On their own

Indiegrrls travel without major labels or corporate sponsors

by Laura Kiritsy

"It's still hard -- it's such a transition for people to make in their minds that women are a force. When I started, and I am by no means a veteran, it was like pulling teeth to get people to take me seriously. I got comments like, you know, `If you lost a little bit of weight -- you have such a pretty face, you could really go far.' `If you grew your hair out longer, if you'd wear just a little bit shorter skirt. . . . ' These things were coming from men and women."

So says Seattle folk/blues maverick Holly Figueroa about her early experiences as an independent female artist trying to stake a claim among the sweaty boys in the music scene. Those attitudes and obstacles prompted Figueroa, who had abandoned medical school to pursue music and raise her daughter in the mid '90s, to start her very own Internet mailing list, Indiegrrl, in May of 1998, unwittingly instigating an international underground network of female musicians.

The Indiegrrl mailing list, which began with a handful of Figueroa's friends, now has 260 subscribers and has spawned a number of side projects. Through an organization called Indiegrrl Total Access (ITA), dues-paying members work cooperatively to book and promote each other's shows and empower women artists to be successful on their own terms. Indiegrrl screens submitted resumes and tapes and certifies "performing members" to play official Indiegrrl concerts and club dates. It has also spun off a not-for-profit record label, which released the first Indiegrrl compilation CD on July 1.

The inaugural Indiegrrl Tour -- currently heating up the East Coast with a roster of talent that includes Figueroa, Michelle Nagy, the show-stopping Kym Tuvim (who also appears at the third Best of Boston Singer/Songwriter Showcase at Hopkinton State Park, on July 10), rising star Katherine Quinn (whose no-nonsense style has invited comparison to Indie Queen Ani DiFranco), Annie Wenz, and Connecticut's Chris and Meredith Thompson -- hits Worcester with a free show in Institute Park on July 14.

The tour is the almost-unintended result of what you might call a happy accident. Figueroa, whose only prior experience in the music industry was as a singer/songwriter, posted a "funky little press release" on the Internet recruiting talent for what she jokingly called the "Indiegrrl Tour." She was unprepared for the tidal wave of responses that flooded her mailbox the very next day. Before she knew it, Figueroa had a mountain of tapes and press kits and résumés from female artists looking for spots on her road-show.

Among the 300 replies was one unwanted advance. "As soon as the press release went out," Figueroa says, "we got a call from a major label that wanted to purchase the name and wanted to purchase the tour but they also wanted to have their newer artists in front of the actual independent artists on the tour. We just kinda laughed because that's totally against the point. I knew that there was no way this was gonna have any major- label affiliation."

Instead, Figueroa painstakingly reviewed every submission herself ("I'm crazy, and I almost got divorced," she laughs.), eventually screening out the artists who became the foundation of the Indiegrrl collective.

The Indiegrrl tour took on a life of its own. Proving that you don't need a million-dollar PR machine to stand up and be counted, the Indiegrrl Tour was featured in Seventeen magazine's Summer Tour Special (right next to the Ozzfest '99 listing), which thankfully distracted a generation of adolescent girls from such articles as "Take Charge: Make Summer Love Happen!" Figueroa was again inundated with inquiries from Indiegrrl wannabes this time from the ranks of Seventeen's subscribers, whom she promptly encouraged to sign up for her mailing list.

And again she had to fend off Corporate America. The Revlon make-up conglomerate -- presumably also avid Seventeen readers -- offered her a sponsorship. "Okay, Revlon supports the Indiegrrl Tour. Well, we don't wear makeup. We're fucking touring musicians -- we don't even wash our hair!"

WHEN FIGUEROA takes the stage in Worcester on July 14 with guitarist and collaborator Ray Fairbanks, she'll be showcasing songs from her stunning debut CD Three Chord Plea (Agitate Records). Be it with haunting folk storytelling, the emotionally charged a cappella of "A Thousand Times" (a song about domestic abuse), or bluesy semi-acoustic alt-rock, Figueroa moves effortlessly in more musical directions on one disc than most musicians do in an entire career. Her songwriting is introspective yet universal, dealing mostly with the theme of relationships from hell, though, refreshingly, she's moved beyond the man-hating bitterness that's made some other current female performers superstars. On the quiet acoustic lament "Passed," she sings simply, "I think you only fall one time and I think my time has passed."

But it's when Figueroa belts out the blues that she can knock you over. It's almost incomprehensible that Figueroa never sang the blues until about four years ago, after tuning in to a blues program on, naturally, an independent radio station. "It just stopped me dead in my tracks," she recalls. "I started listening to Etta James, Big Mama Thornton, Bessie Smith, and Ma Rainey and getting a real feel for what it was like [in their era]."

Figueroa's rollicking tear through blues master Robert Johnson's "Walkin' Blues" showcases Figueroa's blistering harmonica in addition to a raw vocal abandon reminiscent of the whiskey-throated Janis Joplin.

Even more impressive, Figueroa rolls slowly through the live track "I Don't Know You," a classic 12-bar blues song about being done wrong, with superb vocal control -- flowing from low and throaty to growling and then opening up to an all-out wail, just to bring it all back to down to croon one of the best kiss-off lyrics in musical history: "You never did deserve me, now you can watch me walk away."

Figueroa will play only a handful of Indiegrrl dates before the tour rolls on without her, so her Worcester performance is a must see. Be assured, she means to rock your world at any cost. "I actually get paid for doing something I love," she chuckles. "I just can't get over that -- even if it's five bucks."

The Indiegrrl Tour, featuring Holly Figueroa, Katherine Quinn, Chris and Meredith Thompson, Kym Tuvim, Michelle Nagy, and Annie Wenz will play Worcester's Institute Park, on Salisbury Street, on Wednesday, July 14 at 6 p.m. Admission is free. Visit Indiegrrl at http://www.indiegrrl.com/. Sample Holly Figueroa's music at http://www.home.earthlink.net/~hsfigueroa/music.html.