Paying dues
Indie quartet Po’ Girl tours almost 300 days a year — and is making it pay off
By Bliss 11/25/2009
There’s nothing that gives you a healthy new perspective beats like the view from the other side of fence — or, in the case of British Columbia-based quartet Po’ Girl, the other side of the border. Formed six years ago in Vancouver, Po’ Girl — aka Allison Russell, Awna Teixeira, Benny Sidelinger and JJ Jones — tour hard. Frontwoman Russell estimates they played close to 300 dates this past year, their itinerary for 2010 is filling up, and they’re planning for 2012 as well.
While countless US bands are singing the can’t-afford-to-tour blues, Russell says Po’ Girl can’t afford not to tour.
“The structures are all changing, and the infrastructures are all changing,” she says during a conversation about the music industry’s ongoing tumult. “But at the same time I feel like the live show is even more important than it was 15 years ago. It comes down to the grassroots, personal connections with your fans, and finding them wherever they are.
I think because we’re a Canadian band, we were forced to do that early on in our career. It may be different for bands that are growing up in the LA region, which is huge and populated, basically playing there a long time before [going] further afield. The next big city [from Vancouver] is Calgary, and that’s 13 hours away. You do these insane, death-defying drives through treacherous mountain passes and terrible weather. And you go, ‘Wait a second — to the south there’s this whole really big country with a lot of people!’ … To have longevity and to make music your full-time career, most Canadian bands have to go abroad.”With their eclectic instrumentation (everything from clarinet and glockenspiel to banjo and bicycle bells) and Billie Holiday-in-Appalachia vibe, Po’ Girl’s music — “influenced by early blues and early jazz and early folk,” per Russell — is tough to categorize. They’re in the midst of a West Coast tour of listening rooms and radio stations, promoting their newest album, “Deer in the Night.”
Most of their album sales are generated from the side of the stage.
“As a little indie band,” Russell says, “what we have found is that we’re actually doing better in the last two years than we did for the first four years of our career, when we were working with a bigger label. …
“[We] make a lot of personal sacrifices, but … it’s early days yet, and in any career you have to pay the dues. Friends of mine have $50,000 of debt from school. We spend 300 days of the year on the road and struggle to make ends meet, but we’re building something as we go along.”
Po’ Girl plays the Coffee Gallery Backstage, 2029 N. Lake Ave., Altadena, at 8 p.m. Friday; $15. Info: (626) 398-7917. pogirl.net.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT