When the Rumours pull into the venue Saturday and start unloading their van, it’s inevitable someone will assume they’re the “girlfriends carrying the guy’s gear.”
“They don’t know that we’re the girl band that’s actually playing,” said Ela Moore, bassist and singer for the Rumours. “Yeah, it’s one of those situations. We get a lot of disrespect, so we’re just kind of pissed off about it.”
The Rumours are, as the band’s guitarist and singer Carli Foxx, puts it, “A kick-ass, in-your-face, female-power punk-rock band from Waterloo, Iowa.” They’re currently working on their third album and completing a 14-show tour around the U.S., ending with Saturday’s show at the Octopus in Cedar Falls.
The Rumours weren’t always as punk as they are today. They started playing together when Foxx and Moore graduated from high school.
“It just seems like we’ve been in the Rumours forever,” Foxx said. According to her, they spent a majority of those 10 to 11 years learning how to be a band and how everything worked. It’s been a long road for the group to find its sound.
“When we put out the first two albums, we were still trying to find ourselves, and the more aggressive we got, the more we found ourselves,” Moore said.
As the Rumours started to lean more into that classic, rough-around-the-edges punk sound, their themes and voice truly started to shine through.
“It took us a little while to get to that point, because we had to have the experience,” Foxx said. “We needed to be around the right bands to realize that’s what we wanted to do, and that’s what we needed. It was an easier outlet for us to say what we needed to say.”
The Rumours pull inspiration from a plethora of bands, including but not limited to Joan Judd, Betty Blowtorch, L7, Motorhead, and Veruca Salt. “Anything that’s badass and rock ‘n’ roll, there’s a very good chance we like it,” Foxx said.
The band also cites member changes as a factor in finding their sound. The Rumours originally started as a four-piece with another guitarist.
“We realized that you don’t need another guitar player if you know how to play guitar,” Moore said. “If everybody’s on the same page and wants the same thing, at the end of the day, I feel like the creative juices can just really get flowing. Once Clint [Wheelman] started playing with us, everything just started to flow together better.”
Many Rumours songs are centered on Foxx and Moore’s experiences growing up in Waterloo and navigating in the male-dominated local punk scene as young women.
“We talk a lot about the challenges that we face out here, but we also talk about stupid shit that we encounter,” Foxx said. “We just have funny stories. Some of them are just hilarious and amusing for ourselves and maybe they’re relatable to other people.”
“And they make a good song,” Moore adds.
Take a song like, “It’s Not Me (It’s You),” off their album Kill or be Killed, in which the band sings, “Call me up every night / and then you disappear / know your top priority’s / your liquor and your beer / next time that you think of me / I won’t be standing here / want me, so what / I’m not your on-call slut / oh well / it’s not me, it’s you.”
“We talk a lot about … gaining respect and showing that we’re not just female musicians, but we’re just musicians like the rest of them,” Moore added. “Starting in Waterloo, we had to prove that to people.”
As the Rumours started to gain traction, they began to play shows in towns around Iowa, then the Midwest, then the entire country. Today, they’ve reached heights they could only dream of when they first started as they gear up to play overseas in Europe.
“We just want other women to know that just because you’re a woman, you can do this too, even though there’s men out here telling you that you literally can’t,” Foxx said.
“Or they just disrespect you,” Moore continued.
“Yeah, we’re just like the boys,” Foxx added.
