Sisters at play

Chances are if you open one of the local weeklies at any given time you’ll run into at least one of these women’s names: Candice Armenta, Shigemi Minetaka and Holly Taylor, who are all working musicians. They perform regularly in venues all over Chico (and beyond).

I took the opportunity of National Women’s Month to interview them about what it’s like to be female musicians in a field populated mostly by men (at least in this town). All have a healthy and lively attitude about what it means to be on a journey of self-expression, self-discovery and entertainment.

Holly Taylor is a jazz singer best known for her duo work with her husband, seven-string guitarist Eric Peter. The two have played together for the past eight years.

Taylor has loved to sing since she was a kid. As a first-grader, she would invite friends over to be guests on her “television shows” and would pretend to be Dinah Shore or Cher and sing and dance and interview her friends. Carole King’s Tapestry album made a huge impression on a teenaged Taylor; she loved King’s natural-sounding voice. But it was Ella Fitzgerald and her version of “’Round Midnight” who, eight years ago, converted Taylor to jazz.

Along her way, Taylor also learned to play piano, clarinet, flute, bassoon and tuba and performed in a handbell choir. Taylor’s instrumental multi-tasking is matched by her multi-faceted role in the band.

She functions as singer, band leader, booking agent, business manager, hospitality coordinator, mother figure—responsibilities that she seems to take on cheerfully—while sometimes being perceived as “just a girl singer,” with all the trivialization that often goes along with that, including that some people don’t even consider her a “real musician” because she doesn’t play an instrument (she does consider her voice to be an instrument).

Taylor is presently commuting to the Bay Area for voice lessons, where she is being encouraged to let loose, not play it safe, bust out with some “Aretha-ness,” all to her delight … and a little fear.

If she had the chance to sing in an all-female band, would she want to? “In a heartbeat!” she replied. “I would feel safer with a group of women trying something weird and wild.”

Japanese-born jazz flutist Shigemi Minetaka, like Taylor, performs primarily in a duo with her guitarist husband, although she also plays with other musicians (almost always men). Minetaka and hubby Thomas Mattman comprise the group Jazzons. Also like Taylor, Minetaka functions simultaneously as musician, band leader, agent and businesswoman.

Naturally shy, Minetaka says, “To be in control among men and have assertiveness is like changing my personality. But if I want a band I need to get used to it!” She recalled a recent experience of coming home from a rehearsal with a group of male musicians and bursting into tears from the stress of it, explaining to me that she was sure the men had no idea at rehearsal that she was feeling uncomfortable, because she had to be the leader and not appear intimidated.

Minetaka on playing the flute: “I love flute. But depending on a situation, the nice characteristics of flute, being soft and quiet, become the weakness, especially when I play in a full band with other horn players. … And when I’m among male musicians, I feel flute emphasizes my femininity more than I want.”

That, she told me, is why she is learning to play alto sax: “I feel more powerful.”

Piano, though, is the instrument that Minetaka most identifies with. She loves Bill Evans and Horace Silver. “I feel most attached to piano. … It gives me harmony, rhythm, melody. … Playing piano would give me a lot of freedom as a musician.” Recently, Minetaka began lessons with Sacramento-based jazz pianist Joe Gilman. She sees her future increasingly filled with piano playing—and maybe even some singing, à la Diana Krall.

Rock drummer Candice Armenta, who moved to Chico from the Bay Area five years ago, began playing professionally at the age of 14, when her all-girl band, Flare, was asked to play at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco alongside alt-rockers Seven Year Bitch. Armenta initially started out as a flute player but switched over to drums by the time she was 8 because she wanted to play a more powerful instrument. She got into Flare because she was tired of being automatically dismissed by male musicians as too weak to play the drums before they even heard her.

Armenta toured last year with the all-woman AC/DC cover band Hell’s Belles. Her Seattle-to-Austin trek lasted three weeks, taking her through severe climate changes (ranging from -10 to 95 degrees F.), lack of sleep, low pay, terrible asthma from second-hand smoke, band fights and a flat tire with no spare. After finishing her set at South-by-Southwest, Armenta found herself sick, tired, broke and stranded in Texas by the lead singer/manager, who drove away in the band van in a rage, never to be seen again. So much for sisterhood …

On the other hand, her collaborator of the past three years in their two-piece experimental group, Robots Hate Cowboys, bass player Andy Cose, is just the opposite of how some might view a male musician. He’s the one who cries, say Armenta. But, like Taylor and Minetaka, she is the one who does all the business and organizing. Their CD, Robots Hate Cowboys, is due out at the end of March.

Do rock women get more cred than jazz women? "No!" she replied flat out. We speculated that maybe the bluegrass women had an easier time of it. But that’s for another story. …