Riding Along with the Ditty Bops

Published November 28, 2006 by AfterEllen.com
by Shauna Swartz

Amanda Barrett and
Abby DeWald started their band the Ditty Bops four years ago, but this
lesbian couple will celebrate their eight-year anniversary this coming
February. Perhaps that’s why the musical duo’s signature harmonies are
as smooth and deceptively effortless as a ride on a bicycle built for
two. These two know how to work well in tandem.

The
Los Angeles-based band debuted in 2004 with a self-titled major-label
release. They played only a handful of shows before signing with Warner
Brothers and the illustrious producer Mitchell Froom (he has produced
Los Lobos, Paul McCartney and Suzanne Vega, among others). The Ditty
Bops’ second and latest album is this year’s Moon Over the Freeway.

“We like to spend a lot of time together,” says Barrett, who shares a home with DeWald in Hollywood.

The
Ditty Bops just capped a four-month tour that took them from their home
base in Los Angeles to New York City, and they traveled the entire
route by bicycle. They averaged about 65 miles a day, sometimes riding
more than 100 miles before reaching the next town and their next stop
on the tour.

Barrett
and DeWald generally encourage cycling over driving, even offering
discounts at the door to their shows for anyone sporting a bike helmet.
They also invited fans to join them on this summer’s bike tour.

“Trying
to ride your bike and chat is really hard, so I understand why that
isn’t done more often,” Barrett says. “We discovered that it’s hard to
climb a hill while talking to fans about your musical influences. That
was something we hadn’t planned on, like going up the Rockies and
talking about Ricky Nelson.”

On
their albums and at their live shows, the ever playful Ditty Bops
transport listeners to a reimagined bygone era, melding ragtime, jazz
and swing with cabaret costumes and wigs. Sometimes they even break out
the puppets, skits and slide shows.

The
women share a penchant for fancy dress — as comfortable in Bowler hats
and ties as glamorous gowns and sequined accessories. They model an
array of lavish but scanty getups in their 2006 bikini calendar, which
features portrait after portrait of the pair in elaborately staged
settings and classic two-piece suits.

Next up is their 2007 Vegetable Bikini Calendar,
coming out at the end of this month. When pressed, the women confirm
that it will feature vegetables in bikinis as well as bikinis made of
vegetables.

“It
will definitely involve farmer’s market vegetables, recipes, fun,” says
Barrett. She and DeWald both used to sell fresh pasta at the local
farmer’s markets in Los Angeles.

The
Ditty Bops’ music is experimental but rooted in the 1920s, like many of
their costumes. And they manage to pull it all off with less ironic
cynicism than homage to a free-spirited yesteryear.

It’s an aesthetic that carries over from their music to their elaborate website
– which is filled with original drawings, lace borders and sepia-toned
photos of the pair in Wild West-era garb, sipping from tea cups. The
site also features recipes, original artwork, music videos and footage
from the band’s television appearances.

“When
we played the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, we had to leave all our
boys behind, so we had a duo,” Barrett says, referring to their
all-male backup band that includes upright bass, piano, guitar,
accordion and drums. DeWald and Barrett play a variety of percussion
and fretted instruments.

Both
of the women grew up in California, though at opposite ends of the
state. DeWald, who occasionally performs in early cowboy duds, hails
from the northern county of Shasta. Barrett — with her flapperesque bob
and long, often bare legs — grew up in Topanga Canyon, which is as
Bohemian as Southern California gets. (It’s the canyon whose ladies
Joni Mitchell sang about on her 1970 album.)

Barrett
got an early start singing third-part harmony at age 13 in her mother’s
British Isles duo. She learned to play fretted dulcimer and often plays
mandolin as well as washboard for the Ditty Bops. She’s a longtime
performer, a former child actor and model. She also performs sketch
comedy with friend Michael Lucid in their show, Pretty Things.

DeWald
is an avid cook and talented illustrator. The shorter, snarkier of the
two, she usually plays guitar but grew up with piano lessons and
dreaded recitals. “A lot of what you’re trying to do when you’re a kid
is be perfect about the performance,” she says. “You have to memorize
the lines and get it just right, and play the classical piece without a
mistake.”

But
now the stage is pure fun for both women. What changed for DeWald? “I
guess the spirit of what you’re trying to do,” she says. “We just made
our whole thing about totally screwing up, and then it worked fine.”
She explains that they had to set it up that way: “Otherwise people
would realize how many mistakes we’re making.”

Barrett
and DeWald invite fans to snap photos and tape their shows (venue
permitting). They also welcome audience participation in the form of
“Wishful Thinking Karaoke” and a “Sister Kate Dance-Off” on their
latest tour. The latter entailed no judging or prizes — just fans
dancing on stage to the band’s cover of “Sister Kate.”

“We
just wanted people to come up and join us,” DeWald says. “Sister Kate”
is a song she first learned to play on the ukulele. “I was pleased by
the level of participation. Some shows we had everybody up dancing, and
sometimes people would come up on stage and strut their stuff.”

DeWald
and Barrett say they chose their original hit “Wishful Thinking” for
the karaoke segment because it’s one of the more familiar songs to
their fans. But it’s also particularly appropriate given that karaoke
is so often about wishful thinking.

“It
was a lot fun to see the different groupings of people: who knows the
harmony and who doesn’t know the words and makes up their own,” DeWald
says.

Opening
up the bike trip to the public opened the women up to more personal
contact with their fans, for better or worse. “There’s a variety of
people, as you can imagine, who would be interested in riding with us,”
Barrett says. “Most of the time they were really cool, but on occasion
I would’ve preferred it to be just us.”

Some
fans weren’t sure whether to treat the pair like celebrities or human
beings. “Sadly there’s more than a few that just really have no
boundaries,” DeWald says. These individuals didn’t always show the
keenest sense of how to behave around the women when they’re living
daily life as opposed to performing.

“Because
we’re so free with people, and we say, ‘Hey, come tape our shows, take
as many pictures as you want,’ that doesn’t mean follow me around in a
grocery store and take pictures of me when I’m picking my nose,” DeWald
elaborates. “People just don’t understand it’s not appropriate to do
that. If you want to take my picture in a grocery store, you just ask.”

Another
thing the pair wasn’t fully prepared for was the climate changes. “It
was hard to plan on weather for four months over the entire country,”
Barrett says. “It was cold in some places but then the heat took quite
a toll on us at certain times. In the beginning I thought it was easier
than I expected, but that changed after it got hot.”

“One
of my most exhausting days was St. Louis,” Barrett recalls. “It was
like a hundred miles, and I’d been chased and bit by a dog and had a
spider on me going through this spider zone with all these leaves, and
then arriving and going straight to the show and setting up and tearing
down. It was just such a long day.”

DeWald
says, “It’s good and bad to be accessible to your fans. It’s great to
get out there and talk to them and show them you appreciate them being
there.”

Barrett
concurs. “It was really fun to hear people’s stories and talk to people
from different areas and meet lots of cyclists. I’m totally glad we did
it, but I think if we do it again — or some version of it — it will be
more like smaller stints of regional areas.”

The
pair is considering a one-to-three-week tour in Europe or Japan. “I’d
like to not have to do as many miles a day so we could relax a little
more and have more energy for the performances,” Barrett says. “We were
pretty zonked when we got finished.”

But
now that they’re home, these ladies are hardly resting their legs.
Neither of them owns a car these days — which is no easy feat for
residents of one of the most automobile-dependent cities in North
America. These avid cyclists travel the sprawling metropolis by bike.

And
those bikes are about to get makeovers. “We just ordered Extracycles,
which helps you schlep large amounts of things,” Barrett says.

“It adds about a foot and a half length to the end of your bicycle, extending that bracket in back,” DeWald explains.

“It
has all these panniers on it, and it allows you to go to the market
without things falling out everywhere,” Barrett adds. “Yesterday I had
my dry cleaning, groceries and a big pot — we went to get kitchen
supplies. I was almost falling over. So life is about to get a lot
easier, hopefully.”

Barrett
also enthuses about the social aspect of riding bikes. “A lot of our
friends have given up their cars over the summer too and are riding
around, so it’s not just us being the crazy ones,” she says. “Now we
get to go on group bike excursions, to the market or wherever. It’s
nice to create an activity out of stuff because you’re going by bike
instead of just in your car by yourself.”

And when they’re not working, walking or riding? “We like making food,” DeWald says, “and visiting our friends.”

“We’ve been cooking a lot since we got back,” Barrett says. “Abby has, anyway. I’ve been eating a lot. And doing art projects.”

The
Ditty Bops’ current projects also include music for an upcoming comedy
film from Sony as well as a guest performance on the third season of The L Word.
They flew to Vancouver in September to record a song written for them
to perform on the Showtime series, and the episode will be shot at the
end of this month. “When we were at the studio we got to see Jennifer
Beals,” DeWald enthuses.

“Jenny’s gonna be in it. That’s all I’m gonna say,” Barrett teases regarding their L Word scene. “Jenny’s gonna be there. Tina’s gonna be there. And I think the rest is probably top secret.” Stay tuned.

Get more info at DittyBops.com