Le Butcherettes frontwoman Teri Gender Bender has little patience for unenthusiastic crowds, especially ones in Arizona. Hesitant to play the band’s Mesa show on their recent stint with Deftones, Gender Bender, raised in Mexico from age 14, made it a point to mark her territory, expressing her angst towards the state’s controversial immigration law.
“I got offstage in the big grass area, and got next to some bros that were sitting down…and pissed next to them without taking off anything. I just felt better that way,” she commented, adding that “I hate when people sit down [during shows], it’s so rude!”
A band consisting of ex-Hella bassist Jonathan Hischke and former Cattle Decapitation/The Locust drummer Gabe Serbian, the group has been leaving its mark on more than just grassy fields. Having recently completed a US trek with Deftones and The Dillinger Escape Plan, the band will continue to support its 2010 effort Sin, Sin, Sin on Lollapalooza and an upcoming West Coast run with Queens of the Stone Age. And if all goes as planned, the band will enter the studio in fall to record its second album (the first with its revised lineup of Hischke and Serbian) with The Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez at the production helm; he also produced the group’s debut outing.
To get exclusive insight into the band’s new material, along with a recap of the Deftones/Dillinger run, Gender Bender and Hischke came over to Bonnerhaus, the Ryan’s Rock Show headquarters in North Hollywood, for an afternoon tea session.
A few things to note about this interview: While on tour in support of Deftones, Teri Gender Bender made a live cameo during the band’s set to perform the song “Knife Party.” In addition to playing in Le Butcherettes, drummer Gabe Serbian has a project with The Locust bandmate Justin Pearson called Retox — they recently inked a deal with Mike Patton’s Ipecac label. Lastly, the following picture is of bassist Jonathan Hischke in a train car; unexpectedly appearing in the photo: Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl, and Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme a.k.a. Them Crooked Vultures — but more on that during the interview.
Teri, let’s talk about the first time you met Omar Rodriguez Lopez. I know it was at a Le Butcherettes show in Guadalajara. The electricity at the venue went out, and you began singing through a megaphone. What happened then?