More Denim Than Lace for Female Rock Band : After Paying Its Dues in Bars, Group Wants to Showcase Its Songs in Higher-Profile Clubs

SAN CLEMENTE —  The all-female rock band isn’t such a novelty any more, but it still is sufficiently out of the ordinary to make people notice.

Julee Dennis and Stacey Tyner, the lead singer and guitarist of Denim & Lace, have some perspective on that subject: They have been playing together in all-women bands for nine years now.

“An all-girl band still makes people go, ‘Wow!’ ” Dennis said this week as the four members of Denim & Lace gathered for an interview at the house that she and Tyner share in San Clemente. “It may not be ‘that’s unbelievable’ like it was 10 years ago, but it’s still ‘that’s cool.’ It’s still rare.”

It’s more unusual than one would expect in Orange County, considering that the female-rocker tradition of the ‘80s was largely a Southern California phenomenon led by such Los Angeles bands as the Go-Gos and the Bangles. The all-female list also includes the Pandoras, L.A. raunch-rockers whose lineup includes members from Orange County.

(Happily, women in rock--not necessarily in all-female lineups--staked increasing claims in the late ‘80s. Such alternative rock bands as Black Flag, Throwing Muses, the Pixies and Sonic Youth, and front women such as Melissa Etheridge and perpetual role-model Bonnie Raitt, took women beyond their stereotypical role as “chick singers” and made it almost common for them to appear as full-fledged rockers armed with instruments).

Tyner, 28, and Dennis, 32, started out together back in the days when women players were very much a novelty. Dennis had grown up shuttling back and forth between her mother in Orange County and her father, a former jazz drummer who lived in Nebraska. Always drawn to music and performance, Dennis auditioned for a heavy-metal band in Omaha in 1980 and got the gig. At 22, she wasn’t just a woman rocker but a maternal rocker--by then, Dennis had two children from a marriage that had ended in divorce.

Tyner grew up in Oakland, Neb., population 800, where she began putting together rock bands while still in junior high school. By 1981, she was playing guitar in an otherwise male rock band that traveled the Top 40 circuit in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and South Dakota.

It was the success of the Go-Gos, half a continent away, that first brought Tyner and Dennis together. An Omaha music entrepreneur noted the Go-Gos’ success and decided he would bring the all-female rock phenomenon to the heartland. Tyner and Dennis answered an audition call for female musicians and found themselves playing together in a five-woman band that Dennis dubbed Tom Boy.

By 1987, Tom Boy had evolved into the Skirtz (still all women) and Tyner, Dennis and bassist Julie Carlton were dreaming the California rock dream. They headed to Orange County, where Dennis’ mother helped them get settled. Carlton (since married, she is now Julie Carlton-Albracht) marked the occasion by baking a cake. “It was decorated in the shape of a record contract, with drops of blood--signed in blood,” Dennis said.

The next 18 months brought lots of sweat and tears as the Skirtz plied the Top 40 bar scene, working in original songs where they could. But, regardless of that willingness to sign in blood if need be, they won no recording contract. The band went through 26 different drummers (two of them males). Discouraged, Carlton left for a band based in Santa Monica.

Dennis and Tyner found the reliable drummer they were looking for in Keri Cinquina, an Orange County native who had been keen on rocking since her parents got her a Mickey Mouse drum set to bang when she was 6. Then, in late 1988, the Nebraskans got homesick for open spaces.

“We begged Keri to go to Nebraska with us,” Dennis recalled. “She said, ‘Are you crazy?’ ”

“I thought I’d never see them again,” said Cinquina, at 21 the youngest band member. “I didn’t play the seven months they were gone. I was bummed. I was in shock.”

But last July, no longer keen on open spaces, Dennis persuaded Tyner to give California another try. Since then it has been back to the bars for Denim & Lace--with Carlton-Albracht, 25, re-enlisted in the band. Joking and exchanging quips with each other through the interview, the members of Denim & Lace seemed to have gotten over the experience of their first West Coast sojourn, which Dennis described as “a year and a half stuck in a deep trench.” The band’s goal now is to branch out from the Top 40 circuit and to begin playing some showcases for its original songs at higher-profile clubs like the Coach House and Bogart’s.

Denim & Lace’s sound, documented on a four-song tape it sells at gigs, is straight out of the spirited garage-rock tradition: Songs are built on simple, three-chord riffs, with Dennis’ gritty vocals backed by some nice group harmonies. Role models range from Joan Jett to the Rolling Stones and John Cougar Mellencamp. The lyrical concerns on the demo songs don’t stray too far from the bar-band conventions of celebrating rockin’ and lusty romance.

Dennis, a garrulous woman who says her only priorities in life are the band and her children, Mariah, 13, and Ricky, 10, handles the group’s business affairs. She has pitched the band successfully to such people as Jeff Neu, a San Clemente surfing movie producer who had Denim & Lace perform the title song for an upcoming film, “San Clemente Locals.”

The band has found regular gigs at Camp Pendleton, playing for virtually all-male crowds of young Marines. The women of Denim & Lace don’t like it when the Marines slam-dance into their equipment. Otherwise, Carlton-Albracht declares, “they’re like little puppy dogs, jumping all over you. They’re so affectionate you can’t put ‘em down.”

Despite the growing acceptance of female rockers, Denim & Lace still has to put up with some behavior that their male counterparts probably wouldn’t recognize.

“Stacey and I had seven guys drop their pants in front of us” at an acoustic duo gig they played a few months ago at Camp Pendleton, Dennis recounted. “I don’t know what they expected us to do or say. It was, ‘Dudes, you’re not impressing me.’ Stacey and I were just laughing. The club manager came charging out from behind the bar and said, ‘If the colonel came in here, each of you (the Marines, not the musicians) would be in the brig.”

“We don’t sell out in any way, the way some of the bar owners would like us to do,” Dennis said. “One offered us $500 for a new wardrobe. He didn’t like our ripped jeans, and he wanted to put us in real low-cut, sleazy-type things.

“You have to have a sense of humor. It isn’t, ‘I’m a woman and you have to respect me.’ Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t pretty, no matter what sex you are.”

Denim & Lace plays Wednesday night at El Mexi Rock, 28411 Marguerite Parkway in Mission Viejo (information: (714) 364-6674) and Thursday through Saturday nights at Popeye’s, 1700 Placentia Ave., Costa Mesa (information: (714) 650-1840).

ON THE SUBJECT OF WOMEN MUSICIANS: Guitarist Debbie Davies plays tonight at the Sunset Pub, 16655 Pacific Coast Highway, Sunset Beach, fronting her blues band along with singer-harmonica player Kellie Rucker.

EXPANDING ALTERNATIVE: Bohemian Cafe, the folk-jazz-alternative pop soiree that takes place each Friday and Saturday night in the cozy lounge opposite the main concert room at Bogart’s in Long Beach, is expanding to Thursday nights as well. The Thursday schedule begins Jan. 18 with the Zydeco Party Band. Amy Bovee, an acoustic guitarist, and jazz-fusioneer Rick Flauding appear Jan. 25, and the Nick Pyzow Band and gospel-R&B; singer Charles Gibbs play Feb. 1. Musicians interested in playing the Bohemian Cafe can contact booker Jay Tinsky at (213) 392-4687.

MAKING ITS WAY: “Co-Op,” the cooperative CD release that spotlights more than a dozen unsigned bands, most of them from Orange County, is making its way in the world with national distribution to college radio stations and music journalists. Nine of the acts featured on the compilation will celebrate its release with a show Jan. 18 at Bogart’s. Appearing are Exude, the Tearjerkers, John Walker, Poodles Must Die, George Lawton, Beth Fitchett, Carol Martini, Ted Waterhouse and the Dark Horses and Them Lonesome Tracks.

OPPOSING THE ODIOUS: An Anaheim-based organization of hard-rock bands called Worldwide Music Union is going into the concert promotion business in an effort to combat the odious pay-to-play system. Under the system, common in Southland hard-rock circles, bands wind up paying promoters and clubs for the right to perform for an audience, instead of the other way around. The group is sponsoring a show Thursday at Goodies in Fullerton. Grindstone, Apocalypse, Infected and Venicide will play a metal and hard-core bill starting at 7:30 p.m. Tickets cost $5.

Headed by Tim Claws, a contributor to the Flipside music magazine, and Dear Monic, who plays in an all-woman thrash-metal band called F. Defective, the Music Union is trying to set itself up as a clearinghouse for information and bookings for bands seeking to escape or avoid the pay-to-play system. Dues are $3 a month for each member band, Monic said. Information: (714) 647-2307.