three or four of its songs are particularly personal; the others are catchy and sharp mini-manifestos. And it features a guest appearance by Phranc! One of the album's best tracks, in fact, is called "Uncle Phranc", a hard but melodic rocker about rejection by the families of young queer people, and finding one's own family and mentors in the gay community. But despite all the differences of the two recordings, the basic attitude, emocore melody, and passion of Team Dresch is easily recognizable in both.

As of the early 2000's, Donna was still running Chainsaw, whose online discussion forum, incidentally, spawned the famous Strap-On.org online community. Jody's other big band, Hazel, split up around the same time Team Dresch did, with one reunion tour a few years later. A few years afterwards, she was in the Infinite X's, which released one self-titled album, with a review available at www.sincerebrutality.com. Kaia put out two solo albums, Kaia and Lady Man, and she and Melissa are now going strong (with Alison Martlew on bass) as the very successful Butchies. Kaia and her partner, Tammy Rae Carter, run a new record/video label, Mr. Lady, which released The Butchies' first album, Are We Not Femme. It also released Kaia's second solo album, Lady Man, the following two Butchies albums, and many other excellent offerings. Finally, the Butchies have graduated to a very nice official webpage of their own, located for your viewing pleasure at thebutchies.com.

As an update, Kaia, The Butchies, and Mr. Lady records have ended up embroiled in a titanic feud over the admission policies at the massive bio-women-only Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. From its roots as a lesbian-separatist women's music and culture fest birthed in the Seventies or so in the wild and wooly woods of Michigan, it's retained a bio-women-only admissions policy that's felt by many to be unfairly exclusionary towards MtF transgendered individuals. Ironically, although The Butchies, Tribe 8, Bitch and Animal, and other bands performing at the festival have been boycotted for this by transgender activists, each of these band actually has one or more members who identify as transgendered themselves. However, as they are FtM transgendered, they do not run afoul of the current Festival policy, which just opens up another can of worms.

Full discography (info from Jessika Ringard's site):

Links: One page any fan of Team Dresch is going to want to check out: Jessika Ringard's Completely Unofficial Team Dresch Page. Go check it out, she's nice. And her site has loads of pictures, articles, news, etc. In fact, most of the Team Dresch photos here from her collection (with her permission). Thanks, Jessika! I also couldn't have gotten this page together without all the articles and info I found on her site. Donna Dresch's famous Chainsaw Records: your 1-stop mail-order center for the very best in queercore dyke punk rock. The catalog is huge. Plus she's sweet and will give you goodies with your order if you're nice. Mr. Lady, the record/video label that Kaia and Tammy Rae Carter began with 50 bucks and a credit card. The Butchies! All the latest on everone's favorite butchie heartthrobs at a nicely designed website. Candy-Ass Records has some very cool stuff when it's active, and whenever it goes dormant it's always eventually being resurrected. Also it's a quick and easy way of keeping tabs on Jody Bleyle's new projects. Finally, there's an interview of Marci Martinez, Team Dresch's original "fucking drum machine!" on Personal Best, and later the pulsing tempo behind The Vegas Beat. Nice bio tidbits, a couple of photos, etc.

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