Mary Timony of Ex Hex

Ex Hex guitarist and DC native Mary Timony grew up in the right place at the right time. She learned about the music industry – and formed her ideas of what it means to be in a band – from going to punk shows in DC in the late ’80s. Timony made a name for herself fronting ’90s alternative band Helium and later went on to form Autoclave, Wild Flag and current lineup Ex Hex. We chatted with Timony about Fugazi, the pros and cons of being a female musician and the effects of being raised in the DC punk scene.

How much do you think growing up in the DC punk scene affected your songwriting?
Not really necessarily the songwriting, but the energy of people seeing bands and the DIY method of doing things, like putting out records with your friends and touring behind them in your own in vans and stuff rather than moving to LA and trying to make it big – that was a big influence I guess. That’s all I saw as a teenager. I didn’t know that anything else existed, you know? There aren’t a lot of musicians in D.C. so I didn’t really see anybody doing anything else. That’s the way I saw music existing in the world.

How do you think that scene is doing now? Do you still go to any local punk shows?
Yeah! There are still a lot of kids in D.C. putting on shows at local community centers and stuff. I try to follow what’s going on with bands for sure.

You grew up knowing Ian Mackeye. How much influence did he and Fugazi have on you?
I went to every Fugazi show I could when I was in high school because it was really amazing. I’d never seen anything like that and I don’t think I ever will again. It was just this crazy phenomenon. Those shows were so intense. D.C. was its own universe in the ’80s with the scene of kids that were making music in these bands and putting music out on Dischord. Things were so localized then. It was obviously before the internet and stuff so scenes were local anyway and all revolved around labels and towns and stuff. I think the musicians in that scene were all pretty focused on what was going on in our town. There was a certain way things were done and rules people followed and I’m sure all of those things were pretty influential on me.

Have you had to deal with a lot of sexism in your scene over the course of your career?
I think as a younger woman for sure, and that kind of comes up still, but not really. I don’t know. Part of it’s being older and being immune to peoples’ bullshit and just not caring. That’s a large part of it. You just have to ignore when people are idiots. It only comes up now for me when I go into a music store and people assume I don’t know what I’m talking about and talk down to me. But who cares what other people think? As a younger woman I definitely felt like I needed to prove myself. Being a girl in a band in the early ‘90s was like being a female car mechanic. You just didn’t see it as much. But now it’s really not that way as much, or at least it’s not as extreme, which is great.

I feel like when you’re a group of girls playing music it’s easy for people to compare you to other girl bands, like Veruca Salt or Bratmobile. How do you feel about that?
Yeah, it’s weird. Like, okay…? I don’t know. It’s beyond my understanding. I guess it’s some kind of human tendency to group people who they think are like other people together or something. It’s weird.

What do you think about the term “girl band” in general?
It is pretty insulting, actually. It’s not like you’re thinking about that when you’re being a musician. You’re just doing what every other musician does: making stuff. People need a way to classify things, I guess, to make it easier to grasp onto.

A lot of your bands have been lumped into the riot grrl movement even though you’ve never expressed that you wanted to be a part of that.
The reason for that is that I was around and playing music and practicing in the same group houses in D.C., but the only real riot grrl bands were Bikini Kill and Bratmobile. Nobody else was a riot grrl band. Those two bands were the riot grrl bands.

Do you mind having that association?
That’s fine. I didn’t really feel like a part of it because I was more of a music nerd, and the riot grrl movement wasn’t really about playing guitar. It was more about performance and energy. It was only those two bands, but I don’t know. I liked it a lot. I found out about rock music from the hardcore scene, which was all dudes. I feel like the riot grrl movement was a reaction against the hardcore scene in the ’80s. It definitely was. It’s not like there hadn’t ever been women in music before. There were women in rock music. There were women in the punk scene in the ‘70s, and in blues music. I really feel like the hardcore scene was a teenage male scene and riot grrl was a reaction against that. I really saw that. It was really inspiring. I loved Bikini Kill. It was really interesting. It made people upset. I loved being around that. I was really energized by it.

How do you think your songwriting has changed as you’ve gotten older?
I don’t think it’s changed that much. I don’t think the core of where the songs come from has changed that much. I guess I’ve just learned how to get over writers’ block a little bit better. I’m always afraid I’m never gonna be able to write any more songs, but somehow it always happens. I’m always like, “Well, that’s the last song I’ll ever do.” I’ve written some real bad songs. This record is really different because we tried to weed out all the bad ideas and keep the ones we really really liked, whereas in the past I’ve been more lazy about stuff and treated a record as more of a document of what I came up with that year. But this record, everyone that worked on it was relentless in figuring out what wasn’t working. I think that’s a more effective way of doing stuff. I like doing it that way now.

How do you think the feeling behind your songs has changed over the course of your career? Even though you’re writing about the same topics as you used to, are you coming from a different perspective now?
I think your goal changes or what you’re focused on shifts, at least it has for me. At the end of the day, though, I’m just trying to write a melody I really like, which is all I’ve ever been trying to do. That isn’t too complicated of a thing. I think the lyrics have changed a lot. The sentiment behind the songs, or the reason for writing them changes. My focus has shifted. I think there were some points when I was in Helium when I was like, “Let’s explore this interesting thing” or “let’s explore this thought” or “let’s explore this weird rhythm and see what happens.” I definitely did some records where I was more focused on trying to express more emotion and what I was going through that was hard. Now, with this band, the focus is more on the fact that this is a craft that we’re doing. We treated this album like we were a music house, a team who’s crafting a thing that we’d want to listen to. I was reading about Stax and Motown and the whole way of working is very inspiring to me. So inspiring. They just made such incredible music. I just like that way of working, where you’re a team and you’re trying to make this thing that’s awesome, whatever it takes to get that to happen. That’s why I think this record is more crafted.

I think your lyrics have become more direct since your days in Helium. Was that intentional, or do you think that comes with being a more seasoned writer?
That was intentional. Lyrics, for me, are not anything that I work that hard on. All my focus is on the music. I have to like the lyrics, but I’ll do it, and I’ll finish it, and I’ll never think about it again because it’s done. I don’t sit there agonizing over it like I do with the music. I definitely tried to weed out stuff that I didn’t think resonated with people. I just noticed that certain things I do, people are like, “What the hell are you doing?” I didn’t want the songs I wrote on this record to sound too much like I’m in my own little isolated world because it’s not that exciting, even for me, to listen to that. I just wanted to make it raw and easy to communicate to other people. I have a tendency to use a lot of metaphors and it ends up sounding a little coded, which is fine. I think I like that. But I really wanted to experiment with making lyrics that were raw and make it obvious what they meant.