TEAM DRESCH, an all-lesbian punk band from Portland, Oregon, will tour this spring and summer to promote Free To Fight (Candy-Ass), a booklet and compilation CD that teaches awareness, safety and self-defence techniques for all women. Jody Bleyle, Team Dresch's guitarist/bassist/singer (in her spare time, she is also Candy-Ass president and drummer for Hazel), assembled the project after she and guitarist Donna Dresch were beaten up last year in the parking lot of a Portland club at which they gad just performed. For Bleyle, mixing art and politics comes naturally. "I can't separate them. I don't even know how I would be political if I wasen't in a band. And I consider music, and live shows in particular, to be a really important public forum. Rock shows, and the buildings where they're help, are some of the only public secular spaces in society right now."
Self-defence education is not a new cause for Team Dresch, who offered pre-show self-defence deoms on their most recent tour. But reporters that the band hired bodyguards following the parking lot attack are false, says Bleyle. Instead, she reports, audience members spontaneously band together to discourage potential troublemakers. "All the girls will just find each other, and if any shit happens, they take care of it. They'll kick guys out of shows and we won't even realize what's going on - they just sort of form mobile attack units amongst themselves."
