Senior Claudia Ferme said she remembers posting a call out message to Facebook in 2015 after deciding she wanted to start a band.
“Female drummers wanted.”
Soon after, she met now junior Jordan Gomes-Kuehner at a house show in town, and the two became Bloomington’s all-girl garage rock group Her Again.
Her Again will perform 9 p.m. Friday in Blockhouse Bar with Daisy Chain, Sedcairn Archives and Jeron Braxton + the Tomogotchis. This spring Her Again is going on its first tour with shows in Indianapolis, Chicago and Detroit.
With Ferme on lead guitar, Gomes-Kuehner on drums, and newest addition sophomore Megan Searl on bass and each of the ladies contributing vocals, Her Again’s sound fluctuates somewhere between flirty surf-punk and doo-wop.
With no prior songwriting experience, the band started out playing Bikini Kill and the Cure covers in basements across Bloomington. They said they laugh when thinking about Her Again’s early days, when they were first finding their voices as writers and musicians.
“It was kind of a rough first half of the band,” Ferme said. “I really appreciate the people who stuck by us and kept coming to our shows.”
After a lot of practice and growth as a band, it wasn’t long before Ferme started writing and recording pop songs for the group.
While they highlight prominent female artists like Angel Olsen and Hinds as songwriting inspiration, they don’t confine their music to once specific sound.
“When I listen to Claudia’s songs, it’s hard to pinpoint the influence, because it doesn’t really sound like anything in the scene,” Gomes-Kuehner said. “There are pop sensibilities there, but we’re not trying to sound like any weird indie subgenre or anything.”
They credit the local music scene for most of their inspiration and support.
Growing in house shows around town, Ferme said the personal aspect of Bloomington’s music scene has been a big component of their success.
“The house show scene here is really what gave us this opportunity,” Gomes-Kuehner said. “There’s a lot of support. There are lots of opportunities to play. If we wanted to play a show every weekend, we could do it.”
Two years after their cover days Her Again said it is proud to have become an inspiration for budding musicians, especially young women, around town.
“It’s really cool that we can inspire other people to play music because that’s what inspired me,” Ferme said. “If it’s something that you really want to do, you just have to keep doing it, and you can’t let people discourage you.”
In a male-dominated scene the girls agreed that it’s not necessarily harder to be an all-girl group. It’s just different.
Despite being held to different expectations and branded by looks rather than music, Her Again has come out on top as what they set out to be: not “girls with instruments,” but just musicians.
“Whenever you put yourself out there as an all-girl band playing shows in the male-dominated scene, you know that you’re not just doing it for you,” Gomes-Kuehner said. “You’re kind of doing it for all girls.”
