Today’s teenagers have traded in their old leisure activities, like mall trips and movie screenings, for confronting corrupt politicians and organizing nationwide rallies. Now more than ever, it feels like the adolescents of Generation Z are steering cultural shifts towards the future. As some of the youngest members of the Milwaukee music scene, the teenage girls of Gas Station Sushi are teaching themselves how to demand respect as they continue their transition from teenagers to young adults in a child-unfriendly music community.
Nyanna, Olivia, Caterina and Maya met at Girls Rock Milwaukee during the summer of 2013. Aged 11 and 12, each girl came into the summer camp without much music experience, but two summers later, Gas Station Sushi was formed. After a gig at Riverwest FemFest last winter, the girls won some recording studio time from a festival-wide raffle and used the opportunity to record their debut EP, Uglier in Person, whose title was inspired by an infamous Milwaukee lawyer. The girls received their first taste of working in a professional studio with sound engineer Amy Upthagrove (Red Lodge, Awktopus) and cranked out a five-song release.
Many adults in bands know how hard it is to schedule band practice, and for high school students who are still driving with their learner’s permits, getting together is even more difficult. AP classes, after-school jobs and volunteering are only a few of the pressures high school kids face today, and the GSS members admit to sometimes feeling overwhelmed by their commitments. To maintain a sense of balance, the girls devote their Sundays to band practice at guitarist Caterina’s house.
The girls often keep their band activities on the downlow around their high school-aged peers. They say only their closest friends know about their weekend activities, and drummer Maya says she was shocked when she learned a girl in the grade above her was sporting a Gas Station Sushi sticker on her water bottle. “I don’t know her, but I guess she’s been to one of our concerts,” she says. “It was cool; it was a unique thing to experience.”
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Bassist Olivia and singer Nyanna both keep their lips sealed about their band, though Nyanna remembers someone asking her about Gas Station Sushi after they saw a picture of the band on Instagram. The girls acknowledge that being in a high school band is an anomaly these days, especially when fewer and fewer young people are fans of rock music. “Nobody at my school is cool enough to be in a band,” says Olivia.
Their adolescent, underage status means booking gigs is a lot harder, and even getting their friends to come out to shows is a constant struggle. “We can’t go to a lot of venues,” says Caterina, “and when we do play bars, there’s beer everywhere. When I walk in, I feel like I look like a child.” Even though they’ve played their share of bar shows, Olivia agrees playing in adult-friendly venues can still feel ostracizing—especially in a city where so few all-ages venues exist. “We’ll walk in to set up, and people look at us like, ‘Why is this child here?’” she says. “We have to walk in and firmly say, “I am setting up! I am playing here in an hour!”
Not being taken seriously by the adults around them is a struggle that follows Gas Station Sushi almost everywhere they go—although Olivia says being surrounded by consistently low standards does have occasional perks. “You’re able to prove yourself to people,” she says with a smirk.
Gas Station Sushi play an EP release show with Red Lodge and Rocket Paloma at Anodyne Coffee Roasters on Friday, March 9 at 7 p.m.
