During some of Folsom Youth’s earliest gigs, they got accustomed to the comments. Kristin Sollecito says she’d hear this one: “You’re good for girls!”
“It was like we were getting judged as an all-girl band, not just a band,” she explains.
Rachel Spung would overhear talk that the group was “just getting shows because we were pretty young girls.”
“When we started, that kind of thing was tossed around often,” she continues.
The quartet, featuring recent P.G. High grads – and twins – Kim (drums) and Kristin Sollecito (vocals) plus soon-to-be high school seniors Spung (guitar) and Emily Mullet-Foster (bass), have never let such talk discourage them, mainly because they were more interested in music than outmoded misogyny.
“We’d just shrug it off and play music, because that’s what we love to do,” Kristin Sollecito says.
The thing is, the Folsom Youth rarely hear any of the commentary anymore. After less than a year, the outfit has blossomed as an everpresent force on the local band circuit alongside like-minded young favorites including The Pip Squeeks and Moses Nose. The foursome competed fiercely in a pair of battle of the bands contests this year and have worked up to on an almost-weekly show schedule around the Peninsula, no small feat.
Through a muggy haze of surf, ’50s garage and early ’60s British Invasion rock and roll, Folsom Youth’s solid repertoire comes packed with sophisticated originals like their all-instrumental surf jam “Velvet,” characterized by hefty and dexterous amounts of string sliding.
Additionally, the foursome’s sets are loaded with flavorful covers – deeper, wiser, unexpected cuts, including Bo Diddley’s “Not Fade Away” and The White Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a Girl.”
“We pick songs that we can imagine ourselves playing,” Spung explains.
In the end, Folsom Youth is taking a ride and anyone who wants to is invited to come along. And if no one does – which is essentially impossible – they still ride.
“It’s more about having something to prove to ourselves than anyone else,” Spung says. “We try to get better for ourselves and hope that everyone listening has a good time.”
FOLSOM YOUTH, LILLIE LEMON, STRANGE IDEAS and RUFRANO. 7pm Friday, July 24. Carmel Live, SW corner of Fourth and Torres, Carmel. $5.www.facebook.com/CarmelLive
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