Written by Ian Blechschmidt

With a sound that's as raw as their name, it's clear that the Bleeding Hickeys are all about the rawk. But under their great, stripped-down punk, one also finds an inescabable groove. This is what Hickeys' bass player Sarah Black says about bringing punk back to the dance floor.


How’s the response to the album [Lovers & Haters, Unite!] been so far?

It’s been really good. We’ve been getting played a lot on the radio again, which is cool. There’s a new station here, 89.3, which is like a … I don’t know what their format is quite yet, I have to figure it out. But they’re playing us a lot in rotation on that station, which is kind of neat. Along with the college stations.

How did [the band] get together?

I just started the band with Christina [Schmitt], the guitar player, and I played with her in a band a long time ago, an all girl punk rock thing called Period, back in our early twenties. And I’ve kind of known her off and on and we decided we’d definitely start a band, and we did, and then we tried to look for drummers and singers. And then eventually we found Jenn [Gori, vocals], and that kind of got locked down.

Are you guys a jam band? Do you just get together and bang stuff out, or…?

Well, we all kind of come up with stuff. We’re not actually that good at jamming, but someone will come up with something and we’ll kind of, like, chew on it until it gels into something.

I was wondering about your sound, too, because you’ve got this great, simple, straight ahead sound — I think I read in one of the press things on your website that someone called it "skeletal" ... is that something you guys do on purpose?

Not really. I think it’s just because you don’t really have a rhythm guitar player, or there’s not two guitar players. In a way, it would happen automatically with that. And the kind of guitar tone that Christina likes is pretty, like… well, she has a distortion pedal and stuff, but it’s not like… it’s not huge ... So that leaves more room for the bass, which is on purpose for me, which is why I like the band because…I can do stuff and get heard, you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I guess it’s, kind of on purpose, but you know, I like bands that have big guitars and big sound too, but that’s just how it evolved.

It’s a very natural, automatic thing?

Yeah.

Another thing I was wondering about in terms of your sound is the "dance punk" aspect — one of the quotes on your site is "out of the garage, onto the dance floor;" so first of all, why are you guys interested in making people dance?

I think we both just innately like stuff that’s got a little bit of a groove to it. And that’s the angle that we have, instead of just straight-ahead hardcore punk …I don’t like that, it’s not fun as a bass player to play like that, except for, like, maybe once in a while. I think we just like to groove things. And then people start to dance, and we say "oh, cool!"

Do you guys get a lot of flak [for] that? Trying to combine two sounds, the sort of raw punk and the dancey disco and stuff?

No. We haven’t. We don’t even have a keyboard, that’s when you really get it. When we have a keyboard, then…

The keyboard and the skinny ties, right? That’s when you really start to get into trouble?

Yeah.

Do you ever get flak for having girls in your band? Because that was another thing — I’ve been reading all your press releases, and someone said that people who hate you are suffering from "estrogen envy." Do you run into that a lot?

It’s kind of covert. For me, I think personally I probably run into it more than I realize. And I just kind of assume it’s not there, but it kind of is. You know what I mean? It's kind of a mixed bag. It’s somewhat easier for you to get in and get shows right away because it’s girls, it’s a novelty…but at some point when you try to get to the next level, and having basic respect that guys tend to get, you know, then you’re like "what happened?"

Do you think that’s changing now? Because a lot of …well, in my observation anyway, a lot more girls are picking up guitars and are being able to do something with it.

Maybe, I mean I think punk rock started out with a lot of women … back in the seventies or whatever…and it just depends on where you live. But I think it’s always hard for girls. I mean, it’s very competitive and it’s hard for girls to be competitive. Maybe not so much for bass… but for guitar players, maybe for lead guitar players it’s taboo, you know? But if you rock, you rock. You just go out and you do your set, you know what I mean?