Screaming Females Break Free From the Basement -- Top 100 Acts at SXSW 2011

It wasn't all that long ago that world of green rooms and hospitality riders was foregin territory to punk trio Screaming Females. A product of New Brunswick, N.J.'s basement scene, the band -- frontwoman Marissa Paternoster, drummer Jarrett Dougherty and a bass player dubbed King Mike -- knew only of low-slung ceilings and bedrooms which doubled as "backstage." The one-two punch of 2009's 'Power Move' and the subsequent 'Castle Talk' record, changed all that. Suddenly, Screaming Females saw their name on marquees at actual clubs instead of being splashed across xeroxed handbills.

In honour of the band's upcoming SXSW performance, Spinner spoke to Dougherty about those early days in New Brunswick, the band's rather intriguing name and how their fans won't let them retire any of their old songs.

Download Screaming Females' 'Wild' (MP3) off 'Castle Talk' Free



Is there a song off the latest album that people always request at your shows?

The obvious answer would be the song that we chose for the first single because that's been out there for the longest, 'I Don't Mind It.' And it's kind of an easy pick for the single -- it's a quick pop song and kind of encompasses a lot of different things we do into one song.

The cool thing about the record is that people who are legitimate fans of ours will have very different opinions on what their favourite song is. There's always a lot of bands that will have their one kind of hit song, and everyone is just waiting their entire set for that one song. But for us, there will be songs that we think are our back burner catalogue -- we don't necessarily want to leave them behind but we don't think about them too much anymore -- and we'll show up at a show, and some kid from Iowa is yelling out for a song that we haven't played in a really long time and didn't think anyone cared about.

You guys got your start playing underground house shows. What's the craziest thing that happened at one of those gigs?

I guess it's not that crazy, but a good friend of mine had had his last show not that long before, and it was a band I loved, one of my favourite bands. At the show -- I don't know where I got the inspiration, and it's not that weird -- but I started throwing beer cans at them. It got way past the point of being funny, but I just kept it up the whole set, and then it became like this war with the crowd, with hundreds of beer cans being launched back and forth.

So, when we played one of our first shows, they showed up and just started launching beer cans. It was kind of funny because I guess everybody at the show didn't really understand why these two or three people were throwing a bunch of cans.

What's the music scene like in your hometown?

We're from somewhere else in New Jersey, but the town that we formed in is New Brunswick, N.J., and it's a really small college town that doesn't seem like it has much going on at all. There's only one venue and it's 21-and-up so not a lot of people are going there unless it's the college crowd. But the town is really great for underground music, like there's this whole scene, just a couple hundred kids that will come out almost every night of the week to see bands they've never heard of just because someone booked a show.

Do you ever regret picking such an eye-catching band name?

The only reason why we might regret it is people take it literally, which is something we didn't even consider. When our band started, Marisa hadn't started screaming, there was no screaming involved. And the females stuff, Mike and I aren't females. It was just supposed to be an interesting image that could be taken a bunch of different ways, and interpreted as a powerful image, hopefully. But most people seem to just take it literally.

Catch Screaming Females' SXSW Set on Friday, March 18 at Billboard Bungalow @ Buffalo Billiards (201 E 6th St.) 10:15PM.

Watch Screaming Females Video for 'I Don't Mind It'
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