LORETTE VELVETTE

Lorette Velvette grew up in the small town of Savannah, Tennessee, and moved to Memphis at eighteen. A flute player in her high school band, she traded the flute for a Gibson electric guitar after arriving in Memphis and began teaching herself to play. Nights at the Antenna Club exposed her to punk, glam rock, rockabilly, garage music, blues, and the many ways those traditions overlapped, warped, and frayed in the Memphis underground of the 1980s and ’90s.

She also made frequent trips into North Mississippi to hear the Hill Country blues of Junior Kimbrough and R. L. Burnside at Kimbrough’s juke joint and to go to Otha Turner’s picnics, where she heard Turner play fife with his Rising Star Fife and Drum Band. For Velvette, these experiences were connected by the rawness of the music—the repetition, rhythm, freedom, and physical energy that ran through Hill Country blues in North Mississippi juke joints, fife-and-drum picnics, and nights at the Antenna Club.

Working in open tunings, Velvette drew inspiration from blues musicians such as Skip James and Mississippi Fred McDowell. She was less interested in technical precision than in finding her own rhythm and sound. During her early years in Memphis, Velvette performed and toured with Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and sang background vocals on recordings by Alex Chilton.

In the 1980s, Velvette became a founding member of the Hellcats, an all-female Memphis band that toured throughout the United States. The Hellcats released Hoodoo Train and Cherry Mansions on the French label New Rose Records, becoming part of the roots-punk movement developing around Memphis at the time.

After the Hellcats, Velvette began recording and touring under her own name. Her first solo album, White Birds, was produced by Alex Chilton and released by the German label Veracity Musik in 1993. Doug Easley produced the follow-up, Dream Hotel, in 1995. A split single with Mick Collins of the Gories appeared in 1996, followed by Lost Part of Me, also produced by Easley, in 1997. The 2000 collection Rude Angel, released by Okra-Tone Records, brought together singles and other recordings from her solo career.

In 1995, during the recording of Sonic Youth's Washing Machine at Doug Easley's Easley McCain Recording in Memphis, Velvette and longtime bandmate Melissa Dunn sang backing vocals with Kim Deal of the Pixies on "Little Trouble Girl."

During the 1990s, Velvette toured extensively in Europe, both with bands and as a solo performer. In the early part of the decade, she toured with Townes Van Zandt, Alex Chilton, the Country Rockers, and Alluring Strange in support of Love Is My Only Crime, a compilation released by Veracity Musik. Velvette performed both solo and as a member of Alluring Strange. She also played on the band’s 1994 album, Will You Marry Me?

Velvette was also a member of composer Dave Soldier’s band the Kropotkins, whose music combined punk energy with old-time American traditions. She appears on the group’s albums The Kropotkins (1995), Five Points Crawl (2000), Paradise Square (2009), and Portents of Love (2015). The group’s recordings featured drummer Moe Tucker of the Velvet Underground.

In 2019, the French label Mono-Tone released Don’t Crowd Your Mind, a vinyl collection drawn from Velvette’s solo recordings. Her song “Eager Boy,” produced by Alex Chilton, was later included in the Oxford American’s special Memphis music issue and its accompanying vinyl compilation.

Today, Velvette lives on a farm in the hollows of Hardin County, Tennessee. Her forthcoming album, Everlastings, brings her musical history into the present. Produced, recorded, and mixed by Doug Easley at Easley McCain Recording in Memphis, the album contains eleven original songs and her version of Townes Van Zandt’s “Snake Song.” Its songs draw from memory, relationships, dreams, animals, and life on the farm, carrying forward the meeting of blues, punk, and rural Southern music that has run through her work from the beginning.