To the rhythmic thrum of La Legende De Calamity Jane playing in the backdrop, Erica, Julie, and Lenore Maire, all sisters, sit in the Lundell Lawson Beer Garden VIP section, discussing their fourth album, 2021 release “Get Thee To A Nunnery.”
They say it explores the complexity of wrestling with a family background that included a music teacher mother who attended an all-girl’s Catholic school as a young woman, and spoke to her daughters of the virtues of the place, and the obvious settler relations with Indigenous peoples and similar institutions.
Their tongue-in-cheek humour matches dark intelligence that offer audiences a surfer rock experience that also pulls at heart strings.
According to the sisters, their parents religious background included “intrinsic values” that stayed with the three even after they all strayed from the church at various stages of adolescence and adulthood.
On femme representation in the music industry, they all agree that “it’s a double edged sword because while we recognize that representations is important, and this is a position of powerful it can be really powerful for, say, a group of young girls to see us on stage, and be like ‘Oh, hey! I can do that too!’ We used to make these buttons that said ‘All-Female Is Not A Genre,’” Lenore shares, “We don’t want to be pigeon holed, unless you’re calling us a ‘girls band’ because we sound like The Shangri-Las or something, we don’t want that label.”