Kristen Henderson of Antigone Rising

Mickey Z. Interview from 2003
Northampton’s Iron Horse Music Hall was crammed full…Cassidy, with her Robert Plant curls and convulsive elbows, leaned toward the microphone in rhythm with Cathy Henderson’s wah-wah guitar.
“Did it hit where she aimed…or where it hurt?” Cassidy snarled. “Did it wipe off that smile…” Then she cooed the magic words: “…with dollar bills, dollar bills?”
Audience members, having been rocked and rolled onto their asses all night long, crumpled up green singles and launched them toward the stage. A few legal tender projectiles reached Dena Tauriello as she generated more noise from a single-bass-drum set than should be humanly possible…some bounced off Anne-Marie Stehn, standing stoically, her bass guitar holding the line. Cassidy giggled and covered her eyes: she knows the routine…she knows the score.
To her left, Kristen Henderson (Cathy’s little sister) strums her guitar and smiles, but her eyes are closed…lost in the moment, immersed in the music…gripped by the raw power of rock and roll the way it’s meant to be played.
AR’s website describes their sound as such: “A blend of 70's harmonies and rock guitar mixed with an unmatched musicianship and pop ethic.” This isn’t even half of it. Anthemic choruses, on-stage hijinks, power chords, spontaneous jam sessions, choice cover songs like “I’ve Just Seen a Face” and “Fat Bottomed Girls,” and an authenticity that others cannot even imagine pulling off…that’s about half of it.
* * *
Mickey Z.: What other career paths did you consider and why?
Kristen H.: I never considered any other career path.
* * *
When it comes to music, I’m not easy to please and I’m not big on high-tech gadgetry. I’m with Ani DiFranco when she says: “People used to make records/as in the record of an event/the event of people/playing music in a room.”
That’s one of the various reasons I’m partial to Antigone Rising (AR). This five-piece band of dynamos is the event of people playing music in a room. No cross-marketing…no image makeovers…at an AR gig, you get extended jams, drum solos, bass solos, and fans that rival the Deadheads for allegiance…all with the occasional prom dress thrown in for good measure. These gals play rock and roll as if their lives depend on it.
“We’re full-time,” explains Kristen. “Anne-Marie sells the ticket, Cassidy rips it, Dena scoops your popcorn into the bucket, Cathy rolls the projector, and I clean the bathroom. We play approximately 20 shows a month…give or take.” With AR, it’s more give: no-frills music that soothes your soul and rocks your roll.
“If we wore shorter skirts and slinky tops,” Kristen continues caustically, “they might let us sit on their laps and have a record deal.”
I strongly suggest you don’t count on that happening any time soon.
* * *
Note: Read the following out loud…as quickly as you can.
MZ: Joni Mitchell
KH: Blue
MZ: Patti Smith
KH: Poet
MZ: Chrissie Hynde
KH: Rebel
MZ: Courtney Love
KH: Smelly
MZ: Madonna
KH: Yes
MZ: Ani DiFranco
KH: Rad
MZ: Joan Jett
KH: Joan Jett
MZ: Freddie Mercury
KH: Powerful
* * *
AR crisscrosses the country in a white van named, well, Vanna White. “There is so much to say about Vanna White,” declares Kristen. “She’s our home on the road. She’s the only consistent thing we’re got when we’re ‘out there.’ She ended up with a name because we’re a little off. But she’s pretty and good to us. We all just love her.”
Forget what you think you know about “girl rock.” AR defies—check that—sneers at gender categorization. If you can’t get past the fact that the band kicking your ass is made up of five charismatic and stunning women, well, you don’t know shit about rock music. You also probably don’t know how to pronounce the band’s name.
“I got a D on my college paper about Antigone, so I'm not the best member to ask,” Kristen admits. “But if I check the liner notes on our CD, she's the first female rebel to defy a king. We think that's pretty cool. We added ‘Rising’ because it's better to rise than fall. We almost re-named the band after we re-formed in late 1999 to the Angora Debs. If you know what that means, then you know how opposite it lies on the literary spectrum from Antigone Rising. The Angora Debs were a ‘girl gang’ from Laverne and Shirley. We got talked out of the change and have since been teaching much of the East Coast how to pronounce ‘an-TIG-uh-nee’.”
* * *
MZ: What's your favorite venue?
KH: After 240 shows in a year, my favorite venue is home.
* * *
It’s less than a month after Northampton and Vanna is parked somewhere outside the Village Underground (home of the most unorganized coat check in the world)…while AR does their thang on stage. The place is sold-out: a combination of longtime loyalists and a new wave of converts. I’m soaking in the NYC vibe as Cassidy releases the angst of “She Lived Here,” crooning:
“Did it wipe off that smile with dollar bills, dollar bills?”
The currency takes wing. I asked Kristen how George Washington started his flying career.
“A very smart girl wafted a dollar bill from the balcony of a club in Princeton, NJ. It caught on…and it pays our gas bills when we tour. It’s an amazing thing.”
“AR inspires loyalty and devotion because they are the real thing,” says super-fan Karen Wagner of “Where’s Karen?” fame. “They take the time to talk. They care what their fans think or say.”
* * *
MZ: What have you learned during your time in AR?
KH: Interviews never come out the way you think they will.
MZ: What didn't happen that you expected to happen?
KH: Do you have all day? I expected everything and got nothing. It’s when I stopped expecting and started being that I got what I expected.
* * *
You gotta appreciate a band that inspires such loyal fans (they load Ms. White after each show, for chrissake). Like The Boss in his Stone Pony days or back when U2 used to close their shows with a sing-along version of “40,” an AR gig is highly interactive…in a Rocky Horror kind of way: giant rubber thumbs, fans photographing the band, the band photographing the fans, and those airborne dollar bills. Sure, these girls can rock and they take their music seriously but that doesn’t mean they’re not having some goofy fun up there as they work and re-work songs.
“When you tour full-time,” Kristen explains, “playing the same songs every night can get stale so we stretch some songs out, rearrange other songs here and there if it makes sense…whatever we can do to keep it interesting for us without depriving the audience the songs they want to hear. Hey, bass and drum solos are why you go to rock concerts, aren’t they?”
* * *
MZ: Where do you see the band next year at this time?
KH: In a hotel somewhere, watching TV.
MZ: Five years from now?
KH: Same.
* * *
Like it or not, AR is often labeled a “girl band” and this brings with it the inevitable baggage of sexism, feminism, and chauvinism.
“Naturally, female ‘issues’ come into play when you're an all-female band in a male dominated industry,” concedes Kristen. “It creeps into lyrics here and there, but I wouldn't say it's a central theme of our music. I'd say we sing songs about whatever our truths are at the moment. The intention is to play songs that everyone can relate to…sorta like, ‘Insert song here, mend wound.’ We try to set an example by doing rather than saying. We're a full-time, 5-piece, all-female independent rock band. We just do it and let it speak for itself. We don't focus on being too political because we want people to come to our shows and get their minds off things for a minute. But if there's an issue of the week that needs addressing, you can pretty much bet that Cassidy will sneak a statement in during the last pause of ‘Push It’.”
I read where Murray the K anointed himself the “fifth Beatle.” How about Mickey the Z as an honorary member of AR?
* * *
MZ: How long has AR been together?
KH: We’ve always been together. In our last life, the five of us were probably fighting battles against evil warlords...Actually, wait a minute, that’s this lifetime…
* * *
What’s the secret to playing honest rock and roll, you wonder?
“We try to avoid associating with anyone that would ask us to ‘be’ more MTV,” Kristen tells me. “You either are it or you aren't it. It doesn't mean you can't become it...but if you're contrived, people smell it and it smells stinky and nobody will buy your records or come see you play after your ten seconds as Carson's ‘it’ thing.”
But what about the Holy Grail…what about the proverbial record deal?
“If a major label found us, and the circumstances seemed on the up and up, we'd consider partnering up. But it's not a conscious goal. A good cup of coffee is a goal. A clean rest stop is a goal. Getting Vanna White over the 200,000-mile marker is a goal. Playing shows with other great bands is a goal. Having dinner 2 hours prior to showtime is a goal.”
* * *
MZ: What question do you always wish a journalist would ask but never does?
KH: Do you mind if we keep this short?
* * *
She hit where she aimed…so let the dollar bills fly.
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