Rehearsals for the following Maneaters gig are underway in bassist/vocalist/bandleader Barb Brynstad’s south Minneapolis basement, and the opposite night as the remainder of the ‘eaters tuned up and settled in, guitarist/vocalist/bandleader Jenny Case took a moment to deliver a brief aloud reading of the lyrics from the song that inspired the band’s moniker, Hall & Oates’ slimey “Maneater,” which spent a month atop the charts in the summertime of 1982:
“The lady is wild, a she-cat tamed by the purr of a Jaguar/Money’s the matter, in the event you’re in it for love you ain’t gonna get too far/Oh, here she comes/Be careful boy she’ll chew you up/Oh, here she comes/ She’s a maneater…”
No one really laughs, and a collective heard-it-all weariness fills the room because the musicians tune up. But here in the summertime of 2023, when “Barbie” has made mocking the patriarchy all of the meaningful, hilarious, heartfelt popular culture rage, The Maneaters embrace a similarly wry and withering ethos for that upcoming gig, “Do Re MeToo 3,” which hits the Parkway Theater stage in south Minneapolis next month.
“I feel like this 12 months greater than every other 12 months, it’s more vital than ever,” said Brynstad, whose fulltime job is as singer/songwriter/bassist for anti-folk-rockers Turn Turn Turn.
“In previous years, I all the time considered it as a fun thing to do with women, a feminist event and a fundraiser too. But this 12 months greater than ever, with the Supreme Court overturning Roe, I never thought that might occur. So this 12 months it’s greater than ever develop into real. What has happened when your rights are taken away?”
“My thing all the time has just been empowering women, and seeing all these women together on stage with none dudes,” said Case, who splits her time as singer/bassist with beloved first-wave alt-rockers Flamin’ Oh’s and as founder/instructor of her nonprofit music school for women, women, trans and nonbinary folks She Rock She Rock.
“What number of shows do you go to and it’s all like dudes on stage? All these tribute shows, all of the time, all dudes. But you never see a stage with all women, and that’s my favorite a part of it. Just being up there with all these women.”
“Show, on! Absolutely,” chimed in Brynstad. “I never thought what’s happening would occur, just the indisputable fact that women’s rights coming under this type of fire would come to pass. But every little thing in Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” has happened. So yeah, now we have to talk up.”
A profit for Abortion Access Front, the Sept. 10 event features “sexist songs reclaimed by righteous feminists,” namely: The Maneaters (Brynstad, Case, drummer Alyse Emanuel, saxophonist Sue Orfield, and pianist Maureen McFarlane) backing an all-star lineup of singers that features Annie Mack, Meghan Kreidler, Cindy Lawson, Christy Costello, Diane Miller, Ava Levy, Mary Cutrufello, Dana Thompson, Janey Winterbauer, Tricky Miki, Aby Wolf and more.
Tonight, Maneaters rehearsal talk turns to the band’s newfound revelations about creepy lyrics in The Knack’s “My Sharona” and The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” “Do Re #MeToo” turns a neat subversive trick that way, with music serving as a pointed, poignant tonic for the pro-choice troops at a time when the movement suffers every day setbacks — the news of which is usually experienced alone, which is how we experience so many macro moments on this fractured world these strange days.
“It’s very easy to get bogged down by all the terrible news and especially when it comes to women’s reproductive health rights,” said Kreidler, singer for ferocious alt-rockers Kiss The Tiger.
“Oftentimes, we are able to feel so isolated just in our day-to-day life, coping with this stuff, but having the ability to come along with people and to place our collective voices together, I feel is really powerful: We all know coming together on the Parkway that all of us share the identical belief a few woman’s right to her own selections about her body. We get to come back together, and rejoice, and be in community, and create and spread joy, and I feel that form of energy is just as vital as embracing the difficulties and the sadness and the grief that also comes with these battles that we proceed to face day-to-day. Creating joy can also be an act of resistance. That’s why we do it and that’s why it’s vital.”
A lot of the past “Do Re MeToo” performances have been memorable for his or her humor, passion, and skewering of the male rock and folk canon, including Tina Schlieske’s rewrite of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s World,” Chastity Brown’s deadpan reading of Neil Young’s “A Man Needs A Maid,” Janey Winterbauer’s fist-in-cheek version of Guns N’ Roses’ “I Used To Love Her (But I Had To Kill Her),” Lori Barbero’s snarky tackle Alice Cooper’s head-scratcher “Only Women Bleed,” and Jill Sobule’s send-up of Neil Young’s domestic abuse ditty “Down By The River.”
“I feel all music form of has roots in misogyny,” said Kreidler. “Shitting on women in really popular music, not only in rock ‘n’ roll, but in hip-hop and rap and blues music, I mean, there’s all the time men talking shit about women. And having women sing these songs, it almost form of makes it funny, and then you definately really hear it for what it’s. It’s a robust thing to find a way to reclaim those songs and help people hear them otherwise in the event that they’ve never noticed it before.”
“It’s been occurring eternally, and as a blues historian and blues singer, I know that numerous those songs are built on blatant misogyny,” said songwriter, producer and powerhouse blues singer Annie Mack.
“These songs which might be American songbook favorites, songs that outline generations and define the mentality and double-down on rape culture, and double-down on a white male supremacist culture that all of us willingly bought into. You hear this music and also you’re similar to, ‘Oh my gosh, what prolific artists and their contribution,’ but then you definately realize it’s also indoctrination.
“You break it down, and you actually start to understand that is what I used to be eating, that is what I’ve been feeding myself as I’ve been developing my music. But how can I find liberation and speaking the reality as a girl once I’m listening to those songs and buying music from problematic artists, and I expect myself to be edified? This performance for me, personally, is the reclamation and liberation from the indoctrination and oppression that I used to be subjected to in my adolescence.”
“[Taking part in ‘Do Re #MeToo] is amazingly empowering. I used to be a women’s studies major. I’ve been a feminist since I used to be 16,” said Brynstad. “What we talked about in women’s studies, it was placing women at the middle of our consideration. And I feel like that’s why I’m drawn to musical events that feature women and feminists like this in particular, since it does empower women. It shows women doing things that historically they haven’t done before.”
“As a Black Queer Cisgender Woman,” said Mack, “recognizing and calling out the harmful, problematic, insidious nature of misogyny, white supremacy and retaliative culture has been imperative to my own healing and practice of agency and autonomy. From a collective standpoint, I’m excited to make use of my voice and performance together with these other amazing individuals to empower and demand change and accountability.”
“I assume for anybody who’s on the fence about coming out, I might just encourage them to do it since it’s such a fun evening,” said Kreidler, who performed at “Do Re #MeToo 2” in 2019. “I had such an incredible experience being in community with all these amazing and talented women, bringing our voices together for a similar cause. I feel it’s transformative from an artist standpoint, but additionally from an audience standpoint, to be participating in that act together.”