All-female band The Aces hope to convey a message of positivity and girl power as they embark on a headlining tour to promote their debut album When My Heart Felt Volcanic.
The Aces are composed of bassist McKenna Petty, guitarist Katie Henderson, drummer Alisa Ramirez and lead vocalist and guitarist Cristal Ramirez. After touring with popular bands such as COIN last year, The Aces have sold out almost every venue on their “Waiting For You” tour. With a strong indie-pop presence and sense of sisterhood, the band wants to break away from negative assumptions about all-female bands and put on a show that leaves fans in a more positive state of mind.
The Daily Texan had a chance to speak with sisters Alisa and Cristal Ramirez about their debut album and journey as a band before their Feb. 20 performance at Austin’s Historic Scoot Inn.
The Daily Texan: What has the progression of your sound been like while producing your debut album?
Alisa Ramirez: There was this whole journey of us trying a bunch of different sounds and trying to figure out what we wanted to sound like. And then once we kind of nailed it, we wrote one of the first songs where it just felt so right and it felt like the type of music we want to make. It’s when we wrote “Volcanic Love.” That’s one of the first songs we wrote where we went home from the studio that day and we felt like something magical had happened.
DT: What negative connotations and assumptions have you faced as an all-female group?
Cristal Ramirez: There’s a negative connotation of, “Oh a girl group? You guys are good for a girl band,” and “You actually play your instruments?”
AR: Or the other side of it, which is people assuming that all girl bands are these thrashy, metal kind of garage-bandy type bands, when it reality (the term) “girl band” is just kind of silly. Women can come together and make all types of music.
DT: Who were some of your music inspirations growing up? Did you have female artists who you looked up to or did you become the inspiration that you wished you had as a kid?
AR: Honestly it’s kind of a mix of both because when we were younger, we were inspired by some all-male bands and that made us excited and made us want to be the female version of these bands we were looking up to. We also grew up listening to Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston and Destiny’s Child.
DT: What do you want fans to get from this tour?
CR: I would say, from the tour, I just really want people to walk away from the show feeling like they just left the best party ever.
AR: Yeah, like they’re on cloud nine, like they just had the best time and a super positive experience because we like to think that we’ve cultivated a very positive environment and group of people. We’re always happy to hear from people when they walk away from our show and say they’ve made a lot of friends and they had a great time, and it’s really important to us to maintain that.
