Backwash by Laura Bond Westword Magazine, November 7, 2002 edition Mary Beth Abella is finally ready to release her damn CD, already. After almost a year of liquidating her bank account, feuding with a family member and trying to keep track of an ever-revolving cast of backing musicians--she went through three drummers, for starters--What Happened to the Girls? will be unveiled during a CD-release performance at the Lion's Lair on Saturday, November 9. This notion makes the songwriter happy, yes. But most of all it seems to make her feel...relieved. "You spend so much time working on something like this, arranging the songs and trying different things," she says. "I would get to the point sometimes where I would just have to say," 'Is this my project? Because if it is, I need to be able to do things the way I want to.' When you write a song, it's your baby. You almost can't stand the idea of someone coming along and telling you what to do with your baby, or touching it." The CD's production closely paired Mary Beth with John, the multi-instrumentalist/producer brother who's another product of the highly musical Abella household, where each child was required to learn two instruments. Mary Beth chose piano and cello, while John, she says, played "everything." That early indoctrination pays off on What Happened to the Girls? on which John mans acoustic and electric guitar, bass, piano, organ, tambourine and shakers; Mary Beth handles vocals and acoustic guitar and wrote each of the album's twelve songs. And while the old adage dictates that you can pick your producers, if not your parents and siblings, Mary Beth chose to keep the affair in the family--a decision she said ultimately worked but nearly drove everyone nuts. "We would be up at Colorado Sound doing the mixing, and John and I would just scream at each other," she says. "I'd yell that they were my songs and he should shut up. He'd yell at me for singing a certain way or trying to change an arrangement. He calls it 'bleeding a performance' out of me. It was ridiculous. I'd get upset and expect some sympathy from the guys at the stidio. Instead they were like, 'No, that's good. You've got someone who cares enough to push you.' "John is an amazingly talented musician," she continues. "He was the first one to really encourage me to continue with my songwriting and to start a band--not just to play out solo acoustic or whatever. I trust him. He has a vision that, in some ways, is bigger than my own." Maybe, but Mary Beth has demonstrated that her brother isn't the only Abella child with musical foresight. The founder and director of the Colorado Women in Music Committee--a tributary of the Colorado Music Association--she's staked a local claim for female artists while simultaneously bucking stereotypes about chick rock. Though she can sometimes be found behind the microphone at one of CWIM's acoustic-music showcases, she's now most comfortable in a more electric habitat, backed by a band and issuing something slightly more raucous than folksy singer-songwriter fare. Mary Beth, who is among 25 artists vying for a title in the Post-News Battle of the Bands competition, is very much a girl with a guitar; it's just that she more resembles Polly Jean Harvey and Patti Smith than Joan Baez or Edie Brickell. "When I first started playing with a band, people would still ask me to do solo gigs all the time," she says. "I really tried to move away from that, because I felt like I'd been branded to some degree. Women have to do so much to be taken seriously: It's difficult for anyone to find an audience or get gigs or anyting else, but it is harder for women. I felt that it was important for me to not get tied down to what people thought of as women's music." And she's succeded. What Happened to the Girls? is an edgy, shape-shifting and wholly modern collection that includes brazen, arty tunes ("Just Like Me," "Your Skin") alongside more understaed and emotional songs ("Leave You Behind," "Last Night") and never gives in to sentimentality or shamltz. Vocally, Mary Beth can recall everyone from Veruca Salt's Nina Gordon to the aforementioned Harvy. But as a songwriter, she feels more closely aligned with Jeff Buckley, Grant Lee Phillips and Lisa German, artists who draw strength from simplicity but occasionally like to rock, too. "Before I started playing out, I just spent a lot of time writing songs," she says. "That's what I love doing more than anything else. More than performing, definitely more than recording. As a woman who writes music you do sort of have to find a way through that glass ceiling, because there aren't that many role models, at least proportionally to male musicians. People might be surprised when you come up with something that is actually good." These people should prepare themselves in advance for Mary Beth's CD release party, during which she's promised to raffle off a date with John among other things. The line up for the show is a fine cross strata sample of local sounds. Singer/slinger, Americana enthusiast and stageside comedienne Victoria Woodworth opens the evening with an acoustic set that's likely to include rustically inspired originals as well as covers you're not likely to hear outside of a Nashville revival. An eminently likeable performer with a down to earth stage persona and wiseacre streak, Woodworth's got the kind of voice you want to write movies for--and she comes highly recommended. And performing after Mary Beth--probably around the time she'll sidle up to the bar for a well-deserved cocktail--is Tinker's Punishment, the Denver four piece that celebrates the release of its own debut, Zero Summer, on Friday, November 8, at the Gothic Theater (see page 95 for a review). Whatever has happened to the girls, we like it.