SHELBY — Bras decorated the stage, whips were in the air, and punk music blasted from amplifiers as fans nodded their heads and stomped their feet.
The Rust Pelts grabbed control of the Melancholy House in Shelby on Saturday night.
It wasn’t too long ago that two friends, Kate ‘Jo’ Westfall and Llalan Fowler, were hanging out at their local brewery smoking cigars and drinking craft beers when an idea to create a band sparked.
“We really wanted an all-female thing,” said Westfall, a veteran of the Mansfield music scene. “It took a while to find female musicians who were willing to play and were available to play.”
The all-women punk band consists of five members: Sarah Russell who plays guitar, Henrietta Paisley does auxiliary percussion, Teya Schendel also does percussion, Westfall plays keys and sings while Llalan Fowler plays the trombone.
Their songs, Westfall said, revolve around life from a woman’s point of view.
“For one song, for whatever reason I had this jingle in my head,” Westfall said. “I was jumping on the bed and said, ‘Do you love a girl in a polka-dotted bra, baby?’ And we just kept changing the colors (of the bra) and we made a song.
“It’s just goofiness, but it’s not like boys are going to relate to a song like that.”
Fowler said she played music in college, but never expected to join a band.
“It had been a long time and I had forgotten how good playing music felt,” Fowler said. “To make music in a group of women is magical. To do it with women only is more magical for some reason. It’s like shared history and shared knowledge.
“They always say, ‘oh it’s just lady stuff.’ Well yeah, it is lady stuff. Let’s make you understand it in a song. What it feels like to be jilted, to be cheated on. This is what it feels like as a woman to want a younger man and be insulted for that.”
Their guitarist, Russell, had never strummed a six-string before being asked to be a member.
“It involved a bottle of wine and a dare,” Westfall said. “She took it. We didn’t think it was actually going to happen, but she showed up with a spare guitar.”
And so the band performed at Melancholy House, an old llama farm (sorry, the animals are no longer around) on Taylortown road in Shelby. The venue is small, but the crowds who come want to be there — the venue is far enough away from the city of Shelby to need a map — real or virtual — to locate it. The house shows are typically well attended and shows multiple bands a night. Saturday Hurricane Ditka and Gelatinous Cube opened for the Rust Pelts.
Melancholy House ran it’s first show in May 2016, according to owner Marshall Elgin.
”There’s a great sense of pride in being a part of such a wonderfully active community, and there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing,” he said. “There are so many things to love about it, hearing the music, seeing old friends, meeting new friends.”
Bands who play there tend to agree.
“It’s just so friendly,” Fowler said. “You have to really want to be here to be here, so it’s going to be an appreciative crowd.”
The band makes use of props including face paint, bras and whips in their show.
“We just like to make it as fun as possible and not be super serious in the show,” Fowler said. “Although we only want women in the band, it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun.”
