Bristol's Drunken Butterfly are coming to play LOUD WOMEN Fest on 15 Sept! We got to know them a little better ...

Drunken Butterfly! Tell us a bit about the scene in Bristol?
In terms of venues we really love the Exchange. Myself (Alice) and Darcie are organisers for LaDIYfest Bristol and they’ve been super supportive of us there. We also held LaDIYfest Bristol 2017 in the Southbank Club in Southville, which was a really cool venue and accessible too – we don’t have many fully accessible venues in Bristol.

There’s definitely a cool little DIY/punk scene in Bristol, though we do need more bands made up of people of oppressed genders so please start one if you are reading this and are from Bristol! We want more bands to play with! At the moment we play quite a lot with Kiss Me Killer, who we love, and we’ve played with the Menstrual Cramps a couple of times too – I think some of them live in Bristol now. We’ve recently met this really cool band called Miss Kill, who are a grunge band made up of two sisters who are 15/17. They remind me and Darcie of us when we started out. In terms of promoters there’s obviously LaDIYfest Bristol which we are involved in, and Hell Hath No Fury Promotions and Eat Up are doing cool stuff too.

We are SO looking forward to welcoming you to London and seeing you play live! You released your album ‘Socialist of the City’ back in 2016 – tell us all about the album – what’s are your favourite tracks, how did you record it, and what’s the story behind the title track?

Thank you, we are so excited to play! ‘Socialist of the City’ was a totally DIY record. I (Alice) did music production at college, and kitted myself up with recording equipment when I finished, so we were able to record it all at my house and Katie’s house. I produced it, mixed it etc and Darcie did the artwork. It took a while to finish, fitting it around our jobs and uni, but we’re really proud of it. My favourite tracks on there are probably ‘Not All Men’ and ‘We’re All in This Together’. The title track ‘Socialist of the City’ is kind of about being brought up as a socialist and being in that old Labour democratic socialist tradition, which felt very fringe and something from a bygone time when I wrote it – not so much anymore!

What can we look forward to from Drunken Butterfly? 

We are planning to record a new EP in the Autumn which we are really excited about. It’s going to be quite a bit heavier than the last one, with lots of feminist/queer themes. There’s going to be songs about women reclaiming space at shows, the #MeToo movement, the TV show Sugar Rush, and there will be a song about Brexit on there too. We’ll be playing most of the tracks at Loud Women. The working title at the moment is ‘Protest Songs’, which may or may not be a slightly pointed barb at people who say there is no protest music anymore… you only have to look at the line up of Loud Women Fest to see that isn’t true!

Touring can be tricky to fit around our day jobs, but we are hoping to go to lots more cities in the next year! We are already booked for 0161 Festival in Manchester next May which we are really excited about – anti fascist events are so important at the moment.

Who are you looking forward to seeing play at Loud Women Fest?

Literally everyone! This is a dream come true for us, we can’t wait to play with all these fantastic bands and see a load of bands we haven’t had the chance to see before. We are big fans of the Petrol Girls, so we’re looking forward to seeing them again. And we’ve been trying to see Dream Nails for a while so it’ll be great to catch them.

Tell us anything else you think it’s important we know about you/your music!

We recently had our ten year anniversary gig – in May for Hell Hath No Fury Fest. We played our first ever show in May 2008 at Moles Club in Bath.