No ponchos here

>>Babes who are funkifying folk

by MIREILLE SILCOTT

There are few things I know less about than folk music. So on my way to interview Lisa Gamble and Annabelle Chvostek, part of an upcoming all-girl folk revue, I felt not ambivalence but rather dread. My understanding of the folk circuit, never mind the female folk circuit, boils down to clichés: Aztec
ponchos, veggie paté and flaccid philosophy. I also knew one horrendously bitchy mug-toting folkie who preached "love & understanding" to anyone within earshot. Oh, and the Lilith Fair, where they said it was about being "real" and "naturally female" and then distributed free samples of
blackhead removal tape to every girl in possession of pores.

So this is not going to be a story of conversion--but when I met my singer/songwriter folkies at the designated bar on St-Laurent, I was relieved. Annabelle was wearing a tight black sweater. No poncho. She didn't have a blackhead strip across her nose. And Lisa looked like a pretty trucker.

They and co-founder Heather MacLeod call themselves and those who perform at their now-monthly Isart cabaret The Funky Folk Babes. Not funky in the sequined booty sense, but in another, er, more organic way. Although not too organic--we're talking half urban burger, half veggie paté here. "The word folk--it's taken me a while to come to terms with it," says Annabelle. "Because I'm not, like, sitting around campfires singing. But anyway, I now think people are starting to understand folk quite differently." "Yup," smacks Lisa, "there are some really zany folk people out there. Crossover types."

Lisa busks in her spare time and plays drums for a few indie bands, including Queen Size S.H.A.G., and is currently trying sounds on mixing bowls hooked up to amplifiers. Annabelle dances professionally and works on electroacoustic compositions. "It's all about breaking creative moulds and barriers," says Lisa.

But why form the barrier of an exclusively female gig? Why all of this chicks-with-picks stuff, a formula that, at least during my jaunt at the make-up party called Lilith Fair, seemed an utter parody?

"Oh, I don't know," says Lisa. "It's not feminism, not political, not a 'movement.' I'm not an academic. It's just celebrating that I'm a woman, and that I write songs, and I know a lot of others who do too. Nothing to be scared of, you know."

At Isart with Penny Lang, Friday, Oct.3, 9pm, $7