What makes LouFest special?“We know from playing past shows in St. Louis that the city has some of the most loving crowds in America. It’s truly an honor to play there.” - Jessi Darlin
Wow, she’s pretty good for a girl.
That’s something Jessi Darlin is tired of hearing. Her band, Those Darlins, has two female members that can rock as hard as any of the men she knows. “Every once and a while, someone comes up to me and says something like, ‘I can’t believe you can play that guitar! It’s so big!’ and I’m just like, ‘Seriously?!’” Darlin says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“Ah, sexism.”
Perpetuating female empowerment, challenging sexist ideologies and blurring the line of stereotypical gender roles are all colossal themes in Those Darlins’ music. These tropes are reflective of the members’ lives in general as well as the ways they’ve been obstructed in their pursuit to artistic success and the community of women in rock music who have lifted them up.
Those Darlins is a collaboration of three members, Jesse Darlin, Nikki Darlin and Linwood Regensburg, who play pure rock ‘n’ roll laced with the sweet but powerful drug of Tennessee southern punk. Their almost alt-country persona has the same vibe as artists such as The Ettes, Old 97’s and Hurray For The Riff Raff. It’s important to Those Darlins to distinguish between being sexy and being sexualized. Just to be clear, Those Darlins brings a whole lotta sexy.
“I don’t get the whole idea that, because women are sexualized, they aren’t allowed to be sexy,” Darlin says. “For us, it’s more about sexual freedom and allowing yourself to be however you wanta be. Being yourself is what’s sexy.”
Darlin can spout all kinds of instances in which men in the music corporations have created a synthetic view of women in the industry by placing a higher priority on stereotypical beauty and auto-tuning than talent cultivation. This is one reason Those Darlins chose to create music under its own label, Oh Wow Dang Records. Because of that decision, the band was able to define its own boundaries and beliefs in a free and experiential way.
The band’s latest album, Blur the Line (2013), discusses this topic in depth and was also very inspired by Darlin breaking the mold in her own life. “I was at a point in life when I needed to grow up,” she says. “I was letting past experiences hold me back, and writing music was a way to move on.”
What Darlin learned from this creative catharsis was that there’s no way to succeed but to try again, and if she has anything to say to younger girls, it’s to know with 100 percent certainty that you’ll make mistakes but to not let those mistakes delineate your life.
“We as women can do what we want to,” Darlin says. “It’s almost too obvious to say we can be whoever we want to be. But, you know, it has to be said somehow.”
