Girls in Trouble

Thanks to a TV special on the Suzuki Method, Alicia Jo Rabins, daughter of non-musicians, found herself playing a super tiny violin at age three.

Her parents didn't know what they were getting into. By age eleven, she was writing "avant-garde" pieces by bouncing tennis balls against piano strings at a conservatory. At age fifteen she was composing twelve-tone quartets. But it was in college, on a two-month sailing expedition for a semester abroad, that she found her real musical passion. An Appalachian shipmate taught her dozens of traditional fiddle tunes, and, playing on deck as the sun set and the gulls circled, she realized her true love: simple chords and old folktales.

The story could have ended there, but as she drifted across the Caribbean Sea, Alicia found herself dreaming constantly of Jerusalem. Sailors are superstitious, so she bought a one-way ticket, flew across the ocean with a backpack and her fiddle, and found a small school that would teach her Hebrew and Aramaic. Plunging deep into arcane texts and mystical ritual, she studied twelve hours a day. At night she snuck out with her fiddle to play in nearby bars.

After two years of (mostly) monastic life, Alicia rejoined the world with characteristic intensity. She moved to Brooklyn, toured with several different bands, earned two Masters degrees (one in Jewish women's studies, the other in poetry), and read and reread the Old Testament. She was haunted and moved by the sex, the violence and the twisted HBO-worthy drama. It was the ancient women's stories that devastated her the most, and Alicia made sense of them by writing her first songs. She wrote when she could - at Appalachian fiddle festivals, cross-legged on motel room floors, and at home on her bed, plucking an old guitar. She could hear the women speaking to her, correcting her, explaining their side of things. Alicia found herself writing in their voices: one song for each woman's story.

For Girls In Trouble's self-titled debut, Alicia recruited Aaron Hartman of Old Time Relijun (K Records) to play upright bass, Tim Monaghan to play drums, and Jascha Hoffman to play piano, keyboards, and vibraphone. They headed down to rural North Carolina and recorded with master analog engineer Scott Solter (Spoon, The Mountain Goats). Alicia arranged and performed all the string parts, as well as guitar and vocal harmonies.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL....

READ MORE