LOURDS, fronted by female songstress Lourds Lane, have been working hard scene at gaining a reputation in the indie music scene through high-energy shows and their fresh sound, due in part to Lane’s instrument of choice, the electric violin. Her name alone makes her sound like a superhero and the silver “S” dangling from the black chocker around her neck and her ability to gain new fans with a single song is a sure sign there’s something extraordinary about Lane.
The Trash Bar, located on Grand Street between Driggs and Roebling, would be impossible to find if it wasn’t written in tall white letters on its black awning that juts out from the entrance out to the curb. Something so small in Williamsburg can be easily lost. But the neighborhood is empty save for a group people huddled in the cold outside of The Trash Bar finishing their cigarettes. Entering the bar is like eating hot soup on a winter day. The already well-heated establishment is even hotter with the extra body heat of a crowd, and the warm greeting smile of Lane behind her band’s merchandise table just left of the entrance makes you feel that much more welcome.
Lane is the cool rock chick – the girl who looks like the scene because she is the scene. The black eye shadow that suddenly turns to gold just below her eyebrows makes it hard to notice her eyes are dark brown. Her dyed red hair is up in pigtails and they fade to pink at the tips. A variety of studded and spiked bracelets covers both arms and stop mid-forearm. Her image now makes the fact that she started out on classical music that much harder to digest.
“I grew up on classical music and my classical teachers didn’t really inspire the craziness that I was about,” Lane said. “So I slowly but surely moved into rock ‘n’ roll.”
While Lane doesn’t like to reveal her age, it’s safe to assume she’s in her early 30’s at most. She’s happy reminiscing about her musically enriched childhood, which starts at 3 years old when she first started playing the violin. She performed at Carnegie Hall in New York City when she was 6. But her first memory of being in a band was when she was 13, singing and playing keyboards with her close friends.
“It was really quite funny,” Lane said with a grin. “All my best friends were playing instruments that they didn’t know how to play. But there was a lot of heart in it because it was our band.”
The “our” in “our band” now stands for Lane, guitarist Gene Blank, drummer Sarah Vasil and bassist Joey Sagarese. LOURDS was originally a solo project for Lane when she was as young as 14, but she eventually found her completion in three other people.
“For the first time it’s like a real family,” Lane said.
And the family that plays together stays together. A big attraction for fans is the live experience, and even if it’s in a small space like The Trash Bar, LOURDS will move you to your very core. The bar is dirty and packed with sweaty people. It reeks of stale beer and the floors are spotted with puddles from spilt drinks, but no one cares because they’re having too much fun.
Watching Lane sing is like watching an eruption; you can almost see the words boiling inside her. Blank and Sagarese never keep still, moving as much as possible on the tiny stage, while Vasil pounds the drums like it’s her worst enemy. This is a band that loves their work.
“I love the challenge of playing with musicians that challenge me as a musician,” Blanks said while looking at Lane.
“I like the fact that I’m onstage with my family doing music,” Lane said. “And I like how the audience gets into it and puts their hands in the air.”
Lane is referring to their first single, Astropop, from their self-titled album. The song, she explains, is about the freedom of being a child, represented by licking the red, white and blue ice-pops until your tongue and teeth turn blue. As soon as Lane plays the familiar intro to the song on her mandolin, the crowd screams and cheers. During the chorus, Lane sings “Throw your hands on up and cherish all the freedom I ignore / Throw your hands on up and celebrate this life that keeps me poor.” The crowd obeys and wherever the band plays, a sea of hands are in the air on command.
Astropop is now played on radio stations across the country, and the album that spawned it – which sold over 20,000 copies so far – got a glowing review in Billboard Magazine. Billboard Underground called the band “incomparable,” and called their self-titled album “an emphatic companion to the red-hot vim that lead singer Lourds pitches and provokes.”
If things weren’t looking good enough, Lane wrote a song called “Victory” that many are calling the next “We Will Rock You.” The song was played during the St. Louis parade for the World Series.
“It was a total fluke of a thing,” Lane admits. “And I had this funny little lethal laugh inside of me, the fact that I’m playing electric violin and these sports jocks are going to be thinking it’s a guitar! And in the middle of it I’m waling on the violin and they’re going to be like ‘dude, yeah!’ That’s the beauty.”
Lane gets more animated the more she talks. When she talks about rock ‘n’ roll, her hands contort into the devil horns. When she feels she has something poignant to say, she’ll grab your shoulder or your face for emphasis. She’s outgoing and ballsy, and she knows that’s how women have to be to get where they want to be.
The Medusa Festival, an edgier rock-infused version of the Lilith Fair, was the brainchild of Lane and was started in 2003. It gives female fronted bands or all-girl bands the chance to show they can play just as hard as the men.
“I wanted to get snakes coming out of people’s heads’ like Medusa,” Lane said. I’m proud to have created something that… people seem to remember every Medusa show and people walk away feeling like we saw a little New York secret. We saw something that’s really special, something that’s really vibrating the underground.”
The festival was always held at CBGB, but with the legendary venue having finally shut its doors, Medusa will have to find a new home, and the whole band is mourning the loss.
“At the end of Medusa Festival, we were sitting at the edge of the stage, all of our bands, and we were just soaking it in,” Lane said. “Just like ‘oh my God this is our last time here at CBGB’. That’s really intense. I played there when I was 14 years old!”
“It was an honor to be playing there within the last 30 days of its operation and to be a part of it… but it was bitter in the same sense that it was really the last chance we’d ever have to play there,” Sagarese said. “And to absorb the room and the energy and to know that we’ll never do it ever again in that place was the most bitter end.”
“It was short of tears, really,” Blank said.
After LOURDS finish their set they’re back at the front of the bar behind their merchandise table. Vasil has a split lip from accidentally whacking herself with a drumstick, and Blank and Sagarese are soaking wet with sweat and smelling inhuman. Lane looks as if she’s absorbed it all and stares in admiration at her band; her family. They all hug and scream over the Led Zeppelin song playing on jukebox to each other.
As fans leave they stop to say goodbye to Lane who hugs each and every one of them, often pouting and looking deeply upset that her fans are leaving. She kisses them on the cheek softly and says, “You rock.”
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