Lo-Fi MILF: Where Punk Meets the Blues
“The blues is not about people knowing you; it’s about you knowing yourself.” —Ma Rainey
Meet Lo-Fi MILF: a Lambertville resident and musician who writes, records, releases, and performs all-original music. Her songs are punk-influenced by her spirited DIY ethic, yet they fit squarely in the blues genre. The result is a delightfully dangerous form of self expression that’s entertaining and inspiring.
Delightfully Dangerous
Lo-Fi MILF’s songs often feature overdriven vocals, gritty strings, and true blues structures. Some of her works have synthesizer overdubs, but not in any fluffy way. It’s the blues, alright, and it breaks out of the box just enough.
Cover bands are a dime a dozen, but it takes courage to write, record, and release your own musical creations to the world. Lo-Fi MILF finds that process to be a struggle, but she cites her reward as “a way for me to be authentic.”
Every day, she has to overcome the fear of being out there, and every day she has to trample the notion that she’s not allowed to do what she’s doing.
“It’s capitalism internalized,” she said, “The idea that your value is based on a kind of success—the American capitalist dream—is bullshit. But I still have to mantra that, because I still feel that way, and I have to remind myself daily.”
Her latest releases is titled “Gulf of Mexico,” and it is made up of four songs: “Hand It Over,” “Gulf of Mexico,” “Bad,” and “Cmon.”
Daring to DIY
For Lo-Fi MILF, doing it herself means working with what she has, where she is.
“I’m gonna use what I have right here, which is not much: a little interface, a laptop computer that has a big coffee stain on the screen and is about to give up the ghost, and a microphone that I’ve had for over twenty years,” she said.
As someone who grew up around punk, Lo-Fi MILF sees it as a vehicle for the non-professional musician. Punk is easier to play, she says, particularly in the simplicity of it, and the blues is similar. That’s something she wants to deprofessionalize, because musical complexity can be exclusionary.
“What I've learned to do,” she explained, “through punk and the blues, is to understand 1-4-5,” referring to the fundamental chord pattern used in blues.
Seen and Heard
Putting oneself out there for the world to enjoy, or judge, is never an easy thing to do. Artists always run the risk of being criticized, misunderstood, or rejected.
“When you’re the weirdo, you get kicked to the curb, hard,” said Lo-Fi MILF.
She’s been in bands, but she was always absolutely terrified by it.
“It was kind of like a torture, masochistic. I used to ask myself all the time, ‘why would I do this to myself?’ It was so difficult for me,” she admitted.
Her ability to be authentic today—so that she’s not falling apart with terror—is the result of a long journey. Nowadays, being Lo-Fi MILF has become “an empowering act of rebellion.”
“What I’m doing now, it’s a survival skill, but it’s also really fun and free. I can do whatever I want. I don’t have to negotiate with anyone,” she said.
Down to the Crossroads
Lo-Fi MILF drove to New Orleans, then back up along the Blues Trail, which highlights the places where great musicians made their mark. She stopped in Clarksdale, Mississippi where Samuel Jackson owns a blues club called Ground Zero, and she also visited the Delta Blues Museum.
“I walked in [the museum] and they were playing the Rolling Stones,” she recalled, “and I was like ‘what the–? They’re playing the Rolling Stones,’ and their thesis was—you can guess what their thesis was—some inopportune comment about one of them being splashed by white paint.”
She also stopped in Memphis and Nashville, which are places that are considered the heart and soul of American blues music.
“I came through Nashville, Tennessee, which is apartheid, okay? It’s apartheid! It’s not okay to go to Nashville and act like it’s not apartheid,” she pointed out.
Lo-Fi MILF described herself as a traveler who is obsessed with freedom and the idea of getting away, or “getting to the other side.” She often goes to jazz and blues jams so she can sit in with the (usually all-male) musicians.
Sometimes she ends up playing music with peers, other times the musicians respond like, “Where’s your chaperone?” or “Where’s your husband?”
Lo-Fi MILF lamented, “I feel gaslit by the fact that the overwhelming majority of musicians are men, which makes musicianship a middle class and upper middle class male privilege for the most part, and why?”
Poetry vs. Patriarchy
The book Blues and Black Feminism by Angela Davis was influential for Lo-Fi MILF, because it highlights lyrics from the 20s and 30s. At the time, women in blues were singing about what Lo-Fi MILF described as, “a pornographic kind of punk-rock ethic.” According to Davis, the protagonists in women’s blues were free-thinking, free-wheeling individuals who lived by their own rules.
Lo-Fi MILF compared that to current pop, “Right now women's voices in music are so pensive and coquettish, and almost like women with the voice of a child, all whispery and non-confrontational, and I don't want to be that. I’m tired of it.”
That’s Lo-Fi MILF: anti-professional, anti-capitalist, pro-community music that takes you on a journey and dares you to live a more delightfully dangerous life.
Check out Lo-Fi MILF’s album Gulf of Mexico. Also listen to 600 Ft Vixen and her early works on Bandcamp.com. See and follow Lo-Fi MILF on Youtube.
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