Carla Gets Butch

Interview by Gina Bowers
Photos by Jennifer Roper
(Curve Magazine, September, 1997)

"We're not really married to any genre of music and that annoys a lot of people, but I can't help it. I get bored," Carla Bozulich admits. Impatience, in her case, proves to be a virtue: Witness the meteoric rise of her band, The Geraldine Fibbers. Within eight weeks of its conception, the five-member group -- including stand-up bass and violin -- independently recorded a ten-inch single and soon signed to Virgin Records. After touring the United States and Europe with their debut album, Lost Somewhere Between the Earth and My Home, Carla and her fellow Fibbers returned to the studio. "This is the only interview we're gonna do while recording and you're from CURVE, so it's kinda cool," says Carla as she sinks into a leather couch, lights a cigarette and begins our chat.

GB: Is there a theme to your new album?

CB: Yes. The album's called Butch. The recurrent thread through the album is gender issues and ambiguity, as far as sexual orientation. I wanted to name the album Butch because it's a very homo-specific word. It just means so much to me, that word. It's a state of mind, really. It's usually used in reference to a woman, but it doesn't have to be...

What else can I say? It's for the butch inside us all. It was an alternative to the title Bitch.

That fits into your gender ambiguity theme.

Yeah. There's a lot of stuff on the album about power as a woman. I'm a person that refuses to lay down and be walked on. The album is about reaching that place where you're ready to just fucking kill someone or die before you're ready to let that happen again. Because, as a woman, you deal with that. I'm pretty fucking good at it and I don't take shit.

How do you relate to your audience?

I feel like I plug directly into whatever people are feeling or thinking. We opened for Joan Osbourne last year, and one of the shows was all ages. The whole front row was taken up with little girls and their mothers. It was obvious from the first note we struck that they were horrified. The mothers were helping the little girls cover their ears. I'm an empathic person, so I suddenly started feeling what they were feeling.

Are you seeing anybody now?

Mmmm...I've had a date or two recently. It's kind of one of those best friend scenarios. We'll see what happens with that. I don't know.

When CURVE interviewed Jenny Shimizu a while back, she mentioned you.

Yeah, I read that. That was real nice of her.

You two dated, right?

Yeah. That was five years ago. She used to look really solid. She's a solid gal. She still carries that with her, but she used to be a solid hunk of a girl. She's really an excellent person -- fun, funny, gorgeous.

And your friend, your "best friend?"

(Smiling) Gorgeous as well. Pretty. Smart. Excellent kisser. It's a little scandalous, I think. That's why I'm a little reluctant to talk about it. I don't know if she would want me to or not.

Is she married or something? (Laughs) No, no. It's just really a tangled-web situation, you know? I haven't had many girlfriends. I've had a pretty intense history, and a lot of it has to do with the things that men do to their girlfriends and to the women in their life, and some of it's not very nice. Girl Land is very pleasant territory for me because I'm relatively inexperienced, I guess. It's kinda cool because I feel really awkward and naive and not very good at it. Like, I don't feel all confident in what I'm doing. And it adds a sweet element to the whole thing that is lost for me with boys.