After some success with their punk band, Daughter, Nikki and ML formed Spalding Rockwell. In 2002, they worked with Electroclash icon Larry Tee and released their song “White Cotton Panties.” The song was a hit with the Electroclash scene and Spalding Rockwell found a whole new legion of fans to worship them despite the fact they are not an Electroclash band.

Their album Kate, which was written, performed, and produced entirely by Nikki and ML, is a collection of fractured personalities set to music. With Traci Lords-esque, horse whispering vocal styling mixed with aggressive guitars and sultry drum loops, Spalding Rockwell play up to their hot-chicks-with-guitars image in a very tongue-in-cheek way. They’re in on the joke.

We wanted a record you could dance to, fuck to and smoke to...something that you didn’t have to examine but if you did, you’d fine something there.

Liberation: How do you describe your sound? I found myself describing you to a friend as moody, the kind of music you put on when you’re either getting ready to go out, when you want to do pounds of coke, or when you want to fuck.

ML: That’s it! We wanted a record you could dance to, fuck to and smoke to. We wanted something that you didn’t have to examine but if you did, you’d fine something there. We tried not to take ourselves so seriously and kind of make fun of ourselves. It’s interesting because some people take certain things that we say so serious. In our song ‘Karahi’ there’s a line, “You should give me everything that I want in this life because I’m that good looking.” Who says that? It’s so brazen! If you decide that we are two hot chicks that are full of shit, then that’s what you’re going to find!

Nikki: We’ve had a lot of success with the records we’ve made. We made this other record with our band Daughter called Skin and it really hit home in the punk world. We released it on this Indie label and people were flipping out over it, the reviews were sick.

ML: Not many people know we have a legit, punk rock background.

Liberation: There are female artists like Joan Jett, Debby Harry, and Courtney Love that push things forward, and then there are the jig-dancing Ashley Simpsons of the world making an ass out of themselves on national television. Do you think it’s getting any easier for females in the predominately male rock world?

Nikki: Those two worlds are so different, the major label world and the world that we are in.

ML: Listen, when we go into a club not many people know that we engineer our own material. I can hook up and wire an entire studio and do sound at a club. So we walk into a club with heels and tight jeans and we’re like, “There’s a problem with the mic,” and they look at us like, “Yeah, like they know what they’re talking about.” There is a 15-20 minutes of adjustment time, like with the fish in the bag in the water and you let the temperature assimilate…same shit! You have to talk with them and give yourself a couple of opportunities to say something like call a cable an XLR and talk about RC connections or decibels.

And then they’re like, “Oh! OK, cool!” and then they see that there’s knowledge and I don’t know if it’s sex as much as it is knowledge and competence, where that’s the equalizer, when you can look at someone and say, “You work hard, you’re smart. I may not like your music but I respect you.”

When you’re a chick it’s almost like a smart girl’s club. You’re like a horse, you’re pulling a lot of weight behind you. It’s a burden, confidence is a burden

Liberation: That must be a funny transformation to watch.

ML: And of course when you’re a chick it’s almost like a smart girl’s club. You’re like a horse, you’re pulling a lot of weight behind you. It’s a burden, confidence is a burden.

Liberation: You have gotten to where you are because you know what you do and it’s unfortunate that you have to whip it out on the table to prove it.

ML: Right! Definitely! It’s as you say, there are so many examples of people that haven’t had to necessarily work. I think that bitch can wail, I’m being honest, I’ve heard her voice (Ashley Simpson) and I think she has a gorgeous voice. It’s husky, it’s raw. Nikki doesn’t think so.

Nikki: She’s alright.

ML: But do I resent the fact she’s had it real easy and played her first show to a stadium? Fuck yeah! But it’s like growing up and seeing someone with more money than you, you’re like, “I wish I had that dress.”

Nikki: Growing up in New York that was something that ML probably thought about more just because it’s more status conscious.

ML: I guess, but you were rich! You didn’t work a day in your life! (laughs)

Nikki: I’m not bitter. I don’t see Ashley Simpson as someone who didn’t have to work but she doesn’t know anything and she has a long fucking ride ahead of her before anybody takes her seriously. It’s cool, we’re slowly becoming these female figures that other girls will look at because we’re doing something different, and being strong. I feel like a force.

Liberation: That’s great that these girls have this respect for you based on your music and not for something vapid like a swimsuit calendar or pulling off your shirt at the Super Bowl. Not that there’s anything wrong with having a calendar or whipping out your tit.

ML: It’s different when you’re good looking and you take off your shirt, people resent it.

Nikki: We thought, we’re good looking so it’s going to be a leg up for us but in the music business but it’s actually worked against us. We thought we’d present ourselves as hot bitches and we wanted to be playful with what we wore but people were like…

Liberation: Sell out!

ML: Right! But if we were short and fat and ugly people would be like, “Empowerment! Take it all off!” It’s interesting to observe in different contexts. For us it’s about our talent, that’s what we want to shine through.

Liberation: Where did you guys meet?

ML: We met here in New York. I’m from New York and Nikki is from D.C. We ended up meeting one night through mutual friends and then a couple of years later we ran into each other again and I was dropping out of school and Nikki was a Junior at Tisch. I was like, “Dude, this whole college thing sucks” and she was like, “Dude, this whole acting thing sucks.” Fuck it, let’s just start a band!

Liberation: Do either of you have any type of musical background?

ML: Yes. Nikki was a ballerina so she was always around piano. My father played piano every day for at least three hours a night. But we started out as lyricists. When we first got together we found it really easy to write so we were seeking out people that were making beats.

Nikki: It was a very tiring process of meeting people and trying to hook it up so we just learned all the shit ourselves.

ML: All during that time we were looking over the shoulders of these people learning little by little over the year. And it was really a series of disappointments, like at the end of the day when you’ve spent all this time with these people who are donating their time and you don’t like it, it’s hard to…

Nikki: It’s hard to tell somebody that we don’t like it.

ML: It’s much easier for us when we started doing this shit ourselves and we could turn to one another…

Nikki: After two weeks of working on a track and think it’s bad.

Liberation: Do you like this ‘ Electroclash’ label?

Nikki: We’re not Electroclash. People want to call us an Electroclash band because we were associated with Larry Tee but we’re not Electroclash in the original sense of the word. Electroclash is very tongue-in-cheek and we are very earnest about the way we perform and the music we do. We never really fit in with the scene but somehow with the press we got labeled Electroclash because we worked with Larry. It was really cool at the time because before that we had had been playing in our punk band. We had played in rock clubs in the city and we thought the rock scene was pretty dead even though they say The Strokes came out of it. We were psyched because Larry would book us, we’d do our three songs and get paid at the end of the night.

ML: It was awesome! Before that we were playing for two people and now we’re playing for hundreds and they’re artists, musicians, photographers, they’re people starting magazines. We always tried so hard to fit in and make that work but there was something that didn’t fit. We were too rock n’ roll. We were too edgy, too left, or too complicated. We just grew out of it. Larry is awesome and said, “You girls are super stars! You’ve already outgrown me!” (laughs)

On The Web | www.spaldingrockwell.com