WHO: Geisha (opening for Judybats)
WHERE: The Longbranch
WHEN: Friday, November 6

Local Geisha is driven by girl power

by Mike Gibson

As far as singer/songwriter Gabrielle Iacovino is concerned, girl-rock doesn't necessarily have to be girlish. While the three-chord alt. pop gems she polishes for her fledgling power trio Geisha are unmistakably touched by a feminine hand ("All the songs are about boys," she admits with a giggle), they're bereft of the kewpie-doll primping and paisley-folk clichés that too often pass for x-chromosome rock 'n' roll. (Think Liz Phair, not Lilith Fair.)

"It rocks," Iacovino chuckles, relaxing in a friend's basement, the band's temporary practice space. "I think we aspire to power pop, although I'm not sure we're there yet. It's very lyric, but it still has a kick. It's not at all typical girlie-rock singer-songwriter stuff. I love the Replacements, although I don't know that I sound like them. I love the standard rock four-piece stuff, and you can usually hear that in my songs. I've got the Jawbox part, or the R.E.M.-Peter Buck part, or the Liz Phair part."

A lifelong record collector and music enthusiast, ("I knew the words to Simon and Garfunkel songs when I was four," she remembers.), Iacovino had been mapping out three-chord pop songs on her classical guitar for years before deciding, in more recent times, to translate her efforts to the louder medium of a three-piece rock band. She began a couple of years back with Ragazzi, essentially a one-woman band with an ever-changing cast of Iacovino's friends (most of them veterans of well-known local bands) in the bass and drummer slots.

It wasn't until this year that she found a more permanent line-up with bassist John Tipton and drummer John Lousteau, and another name—Geisha—to signify the unity and commitment of hew newfound unit. And it's probably no mere happenstance that her bandmates are expatriates of louder, heavier bands (Tipton is a former member of the Goth-inflected Immortal Chorus as well as modern rockers Flood, while Lousteau played for the grungy quartet Sandbox.)

"We like it because we were in such loud bands before, and it's nice to concentrate on melody and chord progressions for a change, rather than just bashing it out," says Lousteau. "It's a lot different than playing the hard-rock riff stuff. This is more bob-your-head type music, and my challenge is to make my fills tasteful within the context of a well-developed melody."

"This is real fun stuff," adds Tipton. "I was tired of playing that same old depressing type music I was doing before. It wasn't hard for me to adapt, because the songs are real good and real catchy. The first day I'm stumbling around, and then the next I'm humming right along."

Iacovino says she's more than happy with the way her better-traveled bandmates have helped mold her bedroom musings into raucous rock, adding both an edge and a sense of electric three-piece fluency to tunes that began as spare acoustic renderings. "When we play something new, I just stand and play my normal part and the song changes according to what they do," she says. "When I write, I can hear the songs in my head, but I'm not as adept as changing them to a rock 'n' roll feel. They have more familiarity with that, with making them rougher, changing the pace and tempo. They find things in my songs that I never thought about."

Right now, Geisha doesn't have much to show for its efforts, other than a handful of shows at Cumberland Avenue nightspots and a healthy buzz among local rockers. But Iacovino has set her sights on recording some of her musings, possibly in the form of a six-song CD.

"I really like the way the songs have developed," she enthuses. "This is my first real band, and I'm anxious to get something out there featuring this line-up."

"I've played in a lot of bands, but this has been a really nice transition," Tipton adds. "What's great about Geisha is that it feels like my first band, too."