I have to thank my friend Mike DiMilla for sending a group email to me and two women I had never met, Shannon and Mary, saying that he thought we would make "a pretty damn cool band. Hell, I would pay money to see you play, so just do it." It took one band blind date at the Horse Brass Pub and a few practices to decide that he may have been on to something. After three years and two line-up changes, our friend Heath Berg offered to record us in his basement, a project we thought would take a few days. We ended up having so much fun with him and his wife that we were coming over every weekend, recording overdubs between drinking beers, cracking jokes and eating delicious slow-cooker chili. Although we loved the final album, the band split a few months before it was planned to be officially released.
Dramatic and loud. When I first met Dan and Rosy, they were playing in a band called Baby Machine, who I thought were fantastic. But that band was short lived and the moment I heard they had broken up, I accosted Rosy at a house party and nervously asked her to start a band. After stealing the name from a nurse in a series of WWII-era young adult novels, we soon found ourselves playing at secret after-hours parties and bars I was too young to legally drink in. These remain the only songs I ever co-wrote with another person. Many songs sound similar to early Throwing Muses, a band none of us were very familiar with at the time. Cherry Ames never officially broke up but went on hiatus after Rosy moved to L.A. and Dan moved to Chico, CA.
Pleasure Holiday
(Portland, OR & Tacoma, WA 2002-present)
Julia Fernandez - vocals and instruments
Around the time Cherry Ames went on hiatus, I dropped out of college, lost my job because of dropping out of college and moved to Portland because I didn't know what else to do. After getting a job pricing books for Powell's, I bought a Tascam MK-III four-track with the goal of developing the songs I had previously planned to just throw away. I destroyed most of the original cassettes out of embarrassment but eventually wound up with a some songs I was actually proud of. The name comes from a spread in Japanese magazine found at work entitled, "The Pleasure Holiday of Strange Kinoko."
The Chase
(Irvine, CA 1995-1998)
Julia Fernandez - vocals and guitar
Anna Wu - bass
Abigail Palioc - drums and vocals
bands
A classic teenage band. All three of us met somewhere on campus at University High School and, like bored 16 year olds, decided to start a band to conquer the world. Who cares if they had never picked up instruments before? I could barely play, anyway! With few shows to be had in the suburbs, we instead headed to the garage with two microphones and a cassette karaoke machine substituting as a four-track. What we recorded became a long out-of-print split LP with The Knock-Ups, a band fronted by Seth Bogart, now known better as Hunx of Hunx and His Punx. This probably stands as the only time I'll ever get reviewed in Maximumrockandroll (they loved us!). Abigail now plays in all-girl band Apocalipstick.
The Fall Colors
(Portland, OR 2006-2010)
Julia Fernandez - vocals and guitar
Shannon Handy - drums
Jess Abel - bass (2008-2010)
Carissa Honkanen - bass (2008)
Mary DeLine - bass (2006-2008)
Photo by Jennie Wu
Photo by Chris Calvert
Photo by Nicholas Taplin
Cherry Ames
(Santa Cruz, CA 1999-2000)
Julia Fernandez - vocals and guitar
Rosy Nolan - guitar and vocals
Dan Wooldridge - drums (1999-2000)