Living Out Loud

The Dead Betties have been together on and off since they formed in 2001, when Pippin and Ackley, who grew up together in New Mexico, met Shepherd through a mutual friend after their original drummer was deported. They were all in their early 20s, living a life specific to young artists in New York. They all lived together and existed in an insular world, making music more for each other than for an audience. “It was a weird cult,” says Ackley.

The Betties’ music may not be explicitly queer—Ackley and Shepherd are both gay, Pippin is straight—but they’re very much rooted in the city’s homopunk scene. They became regulars at monthly homopunk showcase Queers, Beers, and Rears in the late aughts, and their music does look at society from the outside, a position familiar to most gays. They felt detached from the rest of society to the point that watching TV felt like a foreign experience. “It was just this bombardment of weird gender roles,” explains Ackley. “The women were squealing and annoying and the men were just dumb bricks. I thought it was the most vile thing, and I had to write about it.”

The fusion of the personal and the political is often the focus of Ackley’s lyrics. A self-described political junkie, he nevertheless tries not to be too heavy-handed. “I think bands can be really overbearing when they over-politicize anything,” he says. “My goal in writing lyrics is to take anything political, anything that’s ever bothered you about society, and boil down the meaning into something really personal.”

The band’s internal politics grew equally complicated however, and after a disastrous show at Otto’s Shrunken Head towards the end of the last decade, the Betties decided to take a break from each other. That three-year hiatus proved to be the best thing for the trio, both as musicians and as people.

“When we met, we were at a certain mind-frame and maturity level,” explains Shepherd. “The whole time we were together it didn’t really change much, until after we took a break from each other and all grew up.”

They lived, they loved, they played with other bands, and their worldviews changed dramatically. “We all developed completely different lives and came together as full people,” Ackley adds.

Since reuniting in 2013, the band has been consistently playing shows and recording new music. Last summer, they released an E.P. featuring three new tracks alongside covers of Britney Spears’s “Lucky,” Madonna’s “Angel,” and “Blood” by Babes in Toyland. While the Betties have never wanted for shows to play—“You can get shows anywhere, it doesn’t mean shit,” Pippin laughs—they are conscious of needing to stay in top form. Being a working band in New York, Ackley says, “refines your writing to a point where you cannot put anything bad out if you want to be taken seriously.”

That the Betties have managed to stay true to their punk roots is impressive. They’ve experimented with a more electroclash sound in the past, but Ackley says it felt untrue to what they band set out to do. “I really like being a loud band,” he insists.

For their new record, out later this year, the Betties wrote around 30 songs, which they eventually narrowed down to 10. They were left with a record that spoke honestly about freedom and independence, about leaving behind who you used to be and embracing who you are—a very adult rock record. “There’s nothing preachy and there’s nothing contrived,” Ackley insists, “but it’s very driving, very melodic, and a lot catchier than what we’re used to.”

“It’s the first time we really made an album that’s not trying to be anything,” adds Pippin. “It’s really honest: super pissed, but super happy.”