SHERRY FRASER
Two Ton Boa : Olympia, Thekla Theater (fall 2000).


Bib : Would you be ready to have a girl instead of guys in this band ?
Sherry : Absolutely, I'm completely... I don't give a shit about the gender thing. It's funny because before Brian played in the band, I wanted the band to be all girls, and I really wanted to stick to that, and not change that. But I don't feel that way anymore at all, i feel like it's not an issue, I feel like if the person is an amazing musician, and they care a lot about 2tb, i'm lucky and I don't care what their gender is. I mean if they are an amazing musician like Brian, it's not gonna hurt the music of the band....

Bib : Do you think it would actually be harder to play in an all girl band ? You might not be looked upon as a band full stop to start with, like gender being more important than music? Then there might be complex power relation that become important...
Sherry : Yeah, there's different issues that come with gender, definitely. i feel like if the musician was amazing enough that we could deal with those issues, that would be fine. I mean if I was playing with a female who was an incredible musician, I wouldn't let these issues stop the music... We wouldn't have to pay attention to us being labialised, categorized and trivialized, we would be so over it, we could just ignore all this. Or on the other hand, we might as well just be ignored as a novelty because of all these girls in the band. Of course with men being in a band, there are different issues that come up... I guess there are going to be issues no matter who is in the band...

Bib : What did you think of this show Le Tigre played at Meow Meow in September? Did you like it? Was it the first time you saw Kathleen Hannah ?
Sherry : Well, yeah actually, except karaoke... I saw her sing karaoke once...in Olympia, @ Thekla, here in Olympia, she was the karaoke hostess...I am a big fan of Kathleen Hannah, definitely, she's amazing.

Bib : Did she inspire you when you were younger ?
Sherry : Well she has inspired me more, let's see... in creativity combined with politics. To me she is very symbolic of somebody who is incredibly creative and brilliant, colourful. She's just filled with all this light, she's constantly creative. But she's totally incorporating the political and personal arena in what she is doing, she's very like educational, and I think that's really amazing, highly rare.

Bib : Would you say that the community here is very supportive ?
Sherry : I can't really speak for Olympia, like I know tons of people here, may are my friends and we're just like doing things together, so I don't really think about all this.

Bib : Right, I mean people @ Kill Rock Stars, for example, since that's the label that released your EP.
Sherry : Well, you know I think I am kind of new to KRS, sometimes i just hear some kind of bits and pieces about other people who used to be in Olympia and stuff, but I'm like whatever... and I think Olympia totally loves Kathleen Hannah, like absolutely, she's a goddess here.

Bib : How did you meet the guys from KRS ?
Sherry : Well, I met Slim around town, and also I made a demo with Radio and Rachel and gave him one, so I met him through that. i didn't know him hardly at all when I gave him that demo. Brian knew him as well, and he loved the demo, and he and Brian were talking one day after Brain joined the band and we were thinking... well you know Brian had done this whole band thing before and he jsut thought it would be good if we put out a 7 inch, so we'd have something to sell at shows, something really basic. So, him and Slim were hanging out one day and they just started on that topic and they got totally into it. Brian came up to me and said 'Slim wants to put out a 7" of us', and I was like 'cool'...

Bib : When was that ?
Sherry : June of 1999...but it just kind of became an ep because I had like extra songs that were done and I was like showing the band. then Slim thought an ep would be a much better idea than a 7" because they sell better, so if you had like you know 4 good songs... and then it became like 5.

Bib : Where did you do the demo tape ?
Sherry : @ Mushroom studios @ Vancouver. And we got to record there... oh, my god, it was a strange situation... My high school sweet-heart...well here the gossips are gonna start... You know I fell weird about all this, especially with female musicians I feel really paranoid because I feel like they are going to attach me to him, say like 'oh. she must write music like him, or something'... but we write completely differently, play music in a totally different worlds. I mean, we met each other when we were 15 years old, we grew up together and we were each other's musical cheerleaders for years when nobody gave a shit about what we were doing. I mean it sounds so silly and melodramatic, but it felt like people did not want us to play music, just because it's not a realistic way to make money in this world. It's really weird because he banged, he had this one hit, and he bought a studio with it and he told me 'hey, if you wanna record the ep there, go for it and won't charge you the dayly rate.'So basically all our costs were like hotels and food and like driving up and down, up and down...It actually turned up to be quite a bit of money...

Bib : How long did it take you to record the whole thing ?
Sherry : It took us longer than we thought it'd take. it took us like 4 weeks.

Bib : So you were doing the demo with Brian and Dan ?
Sherry : Yes, he is from New York city, he might be the one drumming for the first album as well, but I don't know yet, I don't want to drop names. He's definitely interested in doing that and he's an incredible drummer, so I am fully happy that he's interested.

Bib : How did you like recording then ? Was it long boring ? Tiring ? Fascinating ?
Sherry : I learnt a lot, I felt like I went through 10 life times because I had never been in a big studio before and this was just completely different. And you think you're gonna go in there and get some like amazing piece of music because there's some engineer that knows what he's doing and he's gonna show you how to do it right, and you trust this person, and you're like.... It was very difficult.


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