Grace McKagan of The Pink Slips (INTERVIEW)

So it’s 1997, right amidst the heated baseball runs for the playoffs; Roger Clemens is still an active pitcher and the wild card Florida Marlins will eventually win the World Series. But while all eyes are focused on Mark McGwire racing towards Roger Maris’ 61 home runs, a different babe is being born who seventeen years later has all the markings of being the next punk princess It girl. A senior in high school, Grace McKagan is finding it easier to focus on putting her feelings to music and taking those sounds to clubs across the west coast with her band The Pink Slips. Originally a fun little project with a friend, singing covers with acoustic guitars, the Pink Slips has developed into a sound very much missing in the giddy-up-lollipop world of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift. Although they may eye roll at fake classmates and silly love crushes in typical teenage fashion, the way McKagan turns her phrases purrs more venom that syrup.

McKagan comes by it naturally. With her father Duff McKagan right in the middle of the early punk-rooted alternative blast in Seattle, playing drums in such bands as the Fastbacks and the Fartz, this young offspring is finding her own footing, performing at the Viper Room’s 21^st birthday show and not one but two CBGB Festivals in New York City. It’s where she feels she belongs, she told me last week. A new EP is certainly laying the groundwork for bigger things. With Say L’or Venus, the Pink Slips six-track debut, the songs jump out at you immediately with the catchy opener, “Googlie Eyes,” and ending with the acidic bouncy beat of “Bratty Attitude,” never breaking vibration except on the Nico-ish “Cruella,” which simmers over with slurred-word symbolism.

The video for first single “Foxy Feline” has definitely perked up some ears and is giving the Pink Slips an energy drink jolt towards their future. Although McKagan is at that fine line between woman and child, her lyrics have already crossed the threshold. A little more growing up and she can be Patti Smith’s younger sister, spitting out brimstone honesty with a survivor’s confidence, while still holding onto her Debbie Harry stage style. But for the time being, she relates with other teenage girls as only a member of the age group can: she knows their hopes and dreams, their battle scars and self-confidence tremors. It’s just that McKagan has found a way to vocalize her insides. [To see how she takes her youthful maturity to a new level, check out on YouTube her acoustic version of Iggy Pop’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” making it her own by slowing it down to an almost echo of loneliness].

So while Mom and Dad went out to the Classic Rock Magazine Awards in the city, Grace pushed aside the homework and kicked back with Glide to chat about her music, her future and how one year can make a mighty big difference in her band’s evolution.

For our readers who don’t know who the Pink Slips are, how would you describe your music to everybody?

If you’ve never heard the Pink Slips before, I would say we’re New Wave/Synth Pop/Punk but with like a modern 2014 twist.

What makes it modern?

I think it’s modern in the sense that we get a lot of influence from older bands from the seventies and the eighties, and even like some of the nineties. But I think it’s modern because we’re all so young. Like, I’m seventeen and I’m the youngest. Our drummer is twenty. And we grew up in this technology age and the whole internet age so I think that has a lot to do with our music and the influence on it.

Is that the kind of music that has always been in you or did you kind of evolve to this?

I would say it definitely evolved over the years. Like, I always had a thing for music and a thing for up & coming artists. When I was eight and nine, I’d make playlists on my iPod Nano and my dad would be like, “Who is this?” and I’d be like, “Oh, it’s this band.” So I’ve always had this thing for finding new people but I think really identifying myself with a genre of music has really happened in the past year or two.

For Say L’or Venus, did you only have six songs or were there more?

No, we had about twenty songs. I really started writing songs a year ago. I wrote my first song last November so I kind of just put out the EP so people could get a little taste of what we’re like. It’s not like a full album, but since I’d written the songs a year ago, I feel like my songwriting skills have evolved so much.

What made now the right time to release these songs?

I think just because I have a lot of people, not necessarily at my school but friends or people that I thought were my friends like my age, were always making assumptions or kind of like making fun of my band because they didn’t like know what it was. They didn’t know anything about it and they were like, “She’s in a band, who does she think she is? So let’s like make fun of it.” So I kind of wanted to just put it out, in a way, to prove them all wrong and be like, “Just listen to it.” You can’t make any judgments without listening to it. Since it’s come out, the making fun of me has subsided.

Making a record today is a whole lot different than when your dad made his first record. What was your recording process like?

Well, it’s not really a full record, it’s just an EP, but I definitely feel the pressure considering that my dad’s debut album is considered this best debut album of rock & roll ever and I’m like, oh fuck (laughs). So when I do a debut album it has to be really good cause his is like, I don’t know, an idolized album. But I feel like my own recording process is really instant. I write all my songs with Isaac Carpenter, who is the drummer for AWOLNATION, and when I recorded we went up to Seattle, me and the guys in my band and Isaac and my dad, and we recorded at Jupiter Studios. I kind of grew up going to Jupiter Studios cause that’s where my dad recorded all of his stuff for his band Loaded, so I just always hung out there. So when I recorded there, we recorded all the songs in three days, in one weekend, and it was just really instant and I felt like my voice got across. I kind of wrote all the songs and I really wanted to make sure that nobody changed what the songs are supposed to be. But it was fun, it was cool.

So you were comfortable

Yeah, I was pretty comfortable. It was in my hometown and a place where I grew up and with people I’m comfortable with and I think that’s important because if you’re working with someone you don’t really know and you feel like they’re judging you then you’re not going to have like the confidence to say what you really think and it’s so important to do that because it’s your songs, your baby. I just felt like, if I don’t say anything then this EP is not going to be what I want it to be, so I have to make sure. It was also hard for me because I wanted to not seem like a little kid. I wanted the songs to not seem juvenile so I had to really steer clear of that. That was on my main list of things.

You have a lot of confidence within these songs: It’s in your vocals, it’s in your attitude. When you start writing songs, where does most of your inspiration come from: reality or fantasy?

I think it’s kind of a mixture of both. Like, I love David Bowie and I like his whole Ziggy Stardust era, and like fantasy and dreams and I kind of like to transpire that in my writing. Like I will take something from my personal life, like I said about people making fun of me for my band or whatever, and I’ll kind of put that into my lyrics and use a lot of metaphorical stuff to talk about that.

“Foxy Feline” is the first single. It’s catchy and so full of sass.

Yeah, that song is kind of like a weird sort of joke because I’m like, all the boys fall in love with her, and I’m making fun of myself because no boys like swoon over me or whatever so it’s just kind of like my fantasy of being like, “Yeah, all the boys fall in love with me and I’m all this good stuff, like I’m so cool.” But when I’m onstage, that’s where I’m the most confident. So when I’m onstage I feel like I kind of personify that dream of, “Oh my God, I want to have all the boys swoon over me and think I’m like this amazing girl.” It’s kind of like a joke since I’m making fun of myself.

What about “Googlie Eyes.” It’s a great way to get the EP started.

“Googlie Eyes” is kind of a metaphorical song again. It’s not about anyone I know really, it’s just an idea I had in my head of a girl who fell in love but got her heart broken so she felt like she died inside. So everyone sees her as a kind of ghost and that a part of her is broken.

Does the songwriting come easy for you?

Yeah. Honestly, every song usually doesn’t take me more than three to four hours at the most. I usually write like a song after school with Isaac and it’ll take like three hours and then we’ll come back and work on a demo a couple of times. So overall, a song will take us max like five hours. It’s a really quick process and that’s how I like to work. If I stay on the same thing for too long, I just get bored and I don’t want to do it anymore. So I think with me, if I have an idea I have to do it right away or it loses it’s spark in a sense and drive.

You did musical theatre when you were growing up. What kind of songs were you singing and how do you think that kind of singing has helped you do what you do now?

Growing up doing musical theatre, I guess, it wasn’t really the songs I was singing, it was just the idea that I was performing. Like, I loved performing, putting on personas and really confident roles whether they be male or female and just projecting this kind of like inner confidence that I have that you can’t necessarily expose in your everyday life. You can’t walk around like on a catwalk. You have to be normal about it. But onstage, no one will like critique you for that. So growing up, I just always had a love for performing and now I’m really excited to take that love into a rock band.

The Pink Slips performed at the CBGB Festival last year and you did it again this year. What’s the biggest difference you see in yourself and your band from then to now?

Oh so much. Last year was my first show ever. Like, I had never played a show. I was so nervous. And also, I had a completely different band. It was me and another girl playing acoustic covers. It wasn’t really anything and I think people made it into something. But it was like, we just practice in our bedrooms sometimes and do covers, and I remember it was really nerve-wracking and there was a bunch of photographers there and stuff and I was like, what? And honestly, this year was a lot more toned down, which I thought was interesting. There wasn’t as many people or anything but now it’s all guys and me, so the band is like 360, totally different, and I’m like so much more confident because I’ve played so many more shows and I know more of what I want cause back then I was doing covers, obviously, and I didn’t know what kind of music I wanted to do. So I was trying to figure it out. Now that I’m all set with these songs I’ve written and I’ve thought about and put time into, I’m just like more confident and I don’t want to leave the stage cause it’s so much fun.

How do you gage whether you think you’ve had a good concert or not?

I’ve never felt like I’ve done a horrible job but usually I can just tell from the audience. I always feed off the audience and that’s just so much more fun cause if an audience is like dancing and taking pictures and when I tell them to come up closer they come up and clap and they’ll cheer, I get much more excited. But the times the audience is on their phones or just standing around, then that kind of bums me out and makes me sad, kind of breaks my heart when people are just not interested. So that’s kind of how I gage it. But I try not to get too affected by it because, well, I did my best and if they don’t like it, that’s their own problem.

Who are some of the artists that inspire your music?

Artists like David Bowie and Iggy Pop and Debbie Harry and Kathleen Hanna, Alice Cooper, even Miley Cyrus. They’re not just singing songs, looking cool up there, they all have messages, whether it be feminism like Kathleen Hanna or Miley Cyrus even, pushing sexual boundaries, or David Bowie who always like glorified the underdog, which I want to be my whole thing, which is glorify the underdog and glorify people that are always like the outcasts and are different. That’s kind of what I end up myself and I feel like everyone at a certain point in their life can identify with being an outcast in their circle of people. But I’m attracted to people who have a voice and opinion and a dream they project onstage. I also love Alice Cooper, who I saw over the summer when he opened for Motley Crue. I love all the theatrical stuff and props he had onstage. I thought it was so cool because he’s not just singing classic rock songs and stuff. He takes the time and puts on a whole show and that’s what I’d want to do if I ever have my own tour. I’d make it like a whole extravagant event with a message.

If David Bowie was doing a big show and he called you up onstage and said you could sing any one of his songs you wanted to, which one would you pick?

Oh it would probably be “Rock N Roll Suicide” because that song is so much about that you’re not alone. I feel like he’s talking to me so to be able to sing that with him onstage I would like lose my mind (laughs). I identify so much with that song and I know so many people do but I think that was really what made me obsessed with him, was that I felt like he understood me being like an outcast teenager and that’s why I love that song so much. And also it’s just a really well-written song.

You have a really cool sense of style. It’s feminine and it’s cute and yet it has an edge. When you go shopping, what do you gravitate to?

I guess I gravitate towards anything vintage and denim. Like, I love denim – denim skirts, denim shirts, Levis, denim jackets, like men’s jackets. I think they look really cool with like a girly dress or skirt. I kind of gravitate towards vintage stuff because I hate generic clothing. So yeah, that’s kind of what I gravitate towards. And anything that I know that I will wear a lot, whether it be on stage or in real life. For example, a denim skirt. That’s good for either kind of thing.

You’re a busy girl – you have school, you have band practice, you write songs – how do you manage it all?

I don’t know, I think I’m just having so much fun and so excited about everything. Like, school is school but once I get out of school, I’m so excited to write songs and be with my band and also I’m a Senior so it’s a lot easier for me this year as to when I was a Junior and I had so much schoolwork to focus on. Now I’m becoming older and reaching adulthood, I can dictate more what I want to do with my time and not told what to do, which is so liberating (laughs)

What are your plans coming up? Are you going to be playing some more shows this year?

Yeah, I’m always trying to play shows and playing shows with my friend Jesse Jo Stark. I don’t feel like I’m ready yet to put out an album because I so need to mature a little bit and find out what I want to do as far as songwriting and stuff. So I’d say in the next year or two, I will look more seriously into writing an album but right now I’m more about improving myself as a performer cause this whole band really started like a year and a half ago so I’m still new to everything but I definitely love playing shows the best.

You seem excited about your future.

Yeah, I am really excited. I just really hope that my band starts getting recognized more and taken more seriously and not as just Duff McKagan’s daughter’s band. I want people to really respect me as a performer and think of me as an individual, not just my dad’s daughter. So it’s like an ultimate dream for me and I hope one day that it comes true. That’s like what I’m working for and kind of having other teenagers or people in general identify with me for being like an outcast or whatever just for liking something different like punk rock. Cause I go to a Catholic high school and it’s not like the most popular thing, punk rock. No one talks about that. I don’t know, for other people to like see me as an individual is what I’m excited about.

When you do your performances, do you get to talk to any of the kids out in the audience?

No, it kind of sucks cause a lot of my shows are 21+ so there’s not a lot of girls out there, or boys, they’re usually adults, but I have had a couple young girls around my age come up to me and ask for my picture and be like, “You’re so cool,” and that makes me so happy because they can identify with me and I’m not necessarily their role model but someone they feel comfortable with. Like if a girl ever comes up to me and compliments me or wants to take a picture or whatever, I treat them as if I’d treat a girlfriend, you know. Like, I want them to feel like you have a girlfriend who you can totally go to lunch with or whatever. I don’t want them to feel lesser or whatever, cause we’re in the same boat. We’re both teenage girls and it’s the same thing, both ways.

Photos by Katarina Benzova