Today we’d like to introduce you to Strawbitty Yops Cindy Haws-Rice.
Hi Strawbitty Yops, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
We (Cindy Haws and Woody Hill) both moved to Austin in the early 2000s as queer performers and met in the burgeoning drag scene performing with Austin Kings and Things. We quickly discovered our mutual love for music and started making music together in the percussion-heavy band Righteous Tidings that played bi-weekly at the queer-owned restaurant Ararat that was a local gathering place for the drag, Bellydance and fire-dancing scene at that time. Autumn Haws was 3 years old at the time and grew up surrounded by drag and music rehearsals that were often hosted in our home. This is around the time she requested to go play her song Rock and Roll sheep at the iconic Ruta Maya. As we added more songwriting into the band and with the closing of Ararat’s brick-and-mortar location, the band morphed into a queer folk project called Pillow Princess. We wrote prolifically during this period, produced a queer folk show at Cheer ups called Queer As Folk and played at various venues around Austin. We also were involved in a queer community choir called Crystal Queer Revelation and which performed around Austin at that time, opening up for QueerBomb and playing regularly at Cheer Up Charlies.
The next era of our musical life was brought about by the addition of many children into our lives. I became a foster parent, and had also recently given birth to Thelonious. Our home was filled with very young children and we were playing music with and for them all the time. We had been talking about making children’s music for a long time and felt that this was the perfect time to start. This is when Strawbitty Yops was born. Our bandmates at the time were Jimmie and Salina Estrada, who are featured on our new album. The name Strawbitty Yops was the brainchild of Jimmie Estrada and came from workplace antics of making up silly cereal names. At this time, I became the accessible music teacher at the Rosedale School in Austin, Texas working to adapt music for students with disabilities.
We got our start playing at an underground house concert in South Austin and then almost immediately became busy with birthday parties and monthly shows around Austin. We started recording music pre-Covid at Crosspick Studios for both Pillow Princess and Strawbitty Yops. After a long hiatus due to Covid, we are back to performing around Austin almost every weekend at the Hive, Cherrywood and Jo’s Coffeehouse. Autumn is now 21 and a UT student and is a full-time member of the band adding her beautiful vocal harmonies and songwriting skills. We recently played Rock the Park by KUTX and have been performing at Austin Public Libraries for events as well as many wonderful birthday parties. Our music has been featured on many radio stations around the US, including Austin’s very own “Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child” with Bill Childs. We are very busy making videos, recording new music and playing around time meeting and making music with the wonderful families in Austin, TX. We have a new album coming out on September 28th called “Let’s Make Some Music”.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
This has been such a fun and rewarding journey for us but it has had some obstacles. Learning to record and find mixing artists has been the biggest struggle to reach our current goals in this band. We had some unfortunate experiences in a male-dominated field with mansplaining and having our songs reworked without our permission, but we have overcome those challenges and have found an incredible mixing artist in Durham, NC, Jam Phelps with Denk Studios, who is also a queer artist and a master at her craft. Covid was clearly a huge setback for us, as it was for every single working musician. All of our live shows were canceled and we had a lot of momentum going prior to the shutdown. We have had to continuously cancel many shows as covid numbers fluctuated, recording stopped and we didn’t see each other for almost a year. Two of our former members left the band during that time. The silver lining is that Autumn, who is Cindy’s daughter (and UT student) officially joined the band and we now have our album, “Let’s Make Some Music” coming out on September 28th, which has also been submitted for Grammy consideration. The other struggle is that being an independent artist is a full-time job, all promotion, booking, art, videos, recording, is all done at home and it is often challenging to get it all done, there is always so much more to do.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
We are a queer-identified, interactive Kindie band making music for children and families. Our primary mission is to get families interacting musically with us and each other and having fun. We know that music classes are not accessible for every family and want to make sure that there are musical experiences and lessons embedded into all of our shows. Instruments and movement props are provided during our live shows to encourage everyone to join in the band. We also write music specifically to invite conversations and teach concepts around social justice and SEL such as identifying emotions and how to be a good listener and then songs that are just for fun. Many of our songs are meant to be universal to the human experience and are for adults as well as children. We have been playing together for twenty years and began as a heavily percussive band playing music for belly dancing and fire dancers in Austin. We continue to add a heavy percussive element to our music which gets everyone up and moving. We also incorporate beatboxing into many of our performances, Woody Hill has been throwing beatboxing into the mix since the early days and has now taught our crew of young family members how to beatbox and they often join us on stage and in recordings. Cindy Haws is also a classically trained oboe and flute player and a collector of instruments, so many of our recordings feature woodwinds and interesting soundscapes. We bring many instruments to every show and offer an instrument petting zoo for the children to experience after the show. This also gives us an opportunity to connect with our audience and build community, which is truly our favorite part of every show. We also often invite children to come up to the stage, get on the mic, encouraging bravery and getting used to being in front of an audience. Our goal is to demystify the music-making experience and to bring the joy of music into the home.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
So many people deserve credit here: Crosspick Studios for doing our original recordings, Denk Studios (Durham,NC) for final mixing and mastering, Claudio Ramirez a local mixing artist for two of our favorite songs, Pete Johnson with Woodford Mastering, Shelly Weiser and the Hive Austin for giving us a monthly stage and being an awesome place for families. Cherrywood Coffeehouse, Jo’s Coffeeshop, Brentwood Social House for giving us a stage. Jimmie and Salina Estrada, for making music with us for many years and adding wonderful music and art to the final album. Angel Rivera for his work on the upright bass at many of our shows. Paula Gordon for her original house concerts for kids series, Melanie Rose for adding percussion to so many of our live shows. Kelly Abshire of Ararat Mid-East fusion for so many incredible performance opportunities and magical food. Cheer up Charlies for supporting queer artists, Children’s Music Network and Kindiecomm for expanding our network and introducing us to people doing this inspirational work all over the world. Bill Childs from “Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child” and KUT for playing our music and giving us incredible performing opportunities. Carlisle Rice for the beautiful website and unwavering support and child wrangling.
Contact Info:
- Website: strawbittyyops.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/strawbittyyops/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StrawbittyYops
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrbGc2T9HhHZqWDxST1xT7Q
- Other: https://strawbittyyops.bandcamp.com/
Image Credits
Carlisle Rice
