Gretchen Phillips Papers

Gretchen Phillips was born on July 19, 1963, in Galveston, Texas. She attended Houston's High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, where she formed her first band, The Folk Group, with Sara Hickman. In 1981, Gretchen moved to Austin, Texas, which was home to a burgeoning punk scene. In 1982, she co-founded the all-female band Suffer Jets (with Mellissa Cobb, Teresa Taylor, and Edith Frost), and wrote "The Queer Song." That same year, Gretchen attended the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival for the first time. When the Suffer Jets broke up in 1983, Gretchen formed Meat Joy with Teresa Taylor and John Hawkes (nee Perkins). Within a few months, Teresa would leave to join the Butthole Surfers. That same year, Gretchen wrote a parodic country song titled "I Spent My Last Ten Dollars (on Birth Control and Beer)," which would later become a college radio favorite. She returned to the Michigan Womyn's music festival as a worker in the worker's kitchen, a role she would continue to fulfill until the festival ended in 2014. In 1985, Gretchen joined the all-female rock band Girls in the Nose, which was led by lesbian folklorist and artist Kay Turner. She also co-founded Two Nice Girls, a folk-tinged band that featured Laurie Freelove and Kathy Korniloff. Both bands were explicitly lesbian. Two Nice Girls toured the US and Canada many times throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1987, Two Nice Girls played the first South by Southwest music festival. In 1988, they signed with Rough Trade records and released 2 Nice Girls (1989), Like a Version (1990), and chloe liked olivia (1991). In 1991, they received a GLAAD Media Award for positive portrayals of homosexuality. Also in 1991, Gretchen became lovers with English professor and cultural critic Ann Cvetkovich, whose writing focuses on some of the same themes that animate Gretchen's own work: feelings, pleasure, and community. After Two Nice Girls broke up in 1992, Gretchen continued to grow as a musician and multimedia artist. In 1993, Girls in the Nose played for an estimated 1,000,000 people at the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Gretchen's subsequent musical projects have included the country gospel band Gretchen Phillips Ministries, the eclectic dyke/fag duo Phillips and Driver (with Dave Driver), rock bands such as The Gretchen Phillips Xperience and Lord Douglas Phillips (with Terri Lord and Darcee Douglas), as well as Gretchen's Disco Plague (It's Infectious!), an improvisational disco group with a rotating cast of players that includes Jenny Hoyston from Erase Errata and Thor Harris (Swans, Stick People).