Interview with Eva Genie, Singer of GATHER

Hello Eva Genie! So, is that your real name? 

Yep! Genie is a slightly different version of my middle name, but growing up, people in my family would call me that.

Most people know you as a musician. What bands have you been in?

I was in a few bands in junior high and high school, but those don’t count because I’m too embarrassed to even listen to them haha. But in 2004, we started Gather which broke up in 2007. Then I played guitar in a Bikini Kill cover band called Pussywhipped that was only around for about a year, maybe from 2008-2009 or so. The most recent was Rats in the Wall, which was around for 6 years before I quit just this year, so 2012-2018. I’m currently doing a new band with some old friends and family, but we haven’t even come up with a name yet!

That being such a variety of acts, which was your favorite? And of course...why?

I guess Gather will always be my favorite because we just had so much fun, and met so many of our best friends while in that band. There was a great sense of community in the vegan straight edge hardcore scene during that time, and everyone was so passionate and sincere. I had a blast every show we played, except for when my voice was dead. Then I was in the worst mood ever. I really did love the music we made in Rats in the Wall, and I also felt like the lyrics were so personal to me, so that was very meaningful, too. My roots are in punk, so it was really fun to be in a punk band again after being more involved with the hardcore scene for so long. But I never connected with the members of Rats like I did with Gather. None of them shared my ideals at all, and they had a very different view of punk/hardcore than I did, so it just wasn’t as fulfilling overall as my experience in Gather was.

Your lyrics have touched people. Personally, I resonated with Gather's political message. How did you choose what to write about?

Thank you! I would simply just write about the things that my friends and I would frequently rant about—the things that outraged us and kept us up at night. As a vegan straight edge anarcha-feminist, there are always PLENTY of things in this world that anger or sadden me. When there is injustice all around us all the time, punk/hardcore has always been a great creative and emotional outlet for anger, and discovering that so many other people felt the same way made it a great way to connect with them.

What kind of connections have you made with people through your lyrics and your music in general? 

When Gather formed, there were not too many women in hardcore bands, and what made me so happy were all the women who showed us support. Shows sometimes felt alienating when all you saw were other guys acting super macho and putting on some tough-guy performance for the other men there, saying sexist and homophobic things on stage. So the fact that there were often lots of women up front and singing along at our shows was one of the greatest feelings—we no longer felt like outsiders at shows. I also loved that there were crusty anarcho-punk kids who were drawn to us because of our lyrics, but there were straight edge hardcore kids who were drawn to us because of our sound, so our shows often had an awesome mixture of kids who wouldn’t normally go to the same shows. We’d play anarcho-punk fests, and we’d play regular hardcore shows, and both made sense.

This is all quite remarkable. Let's hear about your other talents. You're an artist...correct?

I do like to draw and do tattoos! I’ve always liked to do art for different zines, bands, fliers, etc. I also try to help different organizations by donating art to them to use however they want (raffles, or merch, etc) to raise money for their causes. I started tattooing in 2011, but I ultimately quit working in shops, as I’ve found that every time I make something I like to do into a job, I start to hate it. I hope that won’t always be case with me. But it’s still a medium I enjoy when I have the time and motivation. Is your experience in this field different in any way because you're a woman? For the most part, I would say no. However, sometimes working in a tattoo shop was somewhat unbearable since tattoo culture for a long time has been a “boys’ club.” It’s like misogynist jokes are just the name of the game, and if you speak up about it, you’re a buzzkill. It’s USUALLY not a very progressive environment, so I certainly felt frustrated at times having to work where racist, sexist, and homophobic jokes were just thrown around.

 

 

How do spell the word "woman" nowadays? 

In 2004, one of the main goals for Gather was to explicitly talk about things like radical feminism, and a common thing that feminists would do in order to draw attention to the ways in which patriarchy is everywhere, including our language, was to spell woman with a “y” (womyn.) So we did that. It was just an in-your-face way to remind people about the exclusion that they don’t even think about. And it would make sexist dudes mad, which was hilarious. Today, there are SO many more women in punk and hardcore, and I feel like even in the mainstream there is a lot more talk about gender issues and feminism in general, so it’s been less common for people to purposely spell words that way (and that’s not to say that we have gotten rid of gender oppression—not even close.)

Where did you learn this stuff? Where did you go to college? Did your experience there radicalize your ideas? Or were you the radical... 

I guess when I started listening to punk in junior high is when I was first exposed to all the things I still care about today. Bands like Crass and Anti-Product introduced me to feminism and anarchy. Rudimentary Peni made me go vegetarian, and ultimately vegan. Minor Threat helped me feel like I wasn’t totally alone in my decision to be sober. Almost all the bands I liked were talking about racism and classism. I also grew up poor, feeling very uncomfortable with feminine norms, and my mom struggles with addiction and mental illness to this day. So, personal experience shaped my views from a young age and gave me a different perspective of the world. When I first started going to school at UC Santa Cruz, I was majoring in physics. I was vegan and straight edge, but pretty naïve politically. I studied physics for three years and hated it so much. I took a quarter off to tour with Gather (I think?), and I started reading “A People’s History of the United States” by Howard Zinn. I didn’t want to continue with physics, so a friend suggested I study the kinds of things addressed in that book. I ended up majoring in American Studies which is basically gender, class, and ethnic studies, and a lot of my professors were pretty radical. I was finally learning more about the things that the bands I loved were talking about, the kinds of things I was always drawn to. Even though my degree was totally useless in the end and just got me into 15 years of debt, haha, it was very interesting and I’m glad I finally found something that fulfilled the interests I already had as a young punk.

Speaking for myself, I'm pretty tired of arguing with people about the same stuff for decades now. Are you any less likely to argue with bozos today than you would have been 15 years ago? 

I am also pretty exhausted and have learned to choose my battles, and how to identify the kinds of people who are not even worth engaging with. I have much less tolerance for toxic people who only want to cut you down and don’t actually have any intentions of coming to an understanding with you. However, I love talking with people who are genuine and who just want to understand where I’m coming from, whether they agree or not. I often seek conversations with people who are different from me just because I’m simply curious about where THEY are coming from, whether I agree or not. And not agreeing is ok! I can’t stand people who talk to others like they’re trying to “win” something—it’s so gross. Those people just seem like they feel threatened by others who are different, and they feel they need to force you to accept their views as if they’re objectively right. They’re unwilling to even question themselves because they’ve already got their minds made up that they somehow know it all. They’re the worst—some of them are the vegan straight edge kids I used to probably be friends with.

What are the issues that are most important for you (to argue) nowadays?

Hands down, the issue that freaks me out daily is the environmental devastation that comes with climate change because it affects everything and everyone (except the super rich people—they’re untouchable and they know it which is why they don’t give a fuck.) So many animals, plants, and people are at risk because of this human-caused problem, and there’s pretty much no realistic solution at this point—things are already too far gone. Industrial civilization was a failed experiment, and those who still defend it, or think that technology will save us are fooling themselves, and we’ll all suffer because of their faith in this system. I often despair at the state of things and what the future will be like. All we can really do is adapt at this point, but I’m not even sure how to go about that.

Are you all fired up to say more things about this world now? Here is your chance. Any final words from Eva Genie? Upcoming projects to look out for? 

As I mentioned earlier, I am working on something new: a straight edge band. We’ve got some songs written and hope to record sometime in early 2019, so that’s what I’m looking forward to!