Millicent Hailes
Audio By Carbonatix
“It’s not easy to tell your parents you’re in a band called Mannequin Pussy,” says bassist Colins “Bear” Regisford.
He makes that acknowledgement with a hearty laugh from his band’s tour bus, which will soon be headed to Denver: Mannequin Pussy will be here on Tuesday, September 30, for the first-ever concert at Project 70, a new pop-up venue helmed by AEG. The show also includes headliner Turnstile and openers SPEED and Jane Remover.
At a time when censorship seems to be spreading like wildfire in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, Mannequin Pussy is no stranger to it. A New Yorker profile last year noted that the band couldn’t be found on TikTok if you searched its name, although you could find it if you searched for “Mannequin Dick” or “Mannequin Cock.” The band’s label was able to resolve the issue, but it still underscored societal restrictions imposed by gender. “Even in the tech world, sexism’s prevalent,” Regisford says.
“I definitely will say I believe in the idea of freedom of speech, and I also believe that there are consequences to all your words and actions,” he adds. “There’s a war of ‘We can’t say this, we can’t do this.’ It’s like, ‘No, say it, do it.’ And then see what the end result is. See who’s supporting it, and if they don’t align with your ethics, then maybe rethink what you’re saying or doing. Do or say what you can as long as it’s not going to cause harm to other people and how they live their lives. I don’t hold conservative views, but I don’t think it’s wrong for people to have conservative views. … But if you’re going to use that as a rhetoric to force people who don’t agree with you to be like you, then you can go fuck yourself. As the only cis-het member of the band, I’m not going to tell any queer person or any religious person how to live their life. And I sure as hell don’t want them to tell me how to live my life.”
Regardless, he points out the irony of how the “war of Freedom of Speech” is oddly followed by “deciding what is supposed to be censored and what isn’t.”
Wherever Mannequin Pussy lands in that equation, he’s aware that the band’s moniker either repels or intrigues people — there’s not much in between. “I kind of love that it’s divisive in a way,” Regisford says. “There are some things we definitely should have done by now, and it gets back to us that people are scared to have the name [on a bill] because of censorship. And I’m like, ‘Well, then, we’re good.’ I love the name Mannequin Pussy. I’ll scream that until the day I die.”
Those who are curious enough to actually listen to the band’s music almost immediately become fans.
Regisford certainly wasn’t put off by the name. He was playing in a hardcore band in Philadelphia when he came across Mannequin Pussy. “I would book a 4/20 show in the city for one of my other bands…and I remember at the time, a friend of mine made a suggestion to check out this band Mannequin Pussy,” he says. “Off the bat, I was like, I’ve got to check this band out. I was listening to them and I was like, ‘Not only do I love this band, they have to play the show.’ We sent an email being like, ‘We’ll bake you cookies; please play the show.’ And they did.”
Not long after, he saw that Mannequin Pussy was looking for a bassist and secured the gig. “And the rest is history,” Regisford says.
Regisford, who was raised in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, before his family moved to the Poconos when he was twelve, got interested in punk music at a young age. “When I was younger and still living in Brooklyn, my parents didn’t really allow me to watch the music videos on TV,” he says, reminiscing about the days when MTV was actually populated by music programming. “But when they go to work for the day, kids will play. The first music videos I saw were ‘Last Dance with Mary Jane’ by Tom Petty, ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel and ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ by Nirvana. So I was already given post-punk, Americana rock and roll, and then straight grunge. And I’m like, ‘Oh, this is the stuff I love.'”
His mom started to show him rock music’s Black roots, such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard. “And then when I found punk, this is ’95, I didn’t understand what I was watching; it was just great,” he says. “Some of my first CDs were Nimrod by Green Day, Dude Ranch by Blink-182, NOFX, Pennywise.”
Mannequin Pussy’s music is definitely rooted in punk, but also pulls from other influences. Forceful and boiling over with passion, each song off the latest album, I Got Heaven, is evocative and fierce behind the visceral vocals of guitarist Marisa Debice. As a whole, however, the band’s sound is classic. As Regisford notes, “A lot of us realize the wheel has already been made, and reinventing it doesn’t seem possible at this point.” While Mannequin Pussy definitely has its own singular sound, “we are truly the end result of years and years of rock and roll,” the bassist says. “I think we are just the culmination of so many versions of rock, punk and even some pop sensibility, as crazy as that sounds.”
He recently watched a documentary on Billy Joel, and was “kind of surprised at how punk he was,” he says.
“He was able to go against anyone who was telling him he couldn’t do what he couldn’t do,” he adds. “And that’s what we try to do as well: truly just come from within ourselves, our experiences. We try to relate to people out there, as well as just honor the stuff people love and listen to. Sometimes some of our stuff sounds old-school punk, and others match more of ’90s stuff. Other songs like ‘OK? OK!’ are like, right out of 2000s metal. There’s a bass line in ‘Aching’ that I like to joke is my System of a Down.”
He and his bandmates are stoked to be opening for Turnstile, which hails from Baltimore, not far from Mannequin Pussy’s hometown of Philadelphia. “We’ve never played a show directly with them, but we’ve played festivals with them before,” says Regisford. “Baltimore and Philly are kind of sister cities; I feel like there’s a lot of power between us.”
But mostly, the musicians are excited to be in Denver. “It’s a beautiful city,” he enthuses. “It’s my favorite part of the tour, driving through Colorado and looking at those beautiful mountains. … But the elevation gets a little crazy,” he adds with a laugh.
At the live show, expect a “two-way street of energy and excitement” between the band and audience,” he says.
“When we did three sold-out shows in Philly, and each show was packed to the gills with friends and family, those are the moments that are the craziest,” he says. “We’ve played festivals where we’re looking at a sea of people and it’s like, holy shit. … To finally get to that point where you can be like, ‘See, the plan worked out, Mom and Dad.’ Those are the moments where it’s like, ‘Holy shit. This is what we do for a living: make people happy and share it with the band and our friends.'”
Mannequin Pussy plays Project 70, 4600 Humboldt Street, 7 p.m. Tuesday, September 30, with Turnstile, SPEED, Jane Remover. Tickets are available via AXS.
