When Whitney Petty rolls into a new town while on tour, she likes to go where the locals are, the real divey-looking bars.
“Sometimes you discover shit like the rodeo’s in town,” the guitarist with Seattle-based classic rock revivalists Thunderpussy tells me over the phone.
As we talk, Petty and her band are in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “I feel like I’m on acid just walking through,” she says. “It’s one giant arts installation.”
Petty’s particularly excited to make it back to Eugene. “Eugene is a special place for me. I worked in the Northwest Youth Corps. It changed my entire life,” she says.
Petty grew up in the South, listening to pop country from the ’80s and ’90s, splitting the difference between rock ‘n’ roll and country. One day her softball coach put on some Def Leppard.
“I remember thinking this is the best thing I have ever heard — just so ballsy,” she says.
Soon, Petty discovered the blues. “I had an aunt that gave me an Elmore James CD. I love the blues. I don’t really know where that comes from. I’m communing to some older version of myself.”
Last year Thunderpussy put out their self-titled debut, a celebration of rock ‘n’ roll excess, recalling the golden age of hard rock and heavy metal from bands like Kiss, Led Zeppelin, and early Heart, with bulldozer grooves, squealing guitar solos, and psychedelic atmosphere.
Petty got into playing guitar because it just looked so damn cool, she says. “It was all about the feeling: the look, the lifestyle. I knew there was something about it. I never wanted to be a front man. I wanted to be an axe slinger.”
For Petty, performance came first. “The performance part came to me way before any of the chops. I just used to jump and down. I was always a little show boat,” she says.
This year, Thunderpussy are eager to get back into the studio. “We just really want to hone our songwriting,” Petty says. “Everyone knows we have a great stage show. That’s not how you enter the pantheon of rock ‘n’ roll.”
Rest assured, because Thunderpussy will stay as rock ‘n’ roll as ever, “like all the records we love,” Petty says, a style of rock sometimes called cock rock, an obvious reference to male genitalia.
This makes the federal government turning town Thunderpussy’s request for a trademark on grounds of indecency particularly ironic.
A case challenging the ruling made it to the Supreme Court, along with the FUCT clothing brand, and Portland all Asian-American rock band The Slants.
In June, the court ruled the names could be trademarked.
But the message is pretty clear: Male rock stars are welcome to shove their junk in our face and sing about their sexual conquests, but if women make too much noise, reclaiming their sexuality for the glory of rock, it’s “sit down and shut up.”
None of this is lost on the band, especially when Donald “pussy-grabber” Trump is in the White House.
“The word ‘pussy’ is in and out of vogue,” Petty says. “In the last 10 to 15 years it’s kind of out of vogue. It’s really odd times that we’re living in.”
Thunderpussy plays with Shaky Harlots 9 pm Monday, July 22, at WOW Hall; $12 advance, $15 door, all-ages.
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