Few pop music traditions ring out as clearly as the appearance of a new all-girl band. That's a working, traveling all-girl band -- five serious
musicians who've been at it since they could spell, and will tell you so. As if the idea of an all-girl band was not challenging enough, consider the
odds of Norway spawning this rough and ready quintet, schooled in English since age ten, carving out their original voice on a never-ending
road trip of pubs, youth centers, hotels, warehouse parties, anywhere and everywhere the music took them in their native land.
Over the last five years or so, The Tuesdays have survived their share of hard work: Lead singer Laila Samuels, guitarist Hedge (pronounced
HAID-guh) Solli, keyboardist Kristin Werner, bassist May Hole, and drummer Linda Gustafsson. The dues paid off on their first hit, "When You
Are a Tuesday Girl," produced by Ole (pronounced OO-luh) Evenrude, a key figure in The Tuesdays story. That single drove their first album to
gold status at home and in Japan too, where they have three successful visits under their belt. The Tuesdays' new single, "It's Up To You," was
produced by Ole and mixed by Tom Lord-Alge in Miami Beach. Its classic, jangling guitar-driven chords, chunky rhythms and Beatle-esque
harmonies on the choruses are irresistibly infectious.
The influence of the Beatles on The Tuesdays (all of whom are between 21 and 24 years old) is part of their musical common ground. The three
earliest members of the band, Hedge, May and Kristin, have known each other since grade school. Kristin and Hedge had already begun
playing together when, in 1989, they started rehearsing with some friends at the town's youth center as a band called No Limits. When their
bass player quit, they turned to May.
Meanwhile, they were hosting a local radio show, playing their favorite hit records on the air. "When we'd listen to music on the show," Kristin
explains, "we'd say, 'I wish I could play that.'" Their sound engineer helped them get started and they soon took their act on the road -- literally.
They invested in a van and traveled as far as six or seven hours to perform, often skipping school on Friday and staying away until Sunday. In
addition to original material, their sets included such covers as "Sailing" (Rod Stewart); "Being With You" (Smokey Robinson); "Summer of '69"
(Bryan Adams); "Thorn In My Side" (Eurythmics); "The Best" (Tina Turner); and a wealth of Beatles tunes.
The summer of 1993, after high school graduation, the band took off on tour for a year to decide their future. They did their own sound, carried
their own gear on the van, everything on their own. They renamed themselves the Tuesday Girls. "We needed a new name and wanted to
change it to something with 'Girls' so we could get more gigs!" At the same time, they went back to the youth center, where a recording studio
had been built in the basement. The goal was to record a demo of their new song, "When You Are a Tuesday Girl."
The song found its way to Ole Evenrude and, "everything just clicked Ü he understood us and the kind of music we wanted to play. And he liked
the idea of an all-girl band on the road. And the fact that we weren't just put together but that we really play. We're a real band." The single of
"When You Are a Tuesday Girl" was released in 1994; the album followed in January '95. The record's success at home and in Japan set the
stage for another round of touring and recording.
It was a plan that almost short-circuited when the Tuesday Girls found themselves without a drummer. Ole stepped in and introduced them to
Linda, who he'd known in Stockholm. "It started for me when I was 14 or 15," she says, "and I saw a Motley Crue video on MTV. Tommy Lee
was twirling his drumsticks, and I said, 'I have to learn that.' " Like the others, Linda spent time in youth clubs and was in a couple of all-girl
bands while still in high school. One was called Angel, who had a top 10 hit in Sweden in 1992. They recorded one album and toured for two or
three years.
Linda joined the Tuesday Girls in late-'95, as work on the new album gradually resumed. But within six months their lead singer departed. Enter
Laila, youngest member of the band, an Oslo native who's been singing since age six and joined her first all-girl band as lead singer at age 13.
With three original members of the Tuesday Girls now joined by two new faces, the band was newly-christened The Tuesdays.
"In the beginning," Kristin observes, "when we wanted to start this band, it seemed that there were just girls around. It kind of stuck that way
because boys really didn't want to play in the same band as us. They didn't want any girls in their bands. We are always shocked when people
say, 'Oh, you're an all-girl band!' Well, why shouldn't we be? Is that so weird? You hang out with girls, you start a band with girls. There's a lot of
all-boy bands, you don't look at them and say, 'Oh, they're all guys!' "
There is nothing typical about The Tuesdays, the same way there is never anything typical about the best new bands who arrive on American
soil from abroad. If spunk and originality light the sweet flame of success for this fivesome in America, then this country will know, once again,
that we have paved the way for the most exciting new all-girl band to emerge in this decade.
Editors note: They forgot to mention the huge influence that Enuff Z'nuff had on them. They covered two of Enuff Z'nuff's songs - Wheels and Right By Your Side.
