Catching Up With Local Punk Band Plasma Canvas

Here at OFM, we like to keep up with our friends in Plasma Canvas as much as possible. The Fort Collins-based punk band is fronted by true trans soul rebel Adrienne Ash, and the now-four-piece band recently released their second album, Dusk, which is also their first LP for prestigious punk label Side One Dummy. They’re more than our local heroes now, as they seem to be blowing up in the punk scene and gaining a lot of positive attention. Dusk is a very eclectic mixed bag of different punk styles, as Ash refuses to pin herself down to a single subgenre of punk rock. We decided to have another sit-down with Ash to talk about the band’s new record and their growing popularity, and what that means for being a visibly queer person in a punk scene.

I just want to say that I’m listening to the new album, Dusk, I really like it. It’s kind of all over the place in terms of styles of punk. There’s a little bit of hardcore, a little bit of emo, a little bit of pop punk, and it’s all thrown in there. And then there’s a literal church hymn. What would you say your main influences are on this album?

Well, I’ll be real and say that there weren’t any main influences. One of the things that I kept getting feedback on over the years was—I was told that it was a weakness that I needed to sort out, but I’ve come to view it as a strength—to be able to write a lot of different sounding songs. I had been told that it would be better if we stuck to one thing, and I just refused to do that. And there were a lot of influences. I love Jimmy Eat World and My Chemical Romance and Refused and a lot of really emotional bands. But to say that it’s just an emo record or just a hardcore record or something, I think genres are fun when you’re digging through record bins, but it’s not really something to bank your whole career on. I think it’s more fun to just do what you do and then let other people categorize it how they want.

How would you say that your songs focus on queerness? And transness? Or is that is that a common theme that you think you explore?

Yes and no. I got asked in an interview a while back about whether or not we write political songs, and it made me think how my transness and my queerness, they inform everything that I write. So every breath I draw is inherently a political football. And it’s hard to navigate. But it’s not that I write explicitly about those things. But if the person listening to it knows who I am and what I’m about, then they have that added context but, without it, they’re just good songs.

I have in the past explicitly written about being trans. And we have a song on our No Faces EP called “#Genderparty” that I wrote as an answer to bands like Against Me! And I love Against Me! to death but—at the time that I wrote that song, which was, like, January 2018—I think most of the trans and queerness that I heard in punk rock was very self-loathing, or very I-can’t-believe-I’m-sharing-with-the-world-that-I’m-trans. And what I was trying to do was give us an anthem to party with. And I call it “#Genderparty” because you can party with your transness and your queerness, and it doesn’t have to be this shameful thing that you talk about quietly. You can be loud and proud about it, and you should be because you’re fucking beautiful

And I can write about it, and I’m not opposed to writing about it, but I don’t want to be the trans band. I don’t want to be the queer punk band. Because we’ve been on plenty of shows where it’s just all queer bands, or all trans bands, or all femme-fronted bands. And it’s cool to have that solidarity in that community, but it does make you feel lumped into a category that you might not want to be lumped into, or cheapening what you do because nobody puts on a bill that’s a male-fronted rock night. I’m not afraid of being trans and talking about being trans. But we’re so much more than that as a band, and I don’t like just being reduced to that.

So you’re a local band we’re really proud of. I want to ask, what’s the general Colorado punk scene like right now? Or Fort Collins, is that a strong scene right now?

It is, it is. One of the things I love about Fort Collins is it’s a big enough scene to where there’s a bunch of stuff going on all the time. Any given night of the week, you can catch a show somewhere, whether it be hardcore, or death metal, or folk, Americana, bluegrass. There’s a huge bluegrass scene around here. And it’s kind of cool because you’ll see people that play in funk bands in the mosh pit at your hardcore show and then go on Sunday afternoon and watch them play at Avogadros or something. And it’s a cool vibe in that there’s always stuff going on. But it’s a small enough town to where everybody supports each other.

I stumbled upon something on Twitter yesterday where I saw you responded to someone who had posted one of your tweets from a very hateful account and you just said “Next time don’t blur out my name, sweetheart.” which I thought was such a great response. But what is it like right now being that visible trans person in a punk band and a punk scene?

Same as it’s always been, to be honest. Because, even within punk rock, I’ve run into some people being not so great about it. But I’m a redneck. I’m used to being trans in a small town. So being trans in a big city is no fucking problem. But that’s why pieces of shit that want to say horrible things about me online, like, whatever dude. If you’re going to be a hateful, transphobic asshole, then I’m gonna respond with grace and elegance and tell you to go fuck yourself. It’s not something that I’m just now getting used to. It’s not new.

There’s a Ryan Cassata lyric in one of his songs, (“Hold On, You Belong (People Like Us)”), the line was, “It’s just something people like us get used to.” And as bleak as that is, and as simple as that is, there is some comfort there to be found because you’re not the only one who’s going through it. But if you run into 10 people, nine of them are sweet to you and one of them’s an asshole, it’s really easy to just remember the asshole. And our whole thing is about remembering the other nine people that had your back.

What’s coming up next for Plasma Canvas?

Well, we just got off the tour with Descendents. That was a really, really big deal that we believe is gonna knock down a lot of doors for us. We’re planning some real big stuff in the summertime and the fall; we’re planning on making a lot of waves. But it’s looking really exciting.

We got a great crew here, our bass player, Jarod Ford, our drummer Jordan Pasquin, and our guitar player, Miles Stevenson. That is our lineup. I know that, on the album, it says Evelyn and Frankie, and Evelyn did play the drums on the new record and then left because she was just burnt out and needed to focus on her mental health, which we totally love and respect. But Frankie is no longer in the project; they’re just not involved. We have a totally new lineup. Now the only original member is me. But it’s kind of been my project from the get go. I started it as a solo thing. But now we plan on writing and recording as me, Jarod, Jordan, and Miles.

That’s all I wanted to go over is anything else you wanted to add?

Just that we are the loudest, gayest band in the world motherfucker, and we’re here to fuck shit up!

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Photograph courtesy of Lisa Johnson