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| Living > Article |
Despite creative detours, casting changes, locally
based band stays active
06/13/99
By Paula Felps / Special Contributor to the Arlington Morning News
If you haven't seen Blanche Fury performing live recently, maybe you can just catch them on TV.
The Grand Prairie-based band's music is being featured in The American Girls Documentary Film Series airing this fall on PBS. Both of the featured songs - "Ocean" and "Lullaby" are from the group's 1997 album, Blurfly.
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Alyssa Banta / Bobbi Hill, rhythm guitarist with the band Blanche Fury, pratices with lead singer Anne Fontenot, left, and bass player Nancy Giammarco. |
When Blanche Fury began eight years ago, many took note of its all-female lineup. These days, the band not only sports a different look, but an entirely different sound.
"We really are a completely different band than when we started out," says Ms. Giammarco, who along with drummer Heidi Pyron, are the only remaining original members of Blanche Fury. "We've seen a lot of changes, especially in the last couple of years, so in a lot of ways it's almost like we're starting over on a lot of these things. But we do still have a small core group of fans that have been with us the whole time."
It was the addition of lead singer Anne Fontenot in 1996 that marked a dramatic shift in the band's sound and style. Ms. Fontenot, who lives in Arlington, joined the group when she was 19 and helped move the band toward an alternative pop sound. Over the past three years, Ms. Fontenot's vocals have matured dramatically, as have her skills on the acoustic guitar.
No longer shy on stage, the singer can produce goosebumps armed with nothing more than her voice and a microphone. Her vocal range begins somewhere mournfully deep in the blues and stretches all the way to the heights of a sexy siren's wail.
"Before we had Anne, we were much more '80s-sounding," Ms. Giammarco explains. "She's totally changed our sound. I used to sing a lot of the lead vocals, but not anymore. I still sing some backup, but Anne is so fabulous that I wouldn't dream of singing lead again."
Ms. Fontenot's talent isn't limited to her vocal and guitar chords - she also presently writes the bulk of the band's material.
"What's so amazing is that she doesn't write this stuff down; it just comes to her," says Ms. Giammarco. "She'll start playing and then start singing words to go with it, and that's how we get our new songs."
Songs aren't the only new thing that Blanche Fury is enjoying these days. Today, Bobbi Hill, who plays lead guitar for the local band Torn Lace, is Blanche Fury's electric rhythm guitarist.
The band's latest change comes with the addition of Mark Boardman, a music composer, sound designer and visual effects editor for Charlie Uniform Tango, a Dallas audio-visual post-production company. Mr. Boardman now mans lead guitar for the band. After the release of Blurfly two years ago, Blanche Fury went through a number of guitarists, something that Ms. Giammarco acknowledges hurt the band's ability to consistently play live shows. But with the addition of Mr. Boardman, they're ready to take the stage again.
"We've done things, but we haven't been able to play the clubs regularly or work on another recording," she says. "Now we're going to have the chance to do that. And Mark has a lot of ideas for the band. We see a lot of things coming together now."
Mr. Boardman brings more to the mix than just an ability to play guitar; he can play virtually any instrument with strings on it. With him in the lineup, the band's instrumentation now will include a more unusual array, including the dobro, steel guitar, pedal guitar, and mandolin.
"I wanted to get back into live playing, because what I've done in the last few years all has been in the studio," Mr. Boardman says. "When I heard they were looking for a guitarist, I checked out their music, and it really was intriguing to me. Then when I met them, I knew it definitely was a cool thing and it would work out."
He characterizes the Blanche Fury sound as being "dynamic, erotic rock with a bit of folk and blues, but played with a hard edge." That range of sound and gives Mr. Boardman plenty of room to implement a number of different styles, which naturally will further stretch the reach of the band's music.
"The challenge comes in finding out how you can change the sound, but still be Blanche Fury," Mr. Boardman says. "The potential of this band is incredible and now it's a case of sort of adapting my style to their sound. We're going to explore some new things and it's going to be a lot more diverse."
While Blanche Fury refines and redefines its sound, it also looks forward to returning to the live stage.
"We've had some clubs that have been just great to us, like Club Dada, the Aardvark, the Electric Lounge - they've all been great about getting us on stage," says Ms. Giammarco. "Club Clearview has been great about calling us every time they're doing a night featuring female bands. We want to get back to playing all those places, and try some new things, too."
Even without a permanent guitar player, Blanche Fury has remained active, thanks largely to technology and the Internet. As the band's leader, Ms. Giammarco has kept Blanche Fury in fans' minds via the World Wide Web.
"That's something that has allowed us to expand globally, even when we haven't been able to play live," she explains. "We're on Web sites in Amsterdam, Canada, Italy and Florida. We get a lot of inquiries worldwide about our music, and that's how we've been selling a lot of our music."
The band also has recorded a song for a contest on the MP3.com Web site, has been featured as a Band of the Week on the Broadcast.com site and is featured on Broadcast Jukebox and Indiehits.com. Blanche Fury also has done some studio work with Elizabeth Carlisle, a California singer/songwriter who often tours with singer Meredith Brooks.
"We've been able to do so much without even a permanent guitar player, so now that we have everything in place, I'm really excited to see what we can do," Ms. Giammarco says. "We're going to start working on a recording and see what else is out there for us. I think we have a better chance of making it with this lineup than we ever have before."
Performance Information
Blanche Fury performs July 19 at the Avalon Solstice Festival& Talent Review, West Kiest Boulevard and Cedarhurst
in Oak Cliff. The outdoor festival is from 4 to 11 p.m. Proceeds benefit AIDS Services of Dallas and the Women's
Community Association. For more information, visit the Web site (www.avalon-solstice.org).