Vinnie Guidera & the Dead Birds turn election grief into action

Vinnie Guidera sat at Old Ironsides with a friend and five or six other strangers, eyeing a muted television set at the bar. It was election night, and for patrons at Old I, the first stage of grief.

Perhaps, they decided, some kind of solace could be found at Simon’s Bar & Cafe blocks away. Guidera heard their TVs had the sound on. It turned out to be the celebratory chatter of Fox News anchors, and the Simon’s crowd wasn’t so glum about Trump’s inevitable victory.

“The first thing that came up emotionally was anger,” Guidera remembers of that night. “And then there’s this sort of shock and disappointment in your peers.”

The emotions were familiar. In 2008, when Guidera was old enough to vote in his first election, Californians simultaneously opted for Barack Obama and “Yes” to Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriage in the state. That outcome, much like this year’s election, blindsided him.

“It was great to see the country take such a huge step forward by electing an African-American president,” Guidera says. “But in California, it was equally devastating to see voters strip a minority group of their rights.”

The election results were naturally all he and his band, Vinnie Guidera & the Dead Birds, could talk about over group texts in the days that followed.

And while the Sacramento trio, made up of Guidera (guitar and vocals), Ian McDonald (drums) and Kevin Hayes (bass) are all lighthearted human beings offstage, and are not political at all in their music, they also know how to mourn productively. Their debut album, Lows, released in November 2015, was Guidera’s personal exercise in transforming some of his most devastating experiences, from the ends of relationships to the death of his grandfather, into something cathartic, chronic depression and passing grief entombed in 11 low-mood, acoustic rock songs.

The band members figured they could use their performances as a form of activism, standing up for a group that Guidera felt was at risk under the new administration: women. Guidera pointed out Trump’s lewd comments, including those in a leaked Access Hollywood tape which he later chalked up to “locker room talk,” and Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s record of seeking to curtail abortion rights, as a couple of examples.

“I figured that it was a good time for a gesture, just to say that we’re still conscious of the people who are going to be underrepresented for the next four years,” Guidera says.

They came up with the idea of a benefit show, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Planned Parenthood.

The show, slated for Saturday, January 14, will be held a week out from Trump’s inauguration in Washington D.C.

While the Dead Birds will headline, Guidera made sure to bill female-fronted bands, including Sacramento acts Ghoul School, Mallard and Emma Simpson, who is also the co-founder of Girls Rock Sacramento, a local music education program.

“There are a lot of really talented female artists in Sacramento,” Guidera says. “And the whole point of this show is to display that they’re as valued in our community as anyone else.”

Guidera says he doesn’t see the new administration changing its tune.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to change the world with a benefit show at a coffee shop, but I don’t think that’s a deterrent for anyone to do what they can to help,” he says.