At one point in our e-mail back-and-forth, Ganser bassist and vocalist Alicia Gaines says, “I miss green-room conversations.” We’ve been talking not just by e-mail but also over Zoom and via Twitter DMs. In any other year this might feel an excessive number of channels to use with just one person, but the pandemic has made communicating like this feel normal.
Look At The Sun by Ganser
Services like Twitter are designed as platforms for conversation, and when musicians use such spaces that way, they can develop relationships and collaborations naturally—relying not on record-label machinations but rather on deeper personal bonds. “Working with [Ganser] was sweet, because I felt like I got to kind of know who they are as people,” Strange says. “It made me love their music even more and respect what they’re trying to do with their music.”
In July 2020, Gaines wrote for Louder about touring as a Black woman in a band with two women and several queer members. She talks about having to work twice as hard to get half as far, about needing to prove her competence to threatened white men, and about how much more stressful police stops in remote areas are for her. Through social media, that article created connections too. “There was a whole bunch of people that responded to the article saying, ‘Oh my God, I recognize this,’” says Gaines.
