Donoma
For decades Kenosha and Racine’s live-music scene was dominated by all-male groups. These days, however, the most exciting music from these former factory towns, set a few miles apart on the shore of Lake Michigan, comes from acts fronted by guitar-slinging women. Matching catchy tunes with captivating performance styles, four bands in particular have amassed a loyal following in these southeastern Wisconsin cities, without Milwaukee venues.
Donoma, Folkswagon, Ash Can School and the Jill Plaisted Band are breaking new artistic ground. Kenosha and Racine may be minor moons in the outer cultural orbit of Chicago, but these bands are helping them shine brightly. Here’s why they’re worth the short drive south to catch them at a hometown bar, where there’s rarely a cover charge.
Donoma: Art-rock with sex appeal
Ensconced in a spacious subterranean rehearsal room and recording studio in uptown Kenosha, Donoma’s Stephanie Vogt totters gorgeously on red-ribboned high heels while shooting a video. She’s stretching a skintight mini-dress and screaming “Santa Baby” as though it were a kiss-off number. Suddenly she stops, halting the uptempo hard rock, and laughs loudly.
The other members of Donoma—Shelle Mounce (bass), Tim King (guitar), Israel Alpizar (drums) and Nick Campolo (violin)—are having a wonderful Christmas time, too. A mural of David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Bon Scott provides added inspiration. The band has an attacking sound, the raw energy of artists in rebellion. They also excel at introspective ballads, like “Phantom Limb” from their 2010 album A Sight of the Sun. Vogt’s brash whisky alto is as dependable as her rhythm guitar- and keyboard-playing. Donoma merges influences ranging from punk to Pearl Jam into a Frankenstew of menace and compassion. It’s sometimes pretentious, but frequently provocative.
A longtime chronicler of the club scene in both cities, Kenosha News music columnist Paddy Fineran complains that most rock ’n’ roll has lost its essential dangerousness. So he finds Donoma’s edgy sound and charged performance style refreshing. “Donoma is ready to break out of the local scene,” Fineran says, noting that their second album is being produced by Mike Hoffmann (EIEIO, Semi-Twang), a Milwaukeean with major-label connections.
Kicking back in jeans and T-shirt with a can of PBR, Vogt embraces her fate. She seems unfazed by the routine of rehearsing, collaborating with her bandmates and entertaining fickle audiences. Donoma, after all, has played about 350 gigs so far. The nuisance and necessity of a day job doesn’t bother her either.
“I want to earn a living doing music full-time,” she says confidently.
Folkswagon: An Americana siren sings of heartbreak and joy
In her 40s now, Racine-based singer/songwriter Rachelle Van Offeren has been punched in the face a few times by life. But she absorbed the blows and turned her bruises into art. Folkswagon (est. 2008) is the perfect vehicle for her personal, plaintive songs of love and loss. Van Offeren is a gifted guitarist and a seductive vocalist, especially when singing close harmonies with her sister and tambourine-wielding bandmate Susan Ma.
Folkswagon’s charm comes from the spell that Van Offeren casts with her gritty, full-throated soprano. It suggests a lonely siren luring you towards a welcome doom. Her songs “Don’t Know How” and “Every Once in a While” (from Folkswagon’s 2010 album Fresh Fruit) are minor-key masterpieces of yearning and regret. The players come from both Racine and Kenosha. With its rootsy folk-pop Americana sound, Folkswagon would feel at home in Nashville, Tenn., or Austin, Texas.
Jill Plaisted Band: Soulful singer practices aikido with acoustic guitar
Jill Plaisted’s profession is social work, but her vocation is making music. Meanwhile, this busy 30-something singer/guitarist is working toward a master’s degree in counseling at Concordia College. She also practices the martial art of aikido, whose Japanese name means “the way of mutual spirit,” a fitting description for her Kenosha-based band.
Featuring virtuoso electric guitarist Tom Barr, drummer Cy Costabile and Bill Robbins on bass/vocals, the Jill Plaisted Band plays mostly covers, including that groovy Wilco/Woody Guthrie collaboration “California Stars.” For a recent show at Henry & Wanda’s in Racine they tossed a few Plaisted originals into every set, including the dreamy “Lost for You.” Plaisted’s voice is soul-deep and pure, a refined instrument capable of going from jazzy moan to gospel cry in a heartbeat.
Ash Can School: Funky pop-rock transfused by new members
Despite the fact that they’ve been on the scene for 30 years, the married musical partners Dave Jude and Janet Lee Aiello of Ash Can School gig harder than most local bands. And they have a vast catalog of original songs to draw on. At a November basement rehearsal in Kenosha, Dave joked that he selects them at random for set lists.
Rejuvenated by the addition of drummer Tom Selear and guitarist Guy Crucianelli, the Aiellos’ band mixes tongue-in-cheek working-class consciousness (“Lifestyles of the Poor & Unknown”) with a quirky pop-song sensibility (“The Only Lonely One”). Echoing The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde, Janet delivers The Kinks’ “Stop Your Sobbing” with conviction. Demure offstage, Janet stalks the floor, fierce and amusing as she mocks, growls and croons. Ash Can School has released four albums on iTunes, including 2014’s The Ever Blooming Knockout Rose. Like their peers in Donoma, Folkswagon and the Jill Plaisted Band, they’re another example of passionate musicians playing true-to-life songs for thinking adults.
