I moved to Austin from Houston right at the end of my seventeenth year. A few months later I was fortunate enough to meet Kay Turner. Kay changed my life. She’s fifteen years older than me and she took this youngster by the hand and showed me how the lesbian lifestyle is led. She’s certainly one of the most important platonic relationships I’ve ever had. We began setting Adrienne Rich poems to music almost immediately. She also taught me old Motown songs I’d never heard of. She taught me how to drink gin and tonics and she turned me onto Sonic Youth and Madonna. Kay is a mighty force to be reckoned with and anyone who knows her knows this.

In addition to playing music with me, she was playing with her straight co-worker, Betsy Peterson. As a couple of women with good strong noses who had been told they’d look better with some nose job surgery, they jokingly said they were going to form a band called Girls in the Nose. Since I myself had been told my prospects would be improved if I got a nose job, I wanted in this band. So, in the summer of 1985 we made it happen. Incidentally, that’s also the very summer that Two Nice Girls was formed.

Initially a three-piece, Girls in the Nose started out with a number of covers, Bite Me, and Last $10, if memory serves. Then Kay’s college pal, Joanna Labow, joined us, playing percussion, keyboards and great backing vocals.

And then Pam Barger (later of Two Nice Girls) joined us on drums. We went through a few different bass players (Kathy Korniloff, Paula Schorr) before the illustrious Darcee Douglas made the line-up solid. People, let me tell you something, this band was fun. We had great rehearsals and we had crazy shows. We wrote songs about pretty much whatever entered our heads and made us laugh. If you lived in Austin back in the day, you know. If you didn’t, well, lucky for you we made some cassettes that will be available for purchase again someday soon. Maybe even on CD this time around. Viva La Vulva!! Go All The Way With Your Nose!!