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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a good question. I don\u2019t 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,\u201d Kinnon said in a recent Zoom call. \u201cNo, we were all really good students. That\u2019s the funny thing about us \u2014 we\u2019re all really big nerds. If we went to any sort of summer school, it\u2019s probably a voluntary, extra classes type thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve all gotten in a group text together and have been chatting,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s like when you get your college roommate, so you\u2019ve never met, but you\u2019re chatting with each other at first. I think it\u2019ll be really fun to meet everyone and to get acquainted because we don\u2019t have many bands we\u2019re friends with right now. And we want that \u2014 we want to be as integrated in the scene as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a recent call from Nashville, Kinnon spoke with TribLive about the live show, their new single \u201cBombs Away,\u201d Phoebe Bridgers, Winona Ryder and more. Find a transcript of the conversation, edited for clarity and length, below.<\/p>\n
Almost all the bands in the lineup are female fronted, so what are you expecting that experience to be like?<\/strong><\/p>\n I think it\u2019s going to be great. We\u2019ve 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\u2019m excited to be around more women. We\u2019re bringing a female photographer\/merch person with us this tour, and she\u2019s amazing. She\u2019s 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\u2019s going to go just as hard, if not harder, as if it was a more male-fronted tour.<\/p>\n A little bit of a different vibe with a few more women in the room\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n I think with women-led bands or bands that have more women in them, there is that sense of \u2014 OK, I know I feel this. I\u2019m like, I know I\u2019m just as good as everyone else \u2013 but I need to show up 10,000 times more to get noticed or to not be told we\u2019re copying Paramore or this or that. I think it\u2019s going to be a lot of that \u2014 just amazing, talented women showing up and giving it that 10,000%.<\/p>\n