One year ago, Eagles of Death Metal bassist Jennie Vee had a vision — literally. A fashionista whose grandfather was a Croatian tailor and whose mother was an “amazing sewer,” who started making her own clothes when she was a child amd has designed her own stage outfits for years, Vee had just created her signature studded “Midnight Cowgirl Jumpsuit” for her H Bar C Ranchwear western-wear collection. The outlaw look was inspired by Americana style icons like Patsy Cline, Elvis Presley, Wanda Jackson, and the Man in Black, Johnny Cash (“He’s a little bit country, a little bit rock ‘n’ roll, a little bit Goth”). But it was only until Vee suggested forming a rockabilly supergroup with fellow Canadian singer-songwriter Kandle Osborne, who’d been “just drooling over” Vee’s custom clothes and had recently met Vee on Instagram, that Vee’s vision truly took shape.
“She hit me up one day and said, ‘Let’s do this girl band. Let’s call it the Midnight Cowgirls. There’s a market for country. We’re rock ‘n’ roll. We’re different. We have a new sound. Come over and write songs.’ So, I flew out [to Los Angeles] and met her for the first time in January [2024], and we wrote the first record,” Osborne recalled.
Along with Osborne (the daughter of 54-40 frontman Neil Osborne and a member of British Columbian band the Krooks), Vee eventually lassoed the Menstruators/Glaare/Slim Jim Phantom guitarist Rex Elle (whom she’d known for eight years); Eagles of Death Metal drummer Leah Bluestein (who’d joined EODM after Vee’s rockabilly husband, the Stray Cats’ Phantom, discovered her via Instagram); and eventually multi-instrumentalist Blaise Dahl (Daul Haus and Fuck You, Tammy!). And just six months after Jennie and Kandle first convened for that writing session, the Midnight Cowgirls’ six-song, self-titled EP was available on pink vinyl via Licorice Pizza Records — a self-contained rock ‘n’ roll ecosystem masterminded by music biz veteran Kerry Brown that includes a brick-and-mortal record store, an indie record label, a recording studio (where much of the band’s EP was recorded), and even its own vinyl pressing plant.
“I think it was probably the quickest turnaround time on vinyl pressing, ever, in the history of vinyl,” Vee laughingly told me, as she and her fellow Cowgirls sat in the Licorice Pizza Records shop in Studio City back in July 2024 — conducting their first official interview (for LPTV) and preparing to play their first live public show, ever, at the store.
“We moved fast!” laughed Osborne. “Why wait? We all started in our teens. We all are credible in our own rights, and coming together was a very obvious supergroup to us all. We’re like, ‘Wow, we’re tight!’ Within the first day of rehearsals, we were like, ‘Yep, that sounds good!’ … We started rehearsing five days ago, but we’re all pretty much lifers, so we don’t sound like a new band, which is very nice.”
The Cowgirls project only really started galloping a rapid pace two months before the supergroup’s live debut and EP release, when Vee and Phantom had traveled to Maui to play in the Licorice Pizza All-Star band at Brown’s Sunflower Farm Music Festival, on a lineup that also included Al Jardine, Skunk Baxter, Gilby Clarke, Nelson, Licorice Pizza signing Ferry Townes, Bowie bassist Carmine Rojas, and Jardine collaborator Larry Dvoskin. In March of that year, Jennie’s beloved sister, Julia, had been brutally murdered, and Vee, reeling from the horrific loss, found the May 2024 trip incredibly healing — not just because soaking in the Hawaiian ocean made her feel connected to her nature-loving sister, but because she had a new musical/creative outlet to focus on. (Vee did not discuss her sister’s tragic death during our LPTV interview, but she teared up later onstage when her band debuted the new, non-EP song “Heaven Only Knows” in Julia’s honor.)
“There’d been rumblings about my band for a few months — just dropping hints about it and starting an Instagram — but we hadn’t put out any music. I feel like it was my intention, kind of, to drum up some interest first and put out an aesthetic and a vibe. An announcement was in the works that this was happening, and we had been writing for months already in May,” Vee told me. “But when we went to Maui, I had something to speak about. We had been building this even just amongst ourselves. The energy was there, this was happening. It got mentioned briefly in Maui, but it wasn’t until we got back from Maui that I said to Kerry, ‘Let’s talk about this.’ And I let him know a little bit more about what we were up to and the songs we had written and demoed and recorded. I was able to share that with him, and then from there, it was just a match made in heaven — just like us [bandmates].”
“We didn’t have a lot of time to overthink. We were mostly recording in different places, living in different cities, in different countries, so whoever would start the demo of a song, we would build off that,” Osborne explained. “I would do vocals in Montreal and the girls would do bass and drums here at Licorice Pizza, and then Rex would do some stuff in San Diego. We were just all over the place, sending each other files and stems, and then got it all put together here in one gigantic Pro Tools folder.”
Despite all that, the sound of Midnight Cowgirls is organic, true to what Vee calls the “American art form” of rockabilly and roots music. But there’s also a fun cover of the Dave Edmunds version of the Juice Newton ‘80s hit “Queen of Hearts,” and the EP is a self-described “blender” of the band’s influences — Vee’s post-punk and Goth idols, Dahl’s love of the Allman Brothers and other Southern rockers, Rex’s metal origins, and the Cowgirls’ shared heroines like Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Patsy Cline, Wanda Jackson, and Linda Ronstadt. The genre-defying record fits right into the expanding country landscape, where everyone from Orville Peck to Cowboy Carter-era Beyoncé is now welcome.
“Being stuck in one genre is boring to me,” said Vee, who along with listening to the Cure and Depeche Mode in her Robert Smith-postered childhood bedroom loved Buddy Holly from a young age. “That’s the rockabilly origins of rock ‘n’ roll. And the line gets even finer when you’re looking at rockabilly and country.”
“Sometimes it’s about just digging a little bit deeper and going through your background and seeing what’s actually in you — that maybe isn’t exactly obvious at first,” added Dahl.
“Writing country songs is something we’ve never done, but something that came very naturally to us and was really fun. And good music is good music,” shrugged Osborne. “I love writing in different genres, and I love pushing the boundaries and seeing how different we can be and the different songs that we come up with. It’s exciting and it’s always fun to do something new.”
The Midnight Cowgirls have become fast friends (“We complete each other’s sentences now — we’re that kind of annoying,” joked Osborne), only strengthening their sisterhood as they’ve followed up their Licorice Pizza Records in-store performance with nationwide tour dates opening for the Stray Cats and playing festivals. “I think it’s great to just have the support system that is being an all-women band,” gushed Dahl. “I mean, obviously being in bands over the years, it’s very common to be the only woman in a band. And I can’t speak enough to how positive and communicative this whole situation has been. … The camaraderie is just something really that’s important and has stuck out in this whole process.”
“It’s been an awesome experience,” agreed Elle. “I’ve been playing in bands for many, many years, and oftentimes I’ve been the only female in the band and I had to play the role of the ‘female in the band’ — put on a character, put on the outfits, whatever. And here it’s like we’re putting on stage outfits, but we are still being ourselves. … It’s been a really, really cool change in dynamics of my experience in being in bands, where [in other bands] we would rehearse and then everyone just disperses and no one wants to talk to each other and whatnot. And [with the Midnight Cowgirls] it’s like, we actually really like each other!”
Osborne has also found strength in the Cowgirls’ numbers. “When I started, I got my first [solo] record deal when I was 19, and I remember the first half of every review was about my looks: ‘She walked out looking like a little blonde girl in thigh-high stockings and cat eyeliner…’ and you have to skim until you get to [a description of] the music! It’d be harder to get respect and harder to stand my ground in the studio. I had a lot of very uncomfortable situations in the industry and had a lot of bad men trying to boss me around. But those days feel over, or at least mostly over. And it’s so inspiring and amazing to play with all women and the men that we have in our team — Slim Jim working on the record with us, Kerry Brown is treating us like gold.”
Vee admitted that she didn’t “necessarily think that too much has changed out there [in the music business], because some of my younger friends who are in bands and who are girls, they’re confronted with the same things I was.” But she added, reflecting on her transformative and healing Midnight Cowgirls experience: “I don’t want to discourage a girl from starting a band and making it sound like this terrifying arena. So, the change has been in me. I feel like the change has been in me.
“I love inspiring girls, but I just love inspiring people,” Vee elaborated. “It’s cool when a girl writes to me and says that’s why she bought a bass, but I feel just the same feelings when it’s a guy. Because a lot of parents come to see Eagles of Death Metal and they’re like, ‘I want my daughter to see you.’ And I’m like… ‘Do you have a son? … Your son could be inspired by girls too!’ And we’re not doing it [just for] the girls. We’re doing it for us. I am doing this because I love to play bass and I love to play with talented people.”
Now, these five talented people plan to expand their vision into 2025, touring in custom outfits hand-rhinestoned by Vee (“Hundreds of hours have gone into these clothes!”), launching a Midnight Cowgirls fashion capsule collection that’ll be available for purchase at the Licorice Pizza store, and of course, releasing more music. “Jennie and I have a backlog of about 20 more songs; we’re hoping Kerry wants to take us in the studio and finish the record and keep going,” declared Osborne. “We’re feeling mighty unstoppable, I would say.”
Rex Elle, Blaise Dahl, Kandle Osborne, Jennie Vee, and Leah Bluestein (photo: themidnightcowgirls.com)
