GRLBND
in conversation with Lanie Edelson
Meredith Purdy, a musician and fourth-year Graphic Design student, discusses her musical journey from handbells and choir to the bass guitar. Purdy is one of three core members of GRLBND, along with singer Katherine Baloga and guitarist Brooke Palmer. Purdy shares her sources of inspiration, such as Kathleen Hanna and the punk movement, and details the band’s evolution since its formation in December 2024. The band has since disbanded.
This interview took place outside Espresso News on October 21 at 12 PM.
LE: Who are the members of GRLBND?
MP: [So we’re made up of] three people, including myself—Katherine [Baloga] is our singer and she just graduated. She works at Watauga Surgical. Brooke [Palmer] is our guitarist, and she started out as a music major and switched to music marketing. She has a gig running sound at Boone Saloon. And then there's me. I learned bass in December because I was like, I need another side hobby. I have a lot of background in music because I grew up very religious, and I did handbells from kindergarten all the way to middle school, and then choir from kindergarten through senior year of high school, and then piano lessons. So I knew how to practice, but I'd never thought to connect that with a band. Those two felt very separate, and then I met my friend Katherine, and she helped connect those.
LE: Did GRLBND start with you and Katherine?
MP: Yes. It was the two of us. She was in another band, but it was dispersing. We had been friends for a while, I knew how she operated, and I was like, ‘I want to do a project with you that's creative. Let's start a band that's all women.’ At the time I hadn’t been to a show in Boone that played stuff that I, or any of the women around me, were listening to, and I feel like that's important. But then I was kind of freaked out because I don't know an instrument—I didn’t really see myself in this solution, but I did see it as a problem. But then we looked on Facebook Marketplace and she drove with me to Winston-Salem to pick up a bass. Ever since, I've been learning on YouTube. Our goal has always been all-female band members, so we found our guitarist [Brooke], and then we found a drummer. At one point we had a tambourine player. That was awesome. But she left because unfortunately, there wasn’t much need for a tambourine player. But, you know, that's okay. We started practicing in the LLC, which is where most bands in Boone start. Not a very aesthetically pleasing, fun environment, but it is free. Then Brooke was like, ‘We can practice at my apartment, we can set up our instruments and practice outside.’ So that was our first way of getting out there. We had people stop by, and we put a tip jar out. We got a Brazilian dollar. And we were like, okay, we need to book our first show, we need to make this happen. We had a friend of a friend who was moving out of her house. She was like, ‘I'm leaving. Let's throw a house party, but you can't tell anyone. You can tell your friends, but you can't put it on social media.’ So we were like, okay, five people are going to show up. But the whole house was full. I think that was really the energy that we needed to keep it going, 'cause we were very unsure, and all of our songs were very scrappy… one song we just threw together five minutes before. We had so much fun, and it was really cool to see people excited about it.
LE: Where did the name GRLBND come from?
MP: I would describe the band to people when we were first starting, and I was like, ‘Well, it's a girl band.’ There are a lot of other bands called ‘Girl Band’ out there, but I was like, oh, we'll take out the vowels, and that'll make it punk. Katherine and I had watched Kathleen Hanna’s documentary, The Punk Singer, and we were incredibly inspired by that. The way she presents herself is awesome, and I was inspired because she worked with nontraditional musicians who were just excited about the punk movement and didn't necessarily have the skill yet, but they were willing to put effort into obtaining that. After that, we came up with the phrase “all women no vowels” to wrap it all together, and we decided that if we were going to have a show that was the size of our first one, we’d get to say, “Women to the front, men to the back.” That was from Kathleen Hanna. At our show at TAppRoom in May, there ended up being a lot of women and supportive boyfriends, and we love that dynamic—it goes really well with GRLBND. I was talking to a really tall guy about the “Women to the front men in the back” line and he said it was awesome. He was like, ‘It gives me a place to be, and I feel out of the way, and I feel like I'm doing what I need to be doing, and I have a role too.’
LE: Would you say that you draw most of your inspiration from punk music?
MP: We do and we don’t. Our message and our energy is definitely punk. Then there's Katherine—Katherine has a beautiful voice and she's not very comfortable screaming. We definitely take inspiration from punk music, but we're very interested in being ourselves and staying authentic to who we are. Brooke is traditionally a jazz musician, so a lot of her guitar riffs are from that. We kind of started from punk and went from there. Recently, we’ve been taking a lot of inspiration from The Last Dinner Party and Folk Bitch Trio because they have such a powerful message, and they use that melodious sound to get the message out.
LE: How has the band’s sound evolved over time?
MP: When we first started, we didn't really have a sound at all. We were just thinking, ‘How do we play this song? Let's go from here.’ Starting the semester, I was like, ‘Hey, guys, I've been listening to so much punk music. So we're going to scream. I've learned all these basslines, so let's do it.’ And Katherine was like, ‘No, I'm not doing that.’ But she tried, and she lost her voice right before our show with the sorority Chi Omega. Luckily, the day before, she managed to scrape it together, but we learned in that moment that we should just be who we are and not try to fit into a mold. So this is the end of an era because we're going to close out our punk/pop genre that we've been tapping into. We've decided that we need to take a step back and just focus on writing a bunch of music. We want to develop a specific sound. Katherine has a lot of interest in going in a folk direction, Brooke has a lot of interest in going in a jazz direction, and I really like Kendrick Lamar. We had a band meeting, we made a playlist, and they were like, ‘Why is there so much Kendrick Lamar on here?’ And I was like, ‘There's no bass, but there could be, you know?’ So I think it's going to be really cool to see the three of us, who have completely different ideas and interests, work together and create something. We're going to reintroduce ourselves next semester with our own music at Boone Saloon. I drew a new logo, so I'm excited to see that.
LE: How have the members of the band evolved over time?
MP: We've had people come and go. I quickly learned that there are people who just want to play, and then there are people who are willing to practice. We had people who would come in and they were like, ‘Oh, I don't want to run that again, that's good with me.’ And Katherine has always been very high-achieving. We are going to have fun, and we're going to do it for the right reasons, but we're going to sound good, and we’re going to work for it. So we've had some people come and go because that's a lot, and it's not for everyone. We had a drummer, Chelsey [Arney], who we met back when we first started, and we loved her. But one thing that is very important to us is school first, one hundred percent. This is a hobby. We’re not making it—that’s not why we’re here. We're here to uplift each other as individuals first. Chelsey was applying to the nursing program, and she ended up getting in, and she wanted to be able to focus on school. We were really sad because we were so lucky to find her—she was such a good fit, in personality, skill, all of that. But we were like ‘Respect, one hundred percent.’ So that did change a little bit of our sound because our next drummer, [Lex], is leaving in a couple of weeks to do their own projects. It’s been an adjustment, but I think it's helped our sound develop because they're so musically talented. During practices, they'll talk about rhythm techniques and things like that. Having that feedback has been really helpful.
LE: Does GRLBND perform covers or original music?
MP: We have been doing covers, but we wrote our very first song about my car that caught on fire about a month ago. It was really scary. I called 911 and the fire truck was coming, and the first person I think to call is our old drummer, Chelsey. I was like, ‘Can you come and stand here with me? Because I'm freaking out.’ And cars would drive by and yell things at me, and phones were out, so I knew—I don't have Snapchat, but I was like, I know I'm somewhere on that. But Chelsey was really calm because she's training to be a nurse and is very good at dealing with extremes. She was like, ‘Dude, promotion,’ and she pulled out her phone and she made a “follow GRLBND on Insta” sign and held it up. For a second, I forgot my car was on fire. I joked about writing a song about it, and she was like, ‘Dude, let's do it.’ So our song is called CRV. That was my car.
LE: Are you going to put the song on any streaming platforms?
MP: It's still in the editing process. We have the instrumentals written, but we haven't written the words. Well, currently the words are ‘last night my car was on fire, but at least I'm not dating a liar,’ which is funny 'cause no one dated a liar, but it rhymes. When we performed it at ZRC Skate, Katherine just made up lyrics on the spot. We hope to eventually perform our written lyrics, but for now, it's just whatever Katherine's feeling.
LE: What does the process of writing lyrics and instrumentals look like for you?
MP: We throw everything in a pot and just hope for the best. We go from there. For this song, we had a melody and I threw in a bassline, then we were trying to fit Katherine’s lyrics, but her writing is more like poetry and we needed something quick and something punchy. In that case, the music came first and then it was like, ‘What words make sense for this?’
LE: How many gigs has the band played since you started?
MP: There was the beginning show at Brik House. That was our craziest show. And Betty's Biscuits. We've learned that there are certain venues that have us, and they're great, but we've learned that we thrive best in an environment that has a lot of people who are really excited. Even if there's like five people in the audience, we have to act like there's a thousand, and that is such a hard lesson. We got in our heads at the Betty’s Biscuits show and we all kind of freaked—everyone in the band has their own way of freaking out. Brooke, because she's so good at guitar, she'll start playing something we've never heard before, and it's really good. And then I'll just get off rhythm completely. Katherine will usually sing something that's maybe not the right thing. We all have our own little things. We've started working really hard on recovery—like, okay, we're going to mess up, it's just bound to happen. But we're in this together, whether we have three people or a thousand. Brik House was so cool because there was a mosh pit and the owners were so nice and respectful. Anytime any of us were loading in stuff, they were helping. We did have our jacket stolen by someone, but the owners helped us find it, so it all worked out.
LE: How do you choose the venue and your setlist for each show?
MP: Our usual rule of thumb is—because we're all prioritizing school—as long as it's a weekend, as long as we're playing with people who have a good message, and the venue also has a positive environment and message. We do a lot of research [on venues]. We're very comfortable saying no. We're driven by the movement of being for women, [for] positivity. So we really are very picky about who we play with, who we play with and the place we're playing at. As for the setlist, we try to all listen to female-fronted bands, and we try to play songs that either are by women or would have a great spin if it was by a woman. We did “Maneater” by Daryl Hall and John Oates, and that was really cool because we were reclaiming that idea. We've done Katy Perry, we've done Hole, we've done Kathleen Hanna. We've tried a variety of high energy, which is why I originally felt that the setlist was kind of all over the place, but at the root of it, it's all about female empowerment and energy from a breadth of genres.
LE: What is the band community like in Boone, from the perspective of a band—especially a newer band?
MP: It’s very network-heavy. In order to do well, you have to be very interested in connecting with people, but in my band, we're all friends and we hang out all the time. I think that makes better music and better musicians. But then there are people out there who are just there for the music, and I respect that. Especially as a woman in music, it's very important to have that boundary of ‘Not everyone wants to be your friend.’ Also, even though you're friends with your bandmates, you need to keep a level of professionalism to be taken seriously. My role when we pull up to shows is the chill, like, ‘What's up, guys, how's it going?’ person. Brooke is usually making things happen. I think it's good to have a designated person [for that]. Katherine's the ‘talking to the audience’-type of person. We all have our roles, and it works out for us.
LE: How has the community response been to your band?
MP: I feel like it's been really good. It's interesting because we started out kind of expecting to fight the system, like things were going to be tough for us. But people have been really, really excited about the band. Because I come from a graphic design background, I've been doing the promotion material, and people in my classes are always excited. People always say print is dead, and I think print flyers adds to the further message of, you know, women in music is such a small thing and print media is such a small thing, and for us to use that as like our marketing just makes a lot of sense. And having support from so many creative people who are not necessarily tied to music is really exciting, and I think it makes us unique because we are operating on a more creative platform.
LE: In terms of balancing the band and classes, how often do you guys practice?
MP: Usually, we practice three times a week for about three hours typically, and every day on our own for about an hour, but before a show we do twice a week. When we first started we were so excited, we'd just be talking during practice. But now we've learned that it's better for everyone if we lock in, do what we need to do, and then we hang out after. We break down the issues during practice. We're very democratic, so if someone has an idea, we throw it in—that's our time to try different things out.
LE: Are there any specific bass players you look to for inspiration?
MP: I don’t usually have specific people I look to. I just listen to specific rhythms and take note of how they're breaking up a signature. Like in the Le Tigre song, they don't even use a bass, but it has a bassline, and they break it up in such a unique way that matches the clap. That's usually what inspires me. There are certain people like Blu DeTiger and Meg White from The White Stripes who inspire me in the way that they present themselves as a musician, not necessarily what they're doing.
LE: Where do you see the band going post-graduation?
MP: That’s a topic that everyone avoids, because nobody knows. I'm graduating, Katherine's hoping to get into medical school in Raleigh. Brooke will still be here. The band is probably going to disperse after 2026, but we're hoping that we can help Brooke find other people to continue it—so the thing could still exist, but we're just not there anymore
LE: How do you see your journey as a musician separate from the band, and where do you see yourself going musically in the future?
MP: Well now I have this bass, so I’m probably going to continue with the bass, but in general I think music will continue to exist in my life. I grew up doing so much church music, mostly because my mom told me to, but also because it was faith-driven, and I've always been interested in doing music for a greater purpose. We'd go to nursing homes to sing choir, and seeing the older people cry, that was so beautiful. I think that was when I realized how impactful music is and I wanted to be a part of that. That's why I do graphic design, because I can create something that has meaning and purpose for someone. GRLBND is the same, and that's why I've been doing it.