Blame Sally, a Bay Area-based all-female supergroup, brings life and originality to every room they perform in. Their original sound will inspire an array of comparisons – they’ve been likened to everyone from the Indigo Girls to the Dixie Chicks, and from the Wailin’ Jennys to Radiohead. Together, Pam Delgao (percussion, guitar, vocals), Renee Harcourt (guitar, bass, banjo, harmonica, vocals), Jeri Jones (guitar, bass, dobro, mandoline, vocals) and Monica Pasqual (piano, keys, accordion, melodica, vocals) create one killer band that boasts strong compositional and vocal skills and some serious instrumental power.
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The four women who make up the Bay area- based group, Blame Sally, have some experience with improbable complexities and contradictions. Almost everything about their history is contrary to conventional wisdom. For one thing, they put their individual careers aside to start Blame Sally when they were in their late 30s and 40s—the age at which bands are traditionally supposed to break up and begin solo careers. For another, this is obviously an all-woman band—“girl groups” usually being the novel province of youthful upstarts, not mature singer/songwriters.
Splitting the front person status among each of the four members goes against the agreed-upon maxim (agreed upon by everyone but the Beatles, anyway) that every group needs a single strong focal point. And didn’t they get the memo that women, in particular women in show biz, are supposed to be packing it in at this point, not making fresh introductions?
Actually, they did get that memo and promptly tossed it into the proverbial circular file. “We’ve realized that some of the things that might have been considered liabilities were actually assets,” says vocalist/pianist Monica Pasqual, “and that in truth, the very thing you might be thinking you should hide or isn’t going to help you is something that people are excited about.”
“One of the things I really enjoy about being in this band is how inspired our audiences are by us,” agrees vocalist/guitarist Renee Harcourt. “There’s a real openness and lovingness between the band members, and a lot of joy, and I think people get that when they watch us play. In addition to that, I think people find what we’re doing very inspirational, because it’s a time in your life when you’re thinking, ‘Am I doing what I really love to do?’ You start questioning your career choices around that time, along with a lot of things in your life. And we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to defy the odds and do what we love. People enjoy seeing that.”
“There are a lot of people who become really connected to us, and fascinated by ‘Ooh, what’s their story?’ We’ve had fanatical fans in their 40s and older, and also plenty of young girls who’ve been super into it. Just thinking that’s cool—‘Wow, that could be my mom!’” she laughs
“That’s not everything,” Pasqual points out. “If we were coming out and our music sucked, or it was not vital-sounding, I don’t think that people would be like ‘Oh, cool, they’re in their 40s,’ or whatever,” she laughs. “But they’re digging what we’re doing, and they’re seeing that it’s fresh and that it has life and originality—and then you throw in a ‘How weird…!’ on top of that. It’s like when Lucinda Williams really hit when she was in her 40s. She’d been doing it for a long time, but for a lot of people, that was the first time they really heard her, and it was like: God, she rocks, she’s cool, she’s got edge, and she doesn’t fit the stupid mold.”
The members of Blame Sally don’t have to work too hard to find the depth in their songs: Having lived a little leaves no choice but to go deeper. In 2006 Harcourt was diagnosed with and successfully fought breast cancer and Pasqual’s longtime boyfriend was diagnosed with MS. Needless to say, these don’t really compare with flat tires on the tour van or other worst-case adversities common to bands starting up right out of college. But—not to get oxymoronic again—some of the personal setbacks helped prompt some of the career breakthroughs.
Harcourt’s illness “totally affected the band—but in a good way,” she says. “I got my diagnosis and then two weeks later Tom was diagnosed with MS, so that was a very rough summer for us. But we held together very tightly through all that. It’s still going on for Tom and Monica, unfortunately. But what happened for me personally… It sounds so trite, but you know what happens: You’re like, ‘Oh my God, I might die,’ and then you start looking at your life like, ‘Am I really doing what I really want to be doing?’ And the fact was, I’d been doing graphic design for decades and I was burnt out on it while the music was what was feeding me.
“But I was the one who was holding the band back in terms of really making a go of it,” Harcourt continues, “because I had this business, I have a teenage daughter and my time just wasn’t as flexible as theirs was. I went to the band and said, ‘You guys, what if we just really try to do this for real instead of just for fun?’ And it was at that time that everything changed. The three of them were like, ‘Hell yeah!’ Suddenly all these things happened. We got a manager, we got a booking agent, and then we got a great record deal that made it possible for us to focus on music full time. It was quite interesting how once we all had the same goal, things really started to kick in.”
