Interview: Marisa Dabice (Mannequin Pussy)

With the exception of “Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A minor,” the lyric of 2024 might be “And what if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?”

The provocative line comes courtesy of Mannequin Pussy vocalist Marisa Dabice in the title (and opening) track off the Philadelphia-based punk quartet’s latest album, I Got Heaven. And it’s far from the lone bold, boundary-pushing words across the LP’s 10 tracks — or the group’s discography, which has never shied away from controversial subject matter in the name of catharsis and speaking truth to power.

Prior to bringing that fire-power to The Orange Peel stage on Thursday, June 12, Dabice spoke with Asheville Stages from her still-new home of Los Angeles about performing on late night TV with a production budget, acknowledging rage, and Mannequin Pussy’s strong ties to Western North Carolina. 

Edwin Arnaudin: You were supposed to play The Great Eagle a few days after [Tropical Storm] Helene hit. Do you remember where y'all were when you found out that wasn't gonna happen? 

Marisa Dabice: I don't remember exactly where we were on tour, but I know that we were on tour and we started seeing the reports of what was happening in and around Western North Carolina and Asheville. And we also have a lot of friends who live in Asheville, so we were just trying to get in touch with them to see how they were and if they were OK and their homes were OK. 

I remember there was some back and forth with The Grey Eagle where, at first, they're like, “Oh yeah, it'll be fine. As long as we get water back, we'll be OK.” And then it was just very obvious that this was not the time to come in a bus to Western North Carolina and that all the focus should really be on recovery and not a rock 'n' roll show. But we love Asheville, so there's no doubt in our mind that we would return when the time was right and do what we could to help the community from the road.

EA: I imagine being on tour and having a disruption like that would throw things out of whack a little bit. Was that a big disruption to your plans or did it wind up being an OK break for y'all? 

MD: Well, the idea that anyone would become a touring musician and continue to cling very tightly to “things must go this way” would be such a fool's errand. That's just not the way that touring works. That's just not the way that life works. And so you really learn how to loosen your grip on the way that you expect things to go and just allow them to unfold the way that they go.

So, we've gotten very, very good at rolling with the punches. This is actually not our first time that a show has been canceled for natural disaster or weather or anything like that. So yeah, you just find yourself with an extra day on the road. An extra day in, like, a Walmart parking lot, wherever you might be. But our concern was much less our show versus what your community was going through. 

EA: I'm curious what you'll think coming through, because downtown is still — it's like it never happened there. But you go two miles away, closer to the Biltmore House area, and there's still wreckage everywhere.

MD: Oh wow. 

EA: And it's been about nine months at this point. 

MD: We have a day off in Asheville, the day before The Orange Peel show. I'm really hoping to just walk around and enjoy the town, but also see the reality of what it feels like to be living in a place where, not even a year ago, such a large-scale natural disaster took place. Was your home OK?

EA: Fortunately so. My partner and I are in West Asheville and our landlords had some tree work done just a few months beforehand.

MD: Oh, wow. 

EA: Otherwise, both our cars probably would've been out and maybe a big chunk of the house. And then we're a little elevated, but both neighbors across the street had their basements flooded, so they were using sump pumps to get the water out. And since we were running out of water, we were using city trash cans to fill up so we could flush toilets. It was a really strange experience, but we were very, very lucky overall, compared to how things were just a couple miles away.

MD: I'm glad to hear that. 

EA: Thanks for asking. I really appreciate that. 

Well, again, very happy y'all are coming back and glad you made that a priority. Y'all obviously bring a ton of energy to the stage. It's great to see. How have the emotions around your performances changed since [President Donald] Trump was reelected?

MD: Oh, I mean, that anger I feel like has been ever-present for our entire lives. So, I don't know that anything, for us, has changed in terms of our rage on stage. We're still talking about a lot of the same issues that were happening before his election. But there's an obvious ramp up in violence towards very specific communities, throughout different people in the United States. 

But, I don't know, it's a strange question to ask how a president affects your show. The truth is that he doesn't affect our show, but he does affect the rage that we feel and the violence that we're seeing unfold against immigrant populations and documented and undocumented people and trans and gay populations. It's sickening, the way that this president thinks he can use people as political pawns to try to amass power for himself. But we saw that in his first administration. What he's doing are things that we very unfortunately expected him to do.

But I also imagine that there's a growing rage in our audience as well, that the necessity of a cathartic intervention is definitely heightened. 

EA: I definitely agree that y'all have been aware for a long time and it shows in your writing. And kind of to your point of, now that we're in this current situation where there are these more targeted actions happening from Washington, is that inspiring you to write a lot? 

MD: No, not yet. I mean, honestly, logistically, we haven't really had a lot of time off to write and make new music right now. And so, in time — yeah, there will be that channel or that funnel for what we're witnessing and the way that we need to purge it from our bodies and also understand the emotions. But I think, unfortunately, a lot of what is happening is just so violent and disgusting that it's very easy to first allow the numbness to sort of settle in. Or you don't even know how to find the words for what it is that you're witnessing in a creative or poetic way. It's just simply experiencing first. And so it takes time, I think, to distill that anger into a song. 

We are going into the studio in July when we're finally done with the June tour. We've been really busy since January — really over a year now. There's some instrumental demos that we've been working on, so I'm definitely curious what will come out of us. And there's definitely a lot that needs to come out of us. That's something I talk a lot about at our shows is that, if you're not careful with the way that rage just sits in your body, it has the capacity to spread in your body like a poison if you don't acknowledge it. So, we definitely intend on acknowledging it. 

EA: Excellent. I'm glad to hear you already have studio time set up.

I wanted to talk a little about your [Everybody's Live with John] Mulaney performance, which I thought was just incredible. He seems like a different kind of host and Netflix maybe offers more or less freedom than like a [Stephen] Colbert or a [Jimmy] Fallon.

MD: More, more, more. So much more. They gave us everything that we wanted. They paid for everything. No one is performing on late night with a production budget. I'll say that from the start — I have to give major fucking props to John Mulaney and his team and what they're building and doing over there because it is in full support of the artists and the vision that you have going into the performance.

EA: What was the communication involved in planning for that? Like you said, there's a lot of production value going on, plus guest stars. Were you encouraged to go big or was this just sort of carte blanche and then you responded? 

MD: I think the conversations for being on the show started at the end of 2024 — fall or something. We knew that the show was coming back and he's a really big fan of our band, and we were one of the first artists that they reached out to, wanting to have us on the series to perform — which was so exciting for us. 'Cause, with the reality of our name, it's just — we're not going to get to perform on a lot of late night things, I think generally for not good reasons. Like, you have to be ready to say “pussy” on TV. And not everyone is, but John Mulaney really wanted to and he really leaned into it. But yeah, once we were confirmed to play the show and we had our date set, then they kind of just came to us and were like, “So, basically you could do anything.”

I do remember them saying John really wanted us to play “I Got Heaven,” just as kind of a special request. We also played “Loud Bark” for the audience, off camera. But we did a performance of “I Got Heaven,” and it was just such an amazing opportunity to do something a little — I think “camp” is not exactly the right word but, like, slightly bigger and more realized than what we've been able to do before. 

And a little bit more tongue-in-cheek with building our own church and paying homage to Sinead O'Connor and her very radical act of ripping up the photo of the Pope [on SNL]. We had that picture of her ripping up the Pope on our drum head. We had all this kind of sexual and queer imagery within the stained glass. We had a bunch of women — women who are definitely not Catholics — dressed up as nuns. Women and queer people dressed up as nuns, singing with us and playing guitar. And, yeah, it was just an opportunity to do something bigger and more theatrical than we've been able to do before for a live performance like that. 

EA: And it was great seeing former Asheville resident Karly Hartzman in the background.

MD: Yeah! It was so great. Actually, Karly had texted me that she was coming to LA, 'cause she knew I was living here. And so, we wanted to hang out and I was just like, “Oh, dude! The time you're coming here, I'm so busy. I'm in prep. I have to make rehearsals and stuff.” And then she was like, “Oh my god! I wanna come to the performance, if I can.” I was like, “Oh, do you wanna just sing with us and be part of the nuns’ choir?” And she was so down to make it work even though she had such a busy schedule while she was out here for such a little bit of time. I also got to see her play at her solo show she did with Cryogeyser [at The Lodge Room]. It was just great to see a friend of ours from Asheville be part of that performance. It was so cool for us to be able to involve our friends in that way. 

EA: Do you know her from when she was [interning] at The Mothlight [where Mannequin Pussy performed in 2018 and 2019] or through other connections?

MD: No! Wednesday and Mannequin Pussy became friends a couple years ago. We ended up playing a show together in Boise, Idaho. And it was really just one of those — every now and then, as a touring musician, your crew meets another crew and it's like a love at first sight kind of vibe. And that was really what it was like for Wednesday and Mannequin Pussy. Their band and our band just hit it off so immediately. And so we played that show together, then we were at a festival together the next day. Ever since then, the MJ Lenderman crews and Wednesday crews are just really good friends of ours.

And we try to see each other when we're in each other's towns and cities. One of the beautiful things about touring is you unexpectedly meet a group of people who are gonna become really important and that you really believe in and love their music and both admire for their creativity and their artistry — but also just respect and love as a friend in your life and, you know, another friend who understands your life in this very intimate way.

EA: All the interactions I've had with that crew have been very genuine and very, very positive. It does seem like they're really good at community building, so I'm glad to hear that you've made that connection with them too. 

MD: Yeah, they're wonderful people to have in our lives now.

EA: Lastly, I know the day after Asheville, y'all are heading to Bonnaroo. Have you been there before as a performer or an attendee? 

MD: I skipped my prom and I went to Bonnaroo when I was like 17 or 16. So, this would've been in the early 2000s. It was definitely a rock festival still, but kind of had its crunchy roots — like, granola shit going on. 

But yeah, I haven't been to Bonnaroo since then. It was such an immensely informative experience in my life as a teenager. It was so crazy that my parents let me go in the first place. That was just so wild. I sometimes have to, very tongue-in-cheek, shout out to my childhood cancer, because as a teenager with cancer, my parents were like, “OK, yeah, just go live your life, sweetie. You wanna drive 17 hours at 16 with two of your friends down to Bonnaroo instead of going to prom? OK. Who are we to say no?” Right? 

And yeah, I didn't really give a fuck about going to prom. I didn't wanna spend money on a dress or a limo or stuff like that. Going to a school dance was just not on my list of experiences I wanted. But going to a music festival? That was it. After working at my shitty high school job, I'm gonna drop some money on something. I wanna go to a music festival.

But yeah, I remember seeing The Mars Volta at two in the morning on mushrooms for the first time. I think it was the first time I ever took mushrooms and it was this really transcendent and informative experience in my life, going to that music festival and feeling so free. I could just be absolutely the freak that I felt that I never really got to express, growing up in the suburbs of Connecticut — like, this very, very rigid expression of self where, if you express yourself at all, you were gonna get dunked on, and pretty hard. And I was sensitive. 

So, yes, it was a very long-winded and excited way of saying, “I have been to Bonnaroo.” I'm so excited to return as a performer. It just feels like a really wild, full circle moment to be able to now experience that on the other side of it. 

EA: And then having been on — well, you will have been on both sides after you play there. But having been in the crowd, do you feel like that's informed what you want to do from the stage once you're there?

MD: Oh, yeah. I mean, as a young person who was so obsessed with music and so obsessed with going to shows for years before I ever picked up an instrument myself, the performances that always stuck out in my mind were the ones where the artists on stage simply knew how to perform and recognized that what they were doing was a performance. You could feel that they felt the privilege of having the attention of people — that they really treated it like a sacred space and didn't look bored up there. 

I think like there was something that kind of happened in the 2010s era of going to shows where every performer was up on stage looking way too cool to care. And that, to me, does not make for an exciting rock show. You kind of set the energy and then you give that to the audience and, hopefully, they give that back to you. But yeah, those early shows I saw, especially some at Bonnaroo, were just like, “Oh, this is what it means to deliver a performance and to treat that live experience as something very chaotic and sacred.” And so I feel like, for a lot of my artistic life, I've been chasing the chaotic and the sacred and trying to make it our own.

IF YOU GO

Who: Mannequin Pussy with Deux Visages
When: Thursday, June 12, 8 p.m.
Where: The Orange Peel, 110 Biltmore Ave., theorangepeel.net
Tickets: Sold out

(Photo by Millicent Hailes)