Butchies Band With Indigo Girl For Raucous Cradle Assault

Amy Ray w/ The Butchies
Cat's Cradle

When Durham's The Butchies took the stage Jan. 16 at Cat's Cradle and began to wail on their instruments, heartbeats were reset to the reverberations of the music.

The three short-haired women, clad in collared, blood-red button-downs and black ties, rocked in ways most other girl bands scarcely could imagine.

It mattered not that the acerbic punk songs proved difficult to distinguish. The sweaty enthusiasm and personality of the "queercore" band rescued the performance from any trace of monotony.

As they jounced around the stage like weightless scalawags, The Butchies savored every minute of their deviancy -- a rare and energizing spectacle. Even quiet Butchie bassist Alison Martlew looked capable of starting a revolution at a moment's notice.

Though decidedly hardcore in their musical style, the Butchies displayed a non-self-conscious playfulness both between and during songs to the delight of the audience.

Lead singer and guitarist Kaia Wilson showed off her mastery of the art of the evil eye. Her visage slipped into a strangely demonic expression during climactic moments, the most intense occurring in the last song, a feminized but omnipotent remake of "I Don't Wanna Lose Your Love Tonight."

While playing with Amy Ray of The Indigo Girls, the threesome jumped into the back seat and allowed Ray's smoother melodies to steer.

Drastically altering the aura as she took the stage, Amy Ray was rock 'n' roll's sweetheart.

Mandolin in hand, Ray opened solo with"Johnny Rotten," the bluegrass song from her album Stag, and finished in a piercing crescendo, her eyes tightly clenched in concentration.

The Butchies then joined Ray on stage as she picked up her electric guitar and prepared to ambush the audiences' ears with her transformation from folk to rock.

Early last year, Ray split from Indigo Girls partner Emily Saliers to pursue the more intense and raw music to which she's always been drawn. But her distinctly raspy voice remains the driving force behind the songs, giving Indigo Girls fans a familiar point of reference.

"Laramie" and "Lucy Stoners," powerful songs denouncing the music industry and demanding women's rights, respectively, provided the catalyst for crowd eruptions. Even Butchies drummer Melissa York couldn't contain her appreciation.

"I just love 'Laramie!'" she announced at the song's finale into her digital headset microphone, a new toy that had provided comic relief earlier in the show.

Ray displayed her character throughout the show as she encouraged the audience to fight for peace, dedicated songs to loved ones and apologized that she could not perform an encore.

"We don't know any more songs," she said with a laugh. But she then picked the mandolin back up and strummed "Let Me Go Easy," dedicated to a friend who died of cancer.

Physiologically, the audience members were under total control. When the stage went black, the whole place had goose bumps.

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.