[ concert preview ] “The problem of women being under attack by this society is still relevant 30 years from the band’s initial beginnings, and so there is a receptive body as to what Bikini Kill represents in this time and place,” says Lyle. “The band’s presence alone provides an umbrella for multiple generations of women and non-masculine identified people to come together and share the same space with each other, and see each other, and potentially get to know each other and experience together the full spectrum of emotions. From female rage to joy.” A seemingly unstoppable multitasker, besides her Bikini Kill six-string duties, Lyle is also focused on the impending release of a mutual-aid benefit album on June 3 through Bandcamp (ericadawnlylevicecooler.bandcamp.com). Land Trust: Benefit for NEFOC will raise money for the Northeast Farmers of Color Network, and it’s got a head-spinning array of punk and underground guest musicians pitching in with Lyle and collaborator Vice Cooler — from members of the Raincoats to Mike Watt to Kathleen Hanna and Kim Gordon. The initial inspiration for Land Trust came during the early months of the pandemic in 2020. With Bikini Kill’s tour canceled and inspired by the outpouring of mutual aid support she was seeing all around her, the plan was hatched for a digital-only album based around tracks she and Cooler were writing in prolific bursts, with guest vocalists from all around her creative circles. “This is an indigenous-led, grassroots organization that’s acquiring land to return it to indigenous nations and to help POC farmers set up collectively-run land trust farms. So they help people buy farms. They help people start farms,” explains Lyle of NEFOC. “Having land makes a lot possible.” Though Sunday will be Bikini Kill’s first time in the Sunshine Erica Dawn Lyle at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles with Bikini Kill, April 29, 2022 | Photo by Reayna Zemel State, Lyle spends a significant amount of time in Florida and still has family and connections here. She’s looking forward to her return. “When I was a kid playing shows in Miami, we often were taking a generator out into the Everglades to some barren parking lot in the middle of nowhere, in order to simply have a place where we felt like we could be ourselves without regulation by society. It’s wonderful 30 years later to be able to play for a much larger audience, and in a more receptive sort of way,” says Lyle. Talk inevitably turns to the state of things in Florida, and Lyle is clear-eyed in the way that only someone who has spent BY MATTHEW MOYER significant time here can be. “It’s heartbreaking what’s hapo arguments. Bikini Kill are a band that have made an has even been known to play free-improv-noise when she has pening in Florida. … This place could have been paradise on indelible impact on alternative music and the larger a spare second or two in her schedule. She does Florida proud, earth, and yet it’s just been hijacked by all these evil interests,” says Lyle. “It’s important to remember that Florida has been pop culture landscape in the three decades since the in other words. Orlando Weekly reached Lyle by telephone with the Florida strategically hijacked entirely by these right-wing proto-fascist release of still-essential debut Riot Grrrl album Revolution Girl shows mere days away. interests that don’t actually represent the true makeup of the Style Now in 1991. “It’s electrifying to be back on stage with Bikini Kill again. state.” A reconvened Bikini Kill are today just as vital in a cultural And yet Lyle remains hopeful about possible futures for and political landscape that sometimes feels like not a damn They’re fiery, brilliant performers. And the audiences are thing has changed. North American touring originally set really special,” says Lyle of the shows thus far. “We get a lot Florida, hesitant to give any experiential insight to the youth for 2020 was postponed, but now it’s happening. It’s really of really excited, teenage female-identified people and lots of on the ground doing the hard work. young queer people coming to the shows. After not being on a “Florida kids probably don’t need my advice on how to happening. fight back. There is already These facts make Bikini Kill’s show at the Plaza Live this stage in front of audiences for a strong tradition of excitweekend notable enough. Here’s another: This clutch of dates a couple of years, to go from ing youth activism from how in Miami, Orlando and St. Augustine mark the first time Bikini a place of relative isolation to BIKINI KILL this profound togetherness is the Parkland kids became Kill have ever played Florida. with Glass Body national anti-gun violence Even more notable than that? The guitarist for Bikini Kill really moving.” 7:30 p.m. Sunday, May 29 With Bikini Kill’s multiadvocates, to Zander Moricz, since their 2019 comeback is none other than DIY underthe youngest public plaintiff ground lifer and legend — and Orlando-born — Erica Dawn generational audience in The Plaza Live mind — is it a coincidence in the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ lawsuit. Lyle. 425 N. Bumby Ave. Zander is in Sarasota, the first Where do we even start with Erica Dawn Lyle’s towering that audio from Bikini Kill’s plazaliveorlando.org openly gay class president at body of work? Lyle, a trans woman, is an inspirational creative Washington, D.C., Capitol $32-$40 his school, who is now fightfigure with deep roots in Floridian punk going back decades. Plaza protest performance She’s responsible for the seminal and compulsively readable from 1992 (where the flyer ing to be allowed to speak zine SCAM; has played in bands from Chickenhead to Black presciently shouted “Fuck the at graduation. Florida kids Rainbow to Allergic to Bullshit; she’s half of the art and music fucking rightwing Supreme Court”) is running in an endless already know what to do and how to do it!” collective Sobbeth; runs Bermuda Triangle Press; co-founded loop in this writer’s brain? — Lyle talks about how there’s little And what will Florida kids be doing this weekend? Singing the Brooklyn art space 7 Belvidere; has written books and room for the luxury of nostalgia in Bikini Kill’s music and their hearts out to Bikini Kill. Grrrls to the front. contributed art criticism to publications like Artforum; and worldview. music@orlandoweekly.com
REBEL GRRRL Bikini Kill guitarist Erica Dawn Lyle talks Florida roots, returning to the stage, and a new mutual aid album
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MAY 25-31, 2022 ● ORLANDO WEEKLY
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