SXSWORLD

2 4 SXS W O R L D | F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 9 | SXSW.COM Laura Jane Grace's musical career has been remarkable, going back over 20 years to her founding of Against Me! as a teenaged, punk howl from Naples, Florida's '90s cultural vacuum. From that humble start, the band eventually emerged from Gainesville, Florida's fertile anarcho-DIY scene to earn the prestige of signing first to Fat Wreck Chords and then to fabled Sire Records in the mid-aughts. But major label life was predictably tumultuous, and the band departed after 2010's White Crosses, eventu- ally launching its own Total Treble imprint. Then in 2012, she came out as a transgender woman, introducing herself as Laura Jane Grace in a Rolling Stone profile and announcing that she was undergoing gender transitioning. Over the next couple of years, a lineup reshuffle ensued and Grace moved from Florida to Chicago. "I'm not a fiction writer. I need context and lived experience to feel inspired," she explains. "I didn't fully realize this until I moved to Chicago." Against Me! next released a pair of widely acclaimed records (2014's Transgender Dysphoria Blues and 2016's Shape Shift With Me), which fearlessly delved into the identity issues and personal upheaval that Grace had been reconciling. In 2016, she unveiled her autobiography: Tranny: Confessions of Punk Rock's Most Infamous Anarchist Sellout, which leaned heavily on the jour- nals Grace had been keeping since third grade. During the same year, she embarked on a tour of small venues, reading from those journals and playing her songs in a stripped- down style with a backing band dubbed Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers. After a busy 18 months, which included an arena tour opening for Green Day and rumors that Against Me! would be breaking up, Grace reconvened Laura Jane Grace and the Devouring Mothers, which also includes Against Me! drummer Atom Willard (a former member of Rocket from the Crypt, Social Distortion and The Offspring), and bassist Marc Jacob Hudson, Against Me!'s sound engineer, and recordist and mixer at Fenton, Michigan's Rancho Recordo studio. This past summer, the trio recorded its debut, Bought To Rot, as Grace tweeted at the end of July: "I recorded an album. It's a solo album, except that it's not cause my friends did it with me." In early November (on the heels of an Against Me! tour of South America), the record was released on Bloodshot, the Chicago label best known for its alt country and roots-based indie releases. That reputation and Grace's desire to subvert it factored into not only the writing of the record, but even the track sequencing. "I wanted people to think this was going to be a stripped-back, bare-bones, slowed-down record," she explains. "And then have the opening track smack them in the face with a wall of sound and destroy whatever pre- conceived notions they had." "I do think there are elements of roots and Americana present on the album, though," she continues. "And historically, there's always been an element of that in Against Me! too." As for those who might view the pairing of Grace and Bloodshot as incongruous, Grace disagrees: "In a lot of ways, Bloodshot is the most at home with a label I've ever felt, in that they're a self-described label for misfits and outcasts. I'll always want to be where the other misfits and outcasts are." Against Me! fans will find Grace's signature passion, drive, lyricism and brutal honesty on Bought To Rot, but the sound is looser, more relaxed and yes, rootsier. In other words, it sounds like a classic Bloodshot release. Grace says that this result had more to do with the recording process than the songwriting approach. "I wanted to make a hot and quick record," she says. "I didn't want to spend a long time in the studio. Fourteen songs in seven days. We spent three months in the studio recording the Laura Jane Grace at Home with the Misfits and Outcasts By Andy Smith "The most important lesson I ever learned from punk was 'question everything,' and that will never stop being relevant and important ..."

• Cover