You could say MYNX contradicts the biggest myth of rock ’n’ roll. You know the one: four working-class guys dream of screaming chicks, save money for instruments, and teach themselves three chords in dank garages until that big gig sweeps them into limousines and wrecked hotel rooms.
Then there’s MYNX: five women, most of them married with children, financially un-strapped, none of whom much dreamed (until recently) they’d be playing a tribal version of “Love Shack” to a raging house. None have trashed a hotel because they all are considerably pickier about where they hang. “We learned all our songs rehearsing in a living room,” says lead singer Vivien Alexander, a realtor hailing from Zimbabwe. “We’re girls; we don’t do garages.”
What they do do is rock. “MYNX was born over a few cocktails,” jokes Alexander, though band originator Laurie Deans, freelance writer, editor, and lead guitar, believes it could be reduced to even simpler origins: a shared passion for music. “People have asked if this was a midlife crisis. If this is our response to midlife, then how great is that?”
Deans’s rock epiphany happened while driving her kids to school in the early 2000s. “I discovered that guitar bands were back. I remembered loving bands like Cream, and I decided I want to do that.” Music lessons ensued, and a debut at her birthday party (son Avery played backup) thrilled her friends, though some assumed it was a late-life lark.
Fast-forward half a decade, and here stands MYNX. Besides Deans and Alexander are vocalist/bassist Stacey Fergusson, Dawn Sherry on keyboards, and drummer Donna Eveland, the only seasoned musician in the group, who also tours with famed guitar maker Seymour Duncan. Together, they’re kids who just learned to ride two-wheelers—the thrill still obvious on their faces.
The MYNX mix had some help, though. “I’m glad to be along for the ride,” said David Hekhouse, veteran guitarist/vocalist of The Tearaways, a power-pop group with more than three decades of history. “He’s our Manx,” laughs Alexander. Hekhouse, who teaches music, brought them all together from different classes and found Fergusson in one of his Dream Tours to Liverpool, where guests travel to and actually play the Cavern Club, then record in Abbey Road Studios. This connection arose because The Tearaways divide their time between S.B. and Liverpool, where they double as Badfinger behind Joey Molland, the surviving member of the Beatles’ favorite English band.
But Heckhouse is also digging the mentorship role. He was instrumental, so to speak, getting MYNX’s first real gigs. And last April, The Tearaways hosted MYNX at SOhO, which brought the ladies their first great rocker rush.
“I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we had started this 25 years ago,” muses Fergusson. “How good would we be?” Of course, nobody wants to remind her what that part of the rock myth looks like: the bloated rehab years playing oldies for an increasingly debilitated fan base. The thing to do is to catch them fresh this Saturday, June 4, when they open for The Tearaways at SOhO. “We love to dance,” said Deans. “It’s unbelievably cool when you can make other people dance, too.”