Workhorse Ethic
Her Majesty the Baby finally takes matters into their own hands

"We're not pretty. We didn't get it from prettiness," singer Lee Paiva says emphatically about her band's first CD, Mary. "We didn't get it from sexiness. We worked, and worked and worked."

This is no overnight rags to riches story. After making music for nine years, Lee and guitarist Terri Winston, the founders of Her Majesty the Baby, would be insulted to find themselves portrayed like toothpaste-hawking celebrities on a glossy magazine cover.

"We're workhorses. We don't get all groomed and come out and fluff around and put on a show and then go back into the stall and let other people do everything behind the scenes," Lee insists. "We're obsessed."

Terri laughs, "Our booker, YaVette always says we're a little more hands-on than other people."

Hands-on is a good way to describe the all-consuming project that precipitated the band's year-long disappearance from the public. Starting in the autumn of '93, Lee and Terri built a recording studio from the ground up, reformed their band with three new members and, recorded, engineered and released their first CD.


The thing those glossy celebrity profiles never tell you about is the crisis in consciousness, that happens when an artist realizes that if they keep following the rules — if they keep waiting for someone else to recognize their worth — they're never going to be able to quit their day jobs.

For Her Majesty the Baby that moment came two years ago. After building a large, local following the band had landed a coveted spot on the bill of the '92 BMI showcase — the showcase at which, in previous years, both Counting Crows and Primus had been signed.

"We did probably the best show we'd ever done as a band," remembers Winston of that night. "I think the big illusion was that we thought that if we did a really great show and there were all those labels there, why wouldn't someone sign us?"

"We never heard one single word from anyone," adds Paiva. "There's no one like us that's selling millions of records right now so nobody's going to want to lay their job down on the line for us."

Without obvious pop songs or an overt sexuality, they'd never be an easy sell, but being ignored completely was unprecedented. Even in their earliest incarnation in Rhode Island, as a duo performing with a drum machine and a 4-track for back-up, the group had attracted attention.

Under the tutelage of Throwing Muses manager Ken Goes they won the ASCAP new songwriter's award, recorded two demos — one with Suzanne Vega's producer Lenny Kaye — and landed a big bucks record contract with Phonogram in London. Then the deal collapsed when Phonogram went out of business.

"We were broke. We were depressed, and we had just enough money left to get out of there," explains Lee. So they loaded up the truck and moved to California.

"When we first moved here we had a hard time getting gigs," recalls Terri. The then 4-piece band dug in and started over, rehearsing and performing relentlessly until Her Majesty the Baby was regularly playing to sold-out crowds of zealous fans wearing cardboard Burger King crowns.

"I have this picture of our fans," Lee smiles. "They're kind of shy, they don't go out a hell of a lot, they're intelligent, and they have a lot going on inside them. It's like, housewives, wallflowers and geeks - and we totally love that," she adds, "because they're the ones who are really sweet and special."

Sitting at my kitchen table eating chocolate, Lee and Terri act almost like a married couple. They've worked together so long they laugh at each other's private jokes and finish each other's sentences. This bond between them has been tested though periods of richer and poorer more that once.

"What getting signed meant to us was to get money to record, so that we could have a real collection out there. I didn't want a Jaguar," Lee stresses. "I just always felt like, as an artist I would never be able to get out a collection of my work."

When no offers came after the BMI show — and their drummer and bass player left the band — Lee and Terri stopped waiting. With the help of Lee's husband Jake, an investor friend, and homeless teenagers from the Ground Zero teen center, the duo and their newly formed band built a recording studio.

"This studio thing was an intersection of amazing grace," Paiva explains. "We had what, for a studio was very little money, but for us was freedom."

Working during the day and then building the studio, auditioning players and recording with the band at night, Lee admits, "Part of the sound of this album was shaped by exhaustion."

But Mary's smooth mix of pretty guitars and lush vocals belies engineer Terri's lack of experience and the band's fatigue. After three previous turns at professional recording with only lackluster results, Terri says, "We started to see that every time we went into a big studio, we had to leave everything in control of someone else. So then we get into our own studio, and Lee says 'it doesn't sound right,' and sometimes I didn't know what to do. The difference was that I would try what she wanted."

Using the trial and error method, some songs, like the brilliant opener Fendaya, took up to 22 mixes before they were satisfied. But to Lee the creation is worth the effort. "Doing music is about living beyond coping, beyond just surviving — it's about being fully alive." In the song Jazzo, she sings, "We may be doomed, we may be wise, we jump at things, they toss aside, you may be lost, but you'll be found, we'll never tear this lighthouse down." Indeed, the emotionally charged songs on this recording evoke the feeling of that light that shines at the end of a dark journey.

Already receiving frequent airplay on KUSF, Mary 's release marks the end of one journey and the beginning of another. With a new line-up Lee calls, "jammin'" — including members Bennett Green on drums, Maggie Law on bass and William Kendall on guitar — Her Majesty the Baby is back working the clubs. Who knows, maybe they'll get that deal yet. Maybe they'll get to quit their day jobs. Maybe that doesn't matter after all.

"We finally got our CD out, but I'm still going to be living here — doing shows, writing and recording here. We're not going anywhere. This is what we do," Lee says with a wistful smile.


Her Majesty the Baby's record release party is at the Great American Music Hall, Wed, Jan 8. Mary is available at Reckless Records, 16th Note and Tower.

Appeared in "SF Weekly" February 1, 1995 © Suzanne Rush 2001