Girl in A Coma’s Adventures in Coverland

When you first meet the ladies of Girl in A Coma you think, ‘what a nice group of girls.’ They’re about average height and instantly smile when you approach them. They are soft spoken and well mannered but then when they take the stage, Phanie takes a seat behind her drum set as Nina and Jenn strap on their guitars. The lights on the stage begin to rise, you hear the banging on the drums and their guitars begin to rip.

It was Sunday, April 11 and the San Antonio trio was set to perform at the Bowery Ballroom alongside The Wedding Present. We hung backstage in the dimly lit makeshift living room and talked about their series of 3 EPs “Adventures in Coverland” releasing on vinyl beginning with Volume I on April 13^th. The remaining volumes, II and III release the following two weeks.

They revealed that the idea for a cover album came from their label, Blackheart Records and they immediately got onboard, “we like to do covers here and there,” said Phanie Diaz the band’s drummer. “[It was a way] to pay tribute to the bands that have inspired us. I think it’s important for bands to get educated on bands or artists they may not be familiar with. Like Selena, there are some people who don’t know who she is. It was fun project.”

When it came to choosing the songs that would best fit their sound, singer and guitarist Nina Diaz explained, “I was trying to pick the songs that were easy [for us to adapt]. I tried to pick a Jeff Buckley [song] and I just couldn’t get it. The Pixies, their songs sound a bit similar to our sound but these songs [the ones we ended up going with] fit. It seemed natural and the fact that it did that made it more natural and made us eager to do. I think it was just a smooth transfer from there on.”

The recording process was similar to previous sessions, “[It starts with Nina] just like when we write a song, Nina will start it, arrange it and then I’ll come in and do a bass line [in this case I did] a version of that bass line and then sent them over to Phanie,” Jenn Alva revealed.

However the ladies revealed that issuing the songs as vinyl EPs excited them, “we were trying to be clever,” admits Phanie. “A lot of people are quick to illegally download music and we wanted to give people a reason to buy them. When you combine all three of the covers and put them together they make a cool board game.”

Recently, live footage of the girls performing Joy Division’s “Transmission” and Selena’s “Si Una Vez” surfaced on Youtube and is generating buzz. When asked what they hope the originators of the songs they covered think of their interpretation Nina said, “Well, the majority of them are dead and hopefully in heaven watching down with smiling faces.” She continued, “If David Bowie was to hear our version of ‘As The World Falls Down’ that’d be awesome if he liked it. I’ve seen him do songs with Arcade Fire and he did a song with Kristeen Young so that’d be cool if someday he’d actually want to do that song with us.”

“It’d be cool too if even Selena’s family got a hold of us. You never know, there’s a lot of buzz going on with the Selena song right now, so you never know [what could happen],” said Phanie.

“Or if Paul McCartney reached out,” added Jenn in regards to their cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” a song they performed that evening.

Prior to embarking on their current tour the ladies rocked the SXSW stage to Runaways hit, “Cherry Bomb” with Cherie Currie on vocals. The teaming up

“We asked if we would be interested in performing the song with her,” explained Phanie.

“Cause the Runaways movie was coming out,” added Nina.

“And they were promoting it so we were like ‘sure’ and we learned it right before we left [to SXSW] and didn’t really rehearse it and just did it on the spot with her. It was amazing just watching her, from my point of view, getting [to see] her stance and start rocking out,” Phanie said.

“And you were looking at her butt the whole time,” Nina teased.

“Yea I was looking at her ass,” admitted Phanie with a chuckle.

“[She’s] definitely great energy up onstage. We do our own thing when we play our music but when she got up there that first line she sang, we felt really cool and kinda wanted to go ahhh and rock out, knock things over,” added Jenn.

Girl in A Coma fans are easy to spot, they generally sport similar haircuts to Phanie and Jenn’s or wear their GIAC tee shirts and are covered in tattoos and if they aren’t sporting ink they proudly display a blackheart press on tattoo they’ve purchased from the merch booth. If you follow the girls on Twitter, friend-ed them on Facebook or added them on Myspace you’ll see numerous fan photos displaying their Girl in A Coma tattoos. “It’s kinda crazy for us,” said Phanie. “Recently in Corpus Christi, Texas a girl came up to us and showed us her back piece and it’s of the Trio B.C. logo  and it’s just an honor.”

“We’re honored, it’s like we better not break up,” said Jenn.

“We should get all of their names tattooed on us,” suggested Nina.

“Yea, whenever someone gets a tattoo of us we’ll get one [of them in return],” said Phanie.

“Yea we’ll get an eye ball of theirs on us,” said Nina.

Now the ladies are bracing themselves for more touring, “it’s been awesome,” admitted Nina. “We played in Nashville the other day it was our first time playing there.”

“This is our first night playing with The Wedding Present and next month we’ll be back in New York at Terminal 5 and touring with Sia,” Phanie added.

Before wrapping things up I asked the ladies if there was anything else they wanted to share and Jenn wanted to remind us to check out ‘Adventures in Coverland’ all available by the end of this month. She also wanted to encourage aspiring female musicians to start, “their own girl group, the more the better, and the more the merrier.”

For tour dates or info on where you can purchase the vinyl EPs “Adventures in Coverland” visit girlinacoma.com