Correction appended: A previous version of this article listed the one male and four female band members as five women. The change has been made.
It is no secret bands should always practice before their first performance – but every rule has its exceptions.
Miss Crimson, a new band on Ohio University’s campus formed by five members, met each other in person for the first time at The Union Bar before walking on stage.
The band made its debut Aug. 21, the Friday of move-in weekend when The Union was hosting an open-mic night.
“We were all like, ‘Hey, let's go watch this and check out what this place is going to be like, because we hope to perform there at some point,’” Jordan Hara, a freshman studying music production and recording industry, said.
Hara is the band’s lead guitarist.
“Then we were just watching all the people playing and we were like, ‘You know what sounds really cool right now, performing live all together, what if we just did it,’” Hara said.
After retrieving their instruments from their dorms, the five musicians spent nearly 20 minutes going back and forth about what song to sing. Ella Frantz, a freshman studying acting, is the band’s lead singer and said one song they kept coming back to was “Blitzkrieg Bop” by The Ramones.
After settling on the song, the group ran through it on the patio – no amps, no mics, no drumset.
Without ever having had a formal rehearsal, the group took the stage by storm. Despite the lack of practice, the members said they didn’t have many jitters.
“You feel nervous until the music starts playing,” Izzy Rempe, a freshman studying music production and recording industry, and Miss Crimson guitarist, said.
“That stage is our home, and we are most ourselves when we're up there,” Hara said. “As soon as that first note hit, we were all just in the groove of things.”
The itch to perform, spurring their first performance, was not a one-time occurrence.
“We'll just get this craving to play every time we see someone else,” Hara said. “Twelve o'clock, one in the morning, we'll just go out to Paw Print Park, drag all of our amps (and play).”
Frantz said they all seem to live and breathe music and cannot get enough of performing.
“I absolutely just love the way that music brings so many people together,” Frantz said. “There's just this bond between the artist and their audience.”
There is a bond within the band, too. Hara said chemistry is something impossible to teach, but luckily for Miss Crimson, connections came naturally.
“You can just see how much we genuinely enjoy playing with one another,” Hara said. “We're together 24/7 … we got super, super lucky.”
Miss Crimson members said they value more than just making music and finding community. Hara said it is deeper for them as women in the music industry, especially in rock music.
“There aren't as many female voices in rock that are amplified,” Hara said.
In 1986, the first class of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductions included no women artists out of 15 inductees. Since then, only about 8.4% of inductees have been women, states Far Out. This statistic plays a role in why Miss Crimson is proud of its female-fronted identity.
“It's super important to us that, as a female-fronted band, that is at the forefront of it,” Hara said. “Oftentimes, the female voices in this industry are not the ones that have the main platforms. So it was really important to us that that is at the forefront of, not just our music, but of our brand as a band, almost.”
Myles Kuhn, a freshman studying music production and recording industry, is the band’s drummer and only man.
For Miss Crimson, part of having a voice in the industry means taking up a responsibility to be the inspiration they saw when they were younger. Morgan Killmeyer, a freshman studying political science, is the band’s backup guitarist and saxophonist, and said it is important to be a role model for younger musicians.
“There's someone watching you there that wants to do that,” Killmeyer said. “They're looking at you thinking, ‘Oh, I want to be that someday.’”
Even if women’s voices aren’t the loudest in the industry, rock music still gives bands like Miss Crimson a chance to express themselves.
“Young women were given so few opportunities to have safe spaces like this, where you can just go crazy,” Frantz said. “When we're on stage, that's our time to let go. We can be loud, we can be big, we can flail around and stuff. That's our time to mosh. So it's our safe space too.”
Being in the band, Frantz said, means “being present, being loud and taking up space.”
