However, “queer” might be a better term than lesbian for Boyskout. When asked in a 2009 interview, “Are you lesbians? Bi-sexual? Are you just experimenting? Are you all like that or just some of you?”, bandleader Leslie Satterfield responded, “Yes”, then continued: “We don’t want to be pigeonholed into a stereotype. I for one have had relationships with men as well, but I don’t want to be labeled as ‘Bi’ or any other label. It really depends on the person for me.”
Okay, enough detours; let me get back to the UARB. In 2001, Leslie Satterfield (guitar and vocals) was offered the opportunity to be the opening act for her favorite rock band, an Olympia, WA experimental duo called The Need. Unfortunately, she didn’t yet have a rock band to do the job and only three weeks until the concert; so she quickly recruited several friends, first drummer Caroline Mills – they were in a band together though I am not sure the name of it. China Lajczock (keyboards and most of the lead vocals) had been working in a coffee shop, and the other bandmembers met Hannah Reiff (bass guitar) by buying her a drink on “dollar drink night” at a dive somewhere.
While the band was being put together, they saw a news story about a gay troop leader who was being forced out of the Boy Scouts; so they figured that having a lesbian band take the name Boyskout would really offend them. Happily, the ban on openly gay Boy Scouts was finally lifted as of January 1, 2014.
School of Etiquette includes another song called “Back to Bed”; Leslie Satterfield thinks that a playful video for this song was misunderstood. In a 2009 interview for an online magazine called The New Gay, she was asked about “inter-band dating”. After acknowledging that there was some – at one point, Boyskout put a stop to the practice since it was causing so much tension in the band – Satterfield then went on: “One of the members that I really loved and felt like was a really great member for our first record was this girl Hannah [Reiff]. In one of our videos – everyone was like, ‘Oh, all the BoySkouts are kissing each other.’ That really wasn’t true. Hannah and I made out, but we were dating at the time.”
The second CD by Boyskout, Another Life was released on Three Ring Records later in 2006. Besides Leslie Satterfield, the other bandmembers were evidently Christina Stanley on keyboard and violin and Ingrid Dahl on guitar; the male sorta-member, Daniel Dietrick was still playing bass guitar.
As time went on, bandmembers came and went, with Leslie Satterfield being the mainstay for Boyskout. In about 2008, Boyskout appeared at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and were on the bill at Phasefest in 2009 – described on their website as being “an annual Queer music and arts festival dedicated to the development, exposure and interaction of queer and queer-allied musicians and artists, both national and international”.
(January 2014)
