Punk band Winona Fighter is heading out on the idobi Radio Summer School tour in a few days, and frontwoman Coco Kinnon had to think for a moment to see if any of her bandmates ever had to attend summer school in their younger days.
“That’s a good question. I don’t think so. Austin (Luther, bassist) and I are college dropouts. I graduated top of my class in high school, which is funny because I missed a lot of school because I was playing drums for bands and stuff,” Kinnon said in a recent Zoom call. “No, we were all really good students. That’s the funny thing about us — we’re all really big nerds. If we went to any sort of summer school, it’s probably a voluntary, extra classes type thing.”
Winona Fighter will be joined by other rising bands in Honey Revenge, South Arcade, Games We Play and Chase Petra for the tour, which is akin to a traveling, mini-festival. Kinnon said she had never met any of the other groups, so the June 19 tour opener should be interesting. The tour will hit the Roxian Theatre in McKees Rocks on July 10.
“We’ve all gotten in a group text together and have been chatting,” she said. “It’s like when you get your college roommate, so you’ve never met, but you’re chatting with each other at first. I think it’ll be really fun to meet everyone and to get acquainted because we don’t have many bands we’re friends with right now. And we want that — we want to be as integrated in the scene as possible.”
In a recent call from Nashville, Kinnon spoke with TribLive about the live show, their new single “Bombs Away,” Phoebe Bridgers, Winona Ryder and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.
Almost all the bands in the lineup are female fronted, so what are you expecting that experience to be like?
I think it’s going to be great. We’ve only really done male-fronted majority tours. We have a lot of men on our traveling team/crew that have come on tour with us. So I’m excited to be around more women. We’re bringing a female photographer/merch person with us this tour, and she’s amazing. She’s actually done this tour before. So I think just overall, the more feminine attitude of the tour is going to be amazing. I think it’s going to go just as hard, if not harder, as if it was a more male-fronted tour.
A little bit of a different vibe with a few more women in the room…
I think with women-led bands or bands that have more women in them, there is that sense of — OK, I know I feel this. I’m like, I know I’m just as good as everyone else – but I need to show up 10,000 times more to get noticed or to not be told we’re copying Paramore or this or that. I think it’s going to be a lot of that — just amazing, talented women showing up and giving it that 10,000%.
What can people expect from a Winona Fighter live show?
It’s just a lot of energy, and it’s a lot of fun. I think people don’t necessarily expect it to go as hard as it does. I think our live show is comparable to a punk rock show in the basement of a house. We try to curate that energy at any venue size we play, any show we play. I think showing up and knowing it’s going to be sweaty and messy and raw, because we’re up there and we just use stage monitors and we don’t use tracks and we don’t use a click and there’s no auto-tune or anything like that. It’s just purely us, knowing the songs, vibing off each other, vibing off the audience, that’s pretty rare to see these days. But it makes for a fun, energized experience. You don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know what’s going to happen since we don’t have that structure.
The shows look pretty energetic. Have you had any injuries where after you were like, how did this happen?
I have ended up in a boot twice and one time I ended up – we were opening for Sleeping With Sirens, and I did a hairline fracture on my ankle because I had fallen. Someone in the band before us had left a water bottle on stage and so I slipped. We actually had to leave for tour the next week. So I was doing the whole tour that next week in a boot. Otherwise, just scrapes – if I get on the floor, sometimes I don’t realize the stage has this certain texture to it. Or I’ll wake up with bruises and I was like, how did this happen? And then I’ll watch a video back and it’ll be me doing a somersault or something. And I was like, oh, right, OK, that makes sense. (laughs)
So you’re just in the moment and you don’t know what happens then.
Yeah, my front tooth, I’ve had to get it replaced. Immediately after I got it replaced, I started chipping it with the microphone again. So my dentist is just like, when it becomes a problem, we’ll look at it again.
You’ve got the new song “Bombs Away,” so what was the inspiration behind that?
We live in such a challenging time right now, and I think it’s so important for bands and artists to continue to use their voice and to continue to want to curate community through using their voice. Every show we tell people, we don’t care where you came from, don’t care where you’re going. If you can all look at your neighbor, and you and your neighbor might come from completely different backgrounds, upbringings, this or that, if you can respect one another, if you can be outside of the venue and have respect for your neighbor and look after your neighbor, that’s so important during a time when there’s so much division. I think there’s obviously so much political turmoil going on right now. It’s kind of hard not to watch the news every day and not feel like you just want to scream and yell into the ether. So it really was about like, OK, this is our first song back after the last record. What do we feel like we really want to say? The big thing for us was creating a song that our community could just soak in and scream their heads off to.
Is there more new music on the way then?
Yeah, definitely. This has been the longest we’ve been off the road. We ended a tour in December, and we have just been working. We have a detached garage that we outfitted to be a studio, and so for the past five months, we’ve been in there just digging away and getting it done. So we’re very excited about what we’ve been working on. There’s gonna be some more stuff coming.
What did you learn from your debut album, and what did you want to apply to future releases?
I think we wanted to create music — and I think “Bombs Away” was a good representation of that; we have songs like “Hamms in a Glass” and “R U Famous” — that are really like energy and I think really represent our live show. We wanted to create more music that represents the live show and gives people a little better idea of what to expect. So I would say the new music is definitely more band forward and musicianship forward and energy forward.
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In light of the song “You Look Like a Drunk Phoebe Bridgers,” have you ever met her? Have you heard any feedback on the name of that song?
No, I’ve never met her. I have been told that she has heard the song. The song has nothing to do with her, so I always like to make that clear. Someone came up to me at a bar, I had written a song, and I didn’t name it. That night, someone came up to me in a bar and said I look like the drunk version of a Phoebe Bridgers. And I was like, that’s a great song title. But I love Phoebe Bridgers. She’s about to go on an arena tour this fall and I’m excited for new music. I think she’s such a talent.
What would you do if Winona Ryder showed up at a show?
Oh, we welcome it. We’re trying to get her in a music video. That’s the goal. It’s funny, the band name wasn’t specifically after her, but I’m such a fan. I think she’s such a badass. So come on (Winona), go to a show.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source triblive.com ’
