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All girl Led Zeppelin band returns to the Sandbar in Vail Thursday

Caramie Schnell
cschnell@vaildaily.com
Vail, CO Colorado
Special to the Vail DailyVail music: The women of Zepparella revel in 'all Zeppelin, all the time'
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VAIL, Colorado –Clad in tight white leather pants, the four women who make up Zeppelin cover band Zepparella are downright aggressive on stage. And as entertaining as they are, Clementine, the band’s drummer, says the audience can be pretty interesting, too.

Once, at a show in Lake Tahoe, a man wearing business suit fell in love with guitarist Gretchen Menn.

“(He) crashed the stage and made a puckered-up beeline for Gretchen during a song,” Clementine said.



“Also in Tahoe, a dude jumped on stage and break-danced,” she continued. “Fights, lovemaking – it’s always entertaining from our view, too.”

The girls, who revel in “all Zeppelin, all the time,” return to town Thursday night for a show at the Sandbar. Clementine – yes, she only goes by the one name – took the time to answer a few questions for the Vail Daily.

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1. Vail Daily: Be honest, do you ever get sick of Led Zeppelin songs?

Clementine: Totally honest, nope. It’s amazing to me to that I just seem to like Zeppelin more and more as time goes by. I listen to Zeppelin even when I’m not practicing, and that is pretty bizarre. There are songs that I skip over though, I will say. “D’yer Mak’r” gets the thumbs down from me, but I felt vindicated in that when I found out that Bonham didn’t like that song either. So far, still in love with the rest of them though.

2. VD: You guys have been doing some original music as well with your project The House of More. Do you ever sing any of those songs at your Zepparella shows?

C: We’ve opened for Zepparella as THOM, but we don’t mix it up. Zepparella is all Zeppelin, all the time.

3. VD: Led Zeppelin has enormous back catalog. Are you guys tackling anything new for 2010?

C: The list of the songs in the queue is epic. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on what day it is) for me, most of the next batch are the next level of Bonham’s drumming for me, so I’ve been woodshedding like crazy to be able to learn them. One thing about this band is, we are never short of goals, and next-song discussions take up a good deal of our travel time.

4. VD: I saw the fun Zepparella blog post about Lent. Do you update the blog or someone else from the band?

C: The blog is Nila, our bass player, and she just cracks me up. English is her second language, and I have to say I like her writing language more than anyone’s. She gave up all things delicious basically, scotch, cheese, chocolate. It’s a yearly thing for her, and really a good idea for anyone to just clean house once a year. But for us around her, at certain points, we consider force feeding her a truffle to take the edge off.

5. VD: Who do you guys listen to when you’re driving across the country, touring?

C: Our individual iPods. We all have secret music we keep to ourselves. Every now and then I’ll force something on someone. But the van is usually very quiet as we drive. Unless it’s designated party time. Then we listen to Zeppelin. (Are we boring or what?)

6. VD: And what do you drive?

C: The most beautiful, fuel-efficient, tricked out van in the universe. Our tour manager Jim is a renaissance man who builds our guitar cabinets, drives us, books us, and tricked out the most amazing van for us. For those of us who spent years in Econolines slogging around the country, it’s like rock ‘n’ roll Nirvana.

7. VD: If you weren’t a member of Zepparella, what would you be doing with yourself?

C: Wow, think of the time I’d have. Learn crochet, play bocci ball … No, really I’d be in another band, hopefully not as a bandleader but as a drummer who gets to rock out every night. Pretty much a one-trick pony here.

High Life Editor Caramie Schnell can be reached at cschnell@vaildaily.com or 970-748-2984.


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