¦

Guitarist Martie Marro,

drummer Katie Jacobson

and bassist Lisa Hernandez

comprise The Stewed Tomatoes.

With a killer sense of humor

and a large dose of sarcasm,

the trio work, play and live

together in the Windy City. One

of the original MP3 bands, the

group cashed in on Napster’s

IPO and founded Materville (as

in ‘tomater’) Studios. Marro

produced and the group wrote music for the fi lm Hannah

Free and won a 2009 OutMusic Award for Best Instrumental/

Soundtrack Song. (They also scored an award for Best Rock

Song, “Leather Daddy”). We get some chat stew from Marro.

What’s new since the OutMusic Awards?

We just got a copy of Pride Italy, it’s in Italian and the word

for drummer is batterista, so Katie is walking around all

excited saying “I’m a batterista…”

What are you currently doing outside of the studio?

We picked up another gay fi lm, so we are doing the

on-location sound, the music and the sound effects.

It’s titled Fall Away, directed by Julian Grant, the RoboCop

director. He’s a great director and we are having a fabulous

time. The tagline is a really good: “The life and death of Jake,

the secretly gay lead singer of up and coming band 65 Home,

who gets brutally murdered in a Chicago alleyway.”

It sounds very dark.

Yes, we are happy about that after Hannah Free. It was

diffi cult. I pulled what little hair I have out. We, all three

of us, were like, We have to play happy.

What, you don’t like happy?

There always a little edge to everything we write. We wrote a

song called “Happy” once, but it was a little sarcastic.

You won awards for both Hannah Free and “Leather Daddy,”

which was not at all attached to Hannah Free. Are you

making music independent of movies?

We are writing a song called “Fag Fag Disco Disco Boy Boy.”

I don’t know if you can print that, but it’s a great title. A disco

parody with punk in it.

Your band’s subtitle is “The All Female Indie Pop Punk Sex Funk

ROCK Phenomena.” What kind of music do you actually play?

Mostly rock and punk, folk rock and folk acoustic guitar. In

the beginning we would be asked if we did covers and if we

could cover Melissa Etheridge. And we don’t do covers, and

we certainly don’t cover Melissa Etheridge!

Are any of the band members more than just band mates

with each other?

None of us are together. I’m recently single because I

started another movie and my girlfriend hates me, but I

couldn’t help myself…it’s a passion for me, I love the movies.

Ever since I was 3, I would bang on the piano downstairs

and scribble some stuff down and come upstairs and tell

everyone I was going to write monster music when I grew

up. And here I am—writing monster music for movies.

[Stephanie Schroeder]

LESBIAN PUNK ROCKERS

July/August 2010

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