The Fabulous Minx

The top of The Fabulous Minx’s website homepage bears the following message:

Mothers, lock up your daughters and pray for your wayward sons. The Fabulous Minx is an expression of our musical id. A full embrace of the seedy, savage underbelly of American music. Of those blood- and beer-soaked hymns. Of our national anthems. We are here to make your hearts beat and your asses shake.

Ryan Daly, lead singer and guitarist of the band, is an odd image to pair with such a sentiment. He’s an affable red-bearded thirtysomething with a perpetually beaming grin.

“My aspiration is to write ‘Louie Louie.’ If you’re looking for high-class sensibilities and musical gravitas you should get Fiawna Forté’s album,” Daly said with a chuckle. “I think our record could be everybody’s favorite lowbrow, need-to-get-pumped-up-for-the-night rock-and-roll record. If you’re working under a car in your garage, drinking cheap beer, whatever. This is the album for you.”

The Fabulous Minx, the self-proclaimed “dapperist band in Tulsa,” are releasing their first full-length album Make ‘em All Jealous on Morning Creeper Records at the end of this month.

The denim-vested Tulsa rock quintet started in 2012 as a two-piece.

“Noah Sears came to a party at my house and saw that I had some guitars and drums and said we should play in a band together,” Daly said.

Sears, now the band’s drummer, was a punk rock-loving straightedge with the raw chops of a kid who spent years in a basement tormenting his parents with a kick drum. Daly grew up on Zeppelin, Ray Charles and ZZ Top.

“We were looking for genres where a two-piece could sound natural, and we didn’t want to do the Black Keys thing,” Daly said. “I had just started listening to the Flat Duo Jets. They were like punk rockabilly. We started moving that direction because it made sense musically that we could pull it off with two people. You could play it fast and loud and you didn’t have to know a ton of chords. If we weren’t gonna be good at it, then we could at least be very loud and play fast.”

The band soon added saxophone player Andrew Notar, who produced and engineered both of its EPs and co-produced the new album with Daly. Then they added bass player and singer Jill Park into their ranks. The newest member of the band is Jill’s husband, Seth Park (lead guitar) who joined to “avoid feeling awkward at shows,” but who Daly swears is a “much better guitar player” than himself.

This odd blend of musical characters somehow works, grounded by their frontman’s silly self-effacing warmth. Make ‘em All Jealous carries a touch of each member’s quirky aesthetic—it’s clearly a rock record but with hints of rockabilly, soul, doo-wop and even some punk. The band’s influences are broad and seemingly disconnected; they include groups like MC5—Daly described being fascinated by their 1968 performance at the Democratic National Convention (the one that started a riot)—as well as The Stooges, Charles Bradley and Ray Charles. For The Fabulous Minx, it’s less about the nature of the sound and more about the energy and feeling that the sound projects.

“I love watching videos of old Jerry Lee Lewis concerts when he’s going crazy, but he’s not the craziest one in the audience.” Daly said.

The band began recording in earnest in October 2015. It took a little more than a year to complete the largely DIY, spare-time recording project—the band’s members are all married with full-time jobs and several young kids.

“We used to record everything super early, like at 7 a.m. We’d make pancakes, and we’d record for like seven hours. We’d do it at Notar’s house, which was out on some land in Claremore, away from the highway noise, but we’d have a limited time period before his wife wanted to come back in and be able to live in her home.”

Make ‘em All Jealous is lively and fun. Daly’s bright soulful crooning is infectious, and song titles like “Knife fight,” “Don’t be a Wimp,” and “Sock Hop” reveal a band of enthusiastic oddballs relentlessly committed to being themselves.

“We are really shallow with our songwriting. They’re all silly. They show how un-seriously we take ourselves. I mean one of the song’s called ‘Hanky Panky.’”

The band is now preparing for a raucous night of celebration in honor of the album’s release Saturday, January 28 at the Yeti.

“Every year we throw a big weird party, but this may be our weirdest yet,” Daly said.

“Anyone wearing a denim vest or jacket gets five dollars off the album at the show. We’re all about visual continuity, and if the whole crowd could look like they’re in our band we’d be super psyched. There also may or may not be explosive confetti cannons all over the stage that night. There may or may not be a cryptozoological monster walking through the audience during the show. It’s gonna be a rowdy good time. We’re gonna have to tip the cleaning crew pretty hard.” - The Tulsa Voice

Sometimes you don't want a band to reinvent rock. Sometimes you just want a good, old fashioned, fun rock n' roll song. That's where the new single from Tulsa, OK's The Fabulous Minx comes in. "Party Till We're Dead" is a 94 second burst of rock n' roll fun. It definitely has more than a bit of a rockabilly throwback feel, but in the best possible way. You've definitely heard a band mix the Ramones's stripped down rock sound with punk sing-alongs in a rockabilly blend before, but it's still something you should love and listen to. Plus, the song is about being over thirty in a scene filled with youngsters in their early 20's, so we can most definitely relate.

You can listen to "Party Till We're Dead" below. While you're at it, you should also check out the b-side "Baby Baby Baby." For more on The Fabulous Minx, check out their website. - If it's too loud...

What started as a duo of guitar and drums known as The Fabulous Minx has morphed into a band with more guitars and a saxophone, but the goal remains the same.

“My favorite shows that we ever play are when we’ve got people dancing around the stage,” said singer and guitarist Ryan Daly. “That’s the most fun.”

Blending high-energy rockabilly, R&B and punk, The Fabulous Minx has evolved since its formation in 2013. But what hasn’t changed as it releases its debut full-length album, “Make ‘Em All Jealous,” is its desire to throw a party and its will to make it happen.

And its will will be strong Saturday, Daly said, as the group celebrates the vinyl release of its album. The show is set for 9 p.m. Saturday at The Yeti, 417 N. Main St., with Fiawna Forte, the Dead Shakes, Joe Myside and the Sorrow and Evan Hughes sharing the stage throughout the night.

Made up of songs from its beginnings as a duo with Daly and Noah Sears on drums, the album includes songs as the band has evolved, adding Andrew Sears on sax and Jill and Seth Park on bass and guitar, respectively.

“We’ve been taking the band a little further away from the rockabilly thing we started with and a little more into this ... we started and it was very rockabilly and we started getting a little more punk and we started getting a little more raw,” Daly said.

With just Daly and Noah Sears, The Fabulous Minx played hard and fast, high-tempo rockabilly that was more thrashing than dancing in the crowd.

“That first year we were tearing ourselves up pretty hard,” Daly said. “But we’re a little more reserved now, in terms of the number of shows we play, not in how we conduct ourselves on stage.”

The group added Andrew Sears for more depth, but something more was needed to round out the sound, Daly said.

“And turns out, my relatively high voice, guitar, drums and saxophone is a pretty shrill sounding band. We were lacking a little bit of meat to the sound,” Daly said.

They asked Jill Park to join with her bass. Her husband, Seth, became a de facto manager of sorts, but he would be recruited to take lead guitar from Daly while he focused on rhythm and singing.

With that lineup, and with the album, they’ve found a sweet spot. But Daly said he expects the band’s evolution to continue in one way or another.

“Now we’re moving into this punk, R&B space that I really enjoy,” Daly said. “It’s a little more evolved. The songwriting is a little more involved. And the music is more danceable.” - The Tulsa World