On Ephemeral, Groupie Becomes the Band You’ll Want A Poster Of

By Alyana Vera, Contributor

Photo by, @thejohnburgundy

Meet Groupie

Brooklyn-based rock band Groupie have graduated from fans to bonafide rock stars on their debut Ephemeral. Six years after finding each other on Craigslist, bassist Ashley Kossakowski and guitarist Johanna Healy have expanded their line-up with the addition of guitarist Eamon Lebow and drummer Aaron Silberstein. Contrary to what you might think from their tongue-in-cheek name, Groupie’s debut LP isn’t just a needling critique of rock’s misogynistic past and present. Ephemeral is a restless blend of new-wave and surf-rock that leans into the feeling of being unmoored by the transient nature of life. In our latest interview, we chat with Ashley and Johanna about Patti Smith, rock and roll idols, and how a Craigslist ad changed their lives.

There’s this theme throughout your work about these narratives that women in music are often trapped in. It almost feels like on Ephemeral you’re redefining what it means to be women in punk.

Ashley: Hell yeah. That's one of the main reasons why we chose Groupie as a band name, kind of redefining what that term means. Oftentimes women, especially young women, are seen as crazy fans. Especially young teenage girls that like pop are not respected, and that’s a totally valid thing to love and want to appreciate. On the flip side, female musicians deserve respect as well.

“Thick as Glue” touches upon this sort of exclusionary punk mythos: leather-clad men with a DGAF attitude singing about heroin. What does rock and roll mean to you?

Ashley: Rock and roll to me is the act of rebelling and catharsis. You got to a rock show to move around and feel something. It feels like this act of rebellion, which I think also is a male concept a lot of the time based on the way it is represented in American media. But rock and roll to me is a passionate expression of emotion.

Johanna: I agree with that, I really like what you're saying. It's raw and primal in a way.

"Thick As Glue" reflects on the waning appeal of the rock idols of your youth. This album marks a sonic shift away from your garage and punk roots. Have you also grown weary of punk in general?

Johanna: No, that's why it was a hard song to write. I had a heart-to-heart with myself while writing the lyrics, because I still really love that music on a primal level. When I listen to it it makes my heart feel happy. But historically when I look back at myself and my heroes growing up, as an adult I'm like "Why were those my heroes necessarily?" Was it because there was no other choice at the time, in terms of female rock and roll idols being something you wouldn't see as often.

If you're tired of the rock and roll idols of your youth, who do you idolize now?

Ashley: I don't feel necessarily disillusioned with punk because there's still so much cool music being made now that is helping redefine the genre. The bands that are currently wanted as the “punk idols” are all straight white men. People who have not historically been given the mic, like people of color making music, are arguably more punk to me because it’s fortifying punk as rebelling and making a stage for yourself. Those are the people that I look up to now, whereas when I was growing up in Chicago as a part of the Midwest emo scene which was super white, super male, and super straight. Growing up in that environment I was like “It's cool to watch but I can never do that, I can never be a musician.” Now I think things are diversifying, people are getting the recognition they deserve, and the representation of punk is changing.

After the interview, Ashley sent over a list of her personal idols:

Ashley: Current idols: Victoria Ruiz from Downtown Boys—stands up for what she believes in, redefines punk—and Sammus, an incredible musician who also has a PhD. A non-music one is Jamie Margolin, queer teenage climate change activist. I saw her speak at a conference and it was super powerful.

I actually wanted to talk more about that experience you had listening to Riot grrrl and women punks that pushed you to realize that you didn’t have to be just a fan, that you could be on the stage too.

Ashley: Consuming music as a teenager, I never thought I could be up on stage. I didn't know about a lot of cool women in punk throughout history. I was listening to more contemporary and local stuff. I didn't start digging into that until I went to college when someone I was living with at the time recommended Girls to the Front. I remember reading it on the bus to and from work when I first moved to New York and thinking "Oh my god, they made such cool music and I could too. Maybe I should just put out a Craigslist Ad and see what happens. It might amount to nothing but I could always say I tried." It definitely took a lot because I'm a pretty shy-ish person, so to gain the confidence to go on stage took a lot of time. A lot of dudes grow up and are told different things and built up in a way that a lot of women sometimes aren't. Boys will be given a guitar and women will be given cooking stuff, it's gendered in that way. I wish I had known about these cool women musicians earlier in my life, but I’m glad to know about them now.

Did you have a similar experience Johanna?

Johanna: I didn't take classes or go to music school or anything like that. It was just my family; guitar was played a lot so I just kind of picked it up. I was passionate about learning it and trying to be in a band when I was in high school, I had a small band with some friends and that was pretty fun. Then I fell out of it when I went to college and tried to do some home recordings. I love going to live shows but in hindsight, you're like "Actually 99% of the musicians were guys." I remember liking the Bikini Kill song "Rebel Girl" but other than that I didn’t have a lot of exposure to those bands when I was younger.

Both Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus and Patti Smith’s M Train were formative books for the band. Are you reading anything now that speaks to you in a similar way?

Ashley: To be completely honest I’ve had a really hard time focusing on any books during the pandemic. I feel like I take one up and I read 20 pages of it then I put it down. Because of that Reading essays has been helpful, I was reading Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider. Sadie Dupuis has a poetry book called Mouthguard.

“No Hands,” which was inspired by a passage from M Train, sounds completely different from the rest of your album. How did you approach writing it?

Ashley: This song is definitely the most collaborative we’ve been, songwriting-wise, and I think it ended up being so different because of that. Each of us took a verse and then we had the idea of having the chorus being mostly instrumental to just give it space. I think because the content of the song comes from that passage where Patti is talking about how she likes to live her life without defining it by numbers and the passing of time, this song became this trance-like meditation. Ideally, the listeners wouldn't really be thinking about the passing of time or other things and would get wrapped up in it. I think that's reflected in the fact that the baseline is repetitive and driving, and then at the end, the lead guitar plays one note all the way out.

One of the other standouts on Ephemeral was “Daleko,” which you co-wrote with your mom. Can you tell me what it was like working with your mom?

Ashley: I started with this idea that I wanted to write a song about immigration. I was just feeling distant from my family back in Poland and I didn't really want to write it alone; I wanted to have multiple perspectives. My parents immigrated here in 1980, so I’m first generation. I thought about including my mom's perspective because she's always been super supportive of me doing music and has found it really interesting. When I started talking to her about it like, ”You want to write a verse, you want to write some lyrics?” She got really excited about it, so we kind of sat down together over the holidays. I liked doing it with her because it's been hard. My grandfather died in the fall of 2018 and my grandmother's living alone in Warsaw. I wanted to give her a space to talk about those feelings and start to understand my own relationship with that distance.

What was it like when she heard the final track?

Ashley: I played it for both my mom and my dad. They both cried. My dad isn’t the type to get emotional, but they were really happy. The track also got featured in this Polish newspaper in Chicago in print and online. My dad was so excited. He called me and he was like “I saw the article. This is good, this is great. I’m very proud of you,” he was super stoic. But I feel like it affected him somehow.

“Poor You” was one of the first songs you wrote as Groupie. There’s a long lineage of women in punk singing about the sexism and gender-based violence they face, especially because they don’t often get justice in real life—were you inspired by any particular rendition of this theme? 

Ashley: That was the same time that I was really getting into Riot grrrl so I was definitely empowered by the way that they spoke openly about things like that and contributed to me writing the lyrics of the song. It’s stuff that’s hard to talk about and a lot of those lyrics came from a lot of frustrations about all the gender-based violence that people face. It came after I was sexually harassed by a superior at my job and that was the same time that Brock Turner’s rape case was happening, and he essentially walked free. Also going back to like abusers in the music scene, there’s also a line about that. A lot of conflict compounding just feelings and anger that I needed to get out, which I think is very Riot grrrl and powerful. We started writing that song probably at the end of 2015.

When I first listened to “Poor You” I thought it was written in response to what’s happening in the music scene. Six years later and that song is still very timely. 

Ashley: It’s perpetual. It’s unfortunately absurd [to think] that abusers will get what they deserve. The whole “Poor You” thing was like “Oh you actually are getting punished for what you did,” which is also incredibly rare. Burger Records was finally taken down, which is good, but there's probably like thousands of others who are just walking around. It’s super hard to part ways with people who have clout, even if they do something wrong. It’s scary coming forward, like what if people don’t believe you? But if the word doesn’t get out people may still be collaborating with them because they don’t know.

“Human Again” actually deals with the restlessness that comes after returning home from a tour. How have you both adjusted to life without live music?

Ashley: I haven’t played music with people since the start of the pandemic, and I feel deeply sad. I’m very much a collaborative songwriter, I feel like I get a lot of ideas from people. I like working things out in band practice together. Not being able to do that, it’s been really hard for me to write songs. It feels dark, to be quite honest. There’s a vaccine but I don’t want to get hopeful for nothing. Life without live music has been difficult for me.

Johanna: I miss going to shows on top of playing. The thrill you get from playing a good set when the crowd is into it, and feeding off that energy...it kind of sucks to not have that in our lives.

The pandemic ends and you can go to a live show: what’s your dream line-up?

Ashley: I would love to play with Bully, this is a reach for sure but Bully, Oceanator, also another Brooklyn band Saint Mela. That’s just a lot of my personal current favorites and to play with all of them would be really fun.

Johanna: Patti Smith is still alive, we could possibly open for her book signings or something like that.

Ashley: I would freak out! I went to Patti Smith’s book signing of M Train and I was like, “Patti I love you, I don’t know what else to say.” She just looks at me and nods and goes, “That’ll do.”

Johanna: We were going to open for Downtown Boys at Market Hotel before the pandemic.

Ashley: That one was going to be so fun! It was a fundraiser show for Bernie. Different days back then. It would have been our first time playing Market Hotel too. For attending, I’ve been listening to a lot of funk recently. I feel like it’d been fun to go to a funk or disco show and dance around a lot with a ton of people and just get really sweaty.

Johanna: That sounds like serious COVID withdrawal, that you just want to grind-up on some people.

After the interview, Ashley wrote another list of acts she’d love to see/play with after the pandemic. In her own words, “I think I’ve gone overboard with these lists, I just can’t stop dreaming of live music now.”

Ashley: I thought a bit more about dream bands to play with: Shame and Sleater Kinney. Dream bands to see: Third Eye Blind (I was supposed to go right before the pandemic and it got canceled), King Princess, Saint Mela, Amaarae, Jai Paul, Yves Tumor, Parquet Courts (so much fun live, and their bassist is one of my favorite modern bassists), Fionna Apple, Justin Timberlake (I’m not ashamed of my JT obsession), Sheer Mag, and Lorde.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you want people to know?

Ashley: If people are thinking about starting a band—especially women or anyone who has been marginalized by the music industry—and have been thinking about it for a while but don’t have any experience, just do it! Go to Craigslist, reach out to your coolest friends who play instruments or whatever. That literally changed my life, posting on Craigslist and meeting Johanna.