Led by a woman called Debra, who, apart from having written all the original material on this record, also sings and plays all guitar parts, this trio is a good reminder of the fact that one individual’s focus of vision can rework any classic rock style into a personal form of expression.

To those who would initially be tempted to call this album standard soft rock with country leanings, Debra’s deep, space-rocking guitar tone, her furious unvarnished leads and the times when she delves into earnest soul-searching experimentation during the most expansive of her guitar solos, all raise the stakes to the level more ambitious than Sheryl Crow could ever contemplate. Why Sheryl Crow, I hear you ask? Well, that’s because Italian Metal Hammer has recently drawn a comparison between the two. Not without a reason, but ignoring the fact that there is more to Debra’s singing than the crisp smoothness of her voice.

In fact, Debra is capable of going from touchingly lyrical to inspiringly soulful within just one track, and while not deliberately aiming to pack in a muscular raw-edged punch, when extra authority is called for, she makes the needed impact by the sheer nonchalant coolness of her tone. This hits home with a far bigger brunt than those who choose to growl their way into authority. (Although being able to growl is something Debra says she wouldn’t rule out if only she was able to do it. “I’d love to be able to sing like Al Jourgensen,” she admits during our chat, laughing.)

She then goes on to say that Ministry is one of her favourite bands and names Led Zeppelin as the first band to ever interest her in rock music. Not to mention her admiration for the blues and her stint in a punk band, her influences are as eclectic as they can be with young musicians these days. But where Debra is different from the rest is in her ability to distil her influences into a personal style and a personal vision, because what she ends up with is as clear and coherent and at times as remote from the style of her heroes as it could possibly be. But then again, being a truly independent artist is often all about forgetting about your influences and becoming yourself.

In the end, the more you play this record, the more you realise that artists like Debra are a living proof to the fact that despite all the destruction it’s done, grunge, in the end, has served an invaluable service to rock music. Twenty years on we are finally reaping the rewards of it all – artists are liberated from the false requirements of technique at the expense of originality while the goal of searching for one’s own voice is more important as it’s ever been. This, coupled with a comeback of classic rock values, is the perfect climate for artists like Debra and her band to flourish. The industry can’t be blind to such an apparent talent, so hopefully this new release is just a first step towards universal recognition for her fabulous band.

ALISSA ORDABAI: I hope you don’t mind if I jump right in and start with asking you about the new album.

DEBRA: Sure!

AO: I understand this is your first full-length release?

DD: Yeah, this is our first album. We had a couple of downloads beforehand to try to figure out… I play guitar in this band and then I just started to sing a few years ago to try to figure out what I sounded like and what the band sounded like. And once we figured that out, then we made this record.

AO: So guitar came first, and you started singing just a couple of years ago?

DD: Yeah.

AO: How did your interest in making music start and how did it evolve? What came first – an interest in guitar playing or in singing?

DD: An interest in guitar playing—I always loved the electric guitar. Whenever I listened to the radio when I was I kid, I would sing the guitar solos instead of the lyrics, which was kind of weird, and I just had this fascination with it. I approached my mom when I was about 14 or 15 and asked if I could get an electric guitar, and she was kind of horrified, she said, “Oh, that would be so unladylike. And it’s too loud!” So I never did it and didn’t pick up the electric guitar until I was in college. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I just wanted it really badly, but I just felt kind of discouraged that it wasn’t that acceptable for girls, and then I felt that I had to do this, so I got a guitar and started playing. Then, when I came to New York, I brought it with me and I got into a punk band right away. I couldn’t really play but that wasn’t too much of a problem. And that was it. I was fascinated with playing the guitar and then singing just sort of… I always liked to sing but I wasn’t very good at the time, and then I just somehow started really getting into it.

AO: Who were your guitar heroes when you were growing up?

DD: I was really fascinated with Led Zeppelin because none of my girlfriends listened to it, but the guy across the street who was always working underneath his car was always playing Led Zeppelin. And I always thought that it was really bad-ass and scary and cool. So I listened to Jimmy Page a lot.

AO: In terms of your vocal influences, Italian Metal Hammer compared your singing to Sheryl Crow. Is there any truth to that comparison? Did she influence you or were there other influences that impacted on you more than her?

DD: It’s sort of embarrassing, but I don’t own any Sheryl Crow records and I never really listened to her except for hearing her on the radio once in a while. So no, she is not an influence. At the same time I saw her live last summer and I was blown away by what a great singer she is. So if there is any comparison to her, I’m really thrilled. But my favourite vocalists growing up were people I don’t sound anything like. Like Aretha Franklin and Etta James. I like soulful singing.

AO: Going back to the record, are you happy with the way this album has turned out?

DD: Very happy, yeah!

AO: Do you have any favourite tracks on it?

DD: My personal favourite track is “When It Comes Down”. I feel that it really captures everything that the band does well – from jamming to producing that psychedelic sound…

AO: I have a goofy question, but I’ll give it a try anyway. If you had an opportunity to go back and change anything on this record, would you?

DD: No, I don’t think so. I’m very pleased with it.

AO: Over which period of time did the writing of those tunes stretch? How long did it take you to go from the initial idea to the finished product?

DD: About a year.

AO: Was there a concept behind this album or did it all come together as you went along?

DD: I think the title is the concept – “Get Free”. I practice yoga and I study with this really good teacher in New York. I learned a lot from them about this concept of liberation and it’s the same concept that is in yoga, and in Buddhism, and really in every religion which is trying to get over yourself enough to be free. Getting past your neurosis and your personality crisis so that you can be fully connective to your soul and to whatever you might call God and just become a channel for the Divine or whatever you want to call it, and I feel that our goal as human beings is to try to work through that to become free of the things that are holding us back and holding us down.

AO: How does your songwriting process work? Do you have to isolate yourself when you write or do those songs come to you as you go about your daily business?

DD: My process for writing songs is typically the same. Usually there is something that’s bothering me or affecting me emotionally and I can’t express it in words, so I sit down with my guitar and I play guitar until I stumble upon something that gets this feeling out, [laughs] whether it’s frustration, or excitement, or grief, or loneliness. And I always write the music first, and then I work on the lyrics.

AO: How easy or how difficult is it to accurately convey what you are feeling at the time when you are inspired, when you are writing your music? Is it a laboured process or does it happen instantaneously, in a flash?

DD: It takes some time. It takes sitting down with the guitar in a quiet place and allowing myself to feel whatever I’m feeling – whether it’s good or bad, and not being afraid to play around until I’m able to find that expression. And when I can play it musically I feel relieved of whatever the emotion I might be feeling. Most of my songs start with that.

AO: How many of your guitar solos are improvised on this record?

DD: They are all improvised. In the studio I certainly take advantage of being able to stop and start. [laughs] I was able to go, “I like these 8 bars, but I don’t like those 8 bars, let me do it again.” I work like that in the studio, for sure. But they are all written in the studio; they are all improvised.

AO: Did you challenge yourself technically on this record in terms of guitar playing?

DD: Yeah. I think the most challenging solo was on the song “Love That Lasts” because I’m playing in an alternate tuning. What we do live with that song is that we have the bass player hold down a simple riff and the drummer can play around it. And I think that on that record he sounds like Ginger Baker meets John Bonham. It’s so complex and incredible what he played. And I had to put a solo down over that. [laughs]

AO: Were you inspired, at any moment in your career, by female guitar players, or do you think that it doesn’t matter if they are male or female and what counts is what they do with the instrument?

DD: Well, women just have not had the history of playing the guitar that men have had. So it was going to take time to catch up. When I was growing up, the only female guitarist that I listened to at the time was Bonnie Raitt because she was the only mainstream person out there, and also Nancy Wilson of Heart. But I really loved Bonnie’s slide playing. That was knocking me out. And now, of course, there are increasing numbers of great female guitar players out there. But as far as influences go when I was growing up, this was kind of it.

AO: Why do you think that is, why do you think it is still considered an unladylike thing to do?

DD: Yeah, look at what my mom said to me and my mother wasn’t trying to be mean, she was just trying to raise me as a woman, and that says everything about how women are raised in our culture. And that’s another thing that I’m trying to express with the album title “Get Free”. I’d like to see women get free of this idea that we are not supposed to look too passionate, we are not supposed to look too ugly, we are not supposed to be playing the guitar and making unattractive guitar faces.

AO: That’s interesting, because there are quite a few female bass players around, but there are still not so many guitar players. Why do you think that is?

DD: Good question. I don’t know. I think women get caught up on their path by a lot of things. In every pursuit women are still the ones who are supposed to take care of their home and family, letting the man be free to develop completely. Lead guitar is tough – you have to put a lot of time and effort into it and sometimes there are a lot of demands on women that men don’t have on them in some ways. I think we still have to take responsibility for our own development. This is something women still struggle with. I’ve had boyfriends who had no other compulsion but to sit down and play the guitar for four hours. I think a woman would feel guilty if she had a child or a man to take care of.

AO: In your career did you find any resentment within the industry towards women guitar players, women rock musicians?

DD: Oh, sure. Yeah. It’s weird because here I work with a very supportive man in my band. I could never have grown without these very supportive guys who wanted me to do well. But there have also been times where I have been pushed, or shoved, or punched at a gig. At my punk rock shows some guy would try to push me off the stage. There are definitely some men who are very offended by women taking men’s traditional roles.

AO: Talking about live shows, are you planning to take this record on the road?

DD: Yes, we want to. We are working on that right now. We are starting to book shows around the East Coast. We don’t have any financial backing right now so we are trying to figure out if we can tour.

AO: Singing and playing guitar in live situations – does that present any difficulties? Or do they impact on each other? Would you be a different kind of guitar player if you didn’t sing? Or would you be a different singer if you didn’t play guitar?

DD: I’d run around the stage a lot more if I didn’t have to stand in front of the vocal mic! [laughs] But I refuse to get one of those headset things and look like Howard Jones or something. That would be bad. No, I’m the same guitar player, absolutely. Well… No, maybe that’s not true. There’s always that much you can do with your voice, and my voice is not aggressive and growly, and I like playing really heavy guitar. I was in a band that sounded like Ministry. I love industrial music. But my voice is not suited for that kind of music. So when I started doing my own thing, I changed my guitar tone to the one that suited my voice better, I tried to leave more space in the songs to feel my voice better, it took time, and I had to readjust my guitar playing not to overwhelm my voice. Because my voice is softer and sweeter and it is what it is. I wish I sounded like Al Jourgensen, but… [laughs]

AO: Don’t we all? [laughs] But how did you go about your vocal training? Did you go to a teacher like you did with the guitar?

DD: I did. But I actually never went to a teacher for guitar lessons. I’m self-taught. I never took lessons until fairly recently. I went to a guy named Allen Schwartz a few years ago and he taught me about the vibrato. I took lessons with him for about four months, and I learnt a lot. But since I started playing, until recently, I never took lessons. But in contrast, when I started to sing, I went and took lessons right away because I wanted to get good fast and I didn’t want to blow up my voice and I had no idea what I was doing. So I went to a wonderful teacher in New York to learn how to use my voice without ruining it.

AO: What would your advice be to any aspiring young girl who wants to be a rock musician?

DD: Don’t get into any cover bands.

AO: Have you ever done that?

DD: No, I never did and I think it’s good. The first band I was in was an original band, a punk band that played its own songs. So right away I was writing. I am sure there are clichés in my guitar playing but I never learned any by going and playing in a cover band, and I think it’s a good thing. I think it makes you more original when you start playing original music right away.

AO: Did you ever sit around and work out guitar parts from records?

DD: Not so much. There are a few things that I’ve learnt how to play. I just got into playing in bands right away that were writing their own stuff, so I was more involved in trying to keep up with that.

AO: So your first advice would be not to get into any cover bands, is there anything else?

DD: Listen to blues guitar players. Because they are very economical and they are really going for emotion, they are not going for a flash. I think they are very good.

AO: What sort of blues do you have in mind – Delta blues, Chicago blues, British blues?

DD: My personal favourite is Chicago electric blues because I grew up in Milwaukee and I saw a lot of those guys and they really influenced me. Their approach to the guitar influenced me. On the radio there were a lot of technically accomplished guitar players and that was kind of scary because I didn’t start playing until a late date and I thought, “I’d never be able to play that fast. I won’t be able to do that like these metal guys.” And then blues gave me a window into a different approach to the guitar. I was like, “Oh my gosh, they play one note, and if it’s the right note, they’ll flatten the whole place.” And that’s a different aesthetic and I really took that to heart. Then I felt like I could still play guitar because it didn’t have to be about being really fast, it had to be about being emotionally true.

AO: Would there be any advice that relates to being a female in this industry? Because it is still so much dominated by the males, the male psyche, the male mentality. Is there any advice from your experience on how to be able to handle that, how to be a female and still be able to stand up for yourself in this industry which is still very much dominated by male mentality?

DD: Yeah, good question. Be yourself and also, when you are in a band with guys or when you are dealing with men in the industry, don’t be a pussy. [laughs] I don’t know how to say that because I think that it’s a really tacky phrase and I get mad whenever guys I know say that. I always say, “What do you mean, why are you equating being a pussy with being weak?” But one thing that I’ve really done from the start is not to make anyone else carry my stuff and I don’t complain when I’m on the road and conditions are lousy. You kind of have to be one of the guys.

AO: Did members of your band contribute to the songwriting process on this album?

DD: Not on this album, no. I wrote all the songs. But that didn’t mean that they didn’t contribute. I wrote all the song but they made them come alive sometimes in ways I didn’t expect and that improves the songs.

AO: Do you think being a solo artist gives you more freedom as opposed to being a band member? Where you can make all the decisions yourself and you don’t have to make compromises, you don’t have to really take into consideration opinions of other band members?

DD: [Laughs] Yeah, it’s different. Previously I’ve always been in collaborative bands where all the songwriting was collaborative, and I learnt a lot from that. I enjoyed it. It’s fun. It’s great to be surprised by other people’s ideas. When I started doing this I brought all the stuff but I look forward in the future to collaborate more with my band members if they want to start bringing some ideas in.

AO: Well, I think I’ve run out of questions. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about or haven’t mentioned that you would like to get across in this interview?

DD: There is something we haven’t talked about. When I studied with Allen Schwartz, he said to me, “You could be one of my best students if you are going to practice at least 4 hours a day.” And I was very honoured that he said that and I really thought about it because at the time I wasn’t singing yet, and I thought, “I could do this. I could totally devote myself to becoming a technically better guitar player,” but then I thought, “Well, that’s going to be further down the road,” and I just felt bored by the whole idea. And I realised that it wasn’t really my goal in playing music. My goal in playing music is hopefully to move people and excite people. I just knew that it wasn’t my path, I just didn’t want to do that. Part of me did because I love playing the guitar, but the rest of me knew that I had to write my own songs and I don’t need to be this super technically brilliant guitarist. If I had another lifetime to devote to that, maybe I would.

AO: You don’t really need to play a thousand notes a second to really move people. Look at people like Bruce Springsteen. You can have four chords in a song and still move people.

DD: I thought about the music that I loved, too. And although I love listening to Eric Johnson or Yngwie Malmsteen and they do move me, the stuff that I put on over and over and which just wants me to scream and run around the room, is stuff which is really basic got-it-all stuff that’s just great. And I like that better. So I thought I was going to just figure out who I was as an artist as opposed to just a guitar player. And it’s been really rewarding and I hope people like the record.

AO: There’s a French philosopher who once said that all this virtuoso stuff is all fundamentally about domination where nothing is left that cannot be absorbed into your technique. And for those people it’s the nature of artistic fulfilment.

DD: When you talk to African drum teachers, for example, they don’t want their students to play a lot of notes. In fact, if a student is playing too much, the teacher would take their sticks away. And they say, “You are not playing with a cool heart.” What they mean is that you don’t have your emotions together, you are not being natural. In the blues there is a different aesthetic which comes from an African approach to music where music is soulful and is a form of interacting with the Divine. It’s different than the European approach to music. Those are two very different aesthetic values when it comes to music. Not necessarily male and female, but I think it’s interesting that it’s like this question about what is really dominant in our culture. And maybe that’s why female musicians that are coming up are really rejecting that whole thing and, like you said, gravitating towards the bass and deciding they don’t need to be virtuosos.

AO: Do you think being a guitarist has changed in any significant way since the time when you were growing up? Do you think there are more requirements now, are the requirements tougher, or do you think that on the contrary the requirements are more lax?

DD: I don’t know if they are more lax, but originality is prised over virtuosity. Today you have a lot of bands that don’t want to have guitar solos and they use the guitar differently, and I think that’s great. I like to play guitar solos and I hope it’s not too self-indulgent. I enjoy it but I wouldn’t impose it on everybody.

AO: What do you make of all these teenagers coming out like Dragonforce and Black Tide with flash technique and it’s all back to Malmsteen and the post-Van Halen generation values?

DD: I don’t know, but teenage boys usually try to prove themselves. And that’s cool, that’s part of what makes men men. They like to get up there and conquer new skills. Not that women don’t, women like to use that too, but teenage boys in particular compete for position a lot. That’s great, they should go out and explore that level of technique and blow everybody’s socks off. Somebody’s got to do it. It doesn’t interest me, but I enjoy hearing someone else do it. You asked me some really interesting questions about female guitar players and the whole female / male thing. Are you familiar with some of the comments Camille Paglia has recently made about female guitar players?

AO: No. Do you mind sharing them with me?

DD: Yeah, Camille Paglia is this writer on female issues in the United States, and she came out very strongly a few years ago saying that women just don’t have the testosterone to be great lead players. And to that I say that it’s total bullshit. It’s just not been culturally acceptable for women to express strong emotions. But increasingly women are being just as balls-out as men.

AO: But that’s superficial critique and general words, isn’t it? There is no history of female guitar playing to support that view. There hasn’t been enough female guitar players to come to any conclusions on this matter.

DD: She was saying that there never will be because women are just not hormonally capable. [laughs] To that I just say, “Well, F- You.”

AO: What you can say to that is that female tone is going to be different because female fingers are different from male fingers. If you watch all those old Stevie Ray Vaughan videos, my friend said once to me, “Look at that, those aren’t fingers, those are tools for pressing them strings down!” But female tone isn’t going to be any worse, it’s just going to be a different sort of tone which just adds an additional colour to the overall palette of different guitar styles.

DD: Yeah, and I just don’t think that women have any less of an emotional palette than men do. Women are capable to be just as angry and just as fiery. I frankly think it’s complete bullshit. Sue Foley, who is a Canadian blues guitar player is writing a book which I think is called Guitar Women and she’s gone and interviewed so many female guitar players – it’s going to be a landmark book. She’s found so many great guitar players that she is going to tell the world just how many really great players are out there now who are women.