Rocking with an edge Betsy Todd
East Village’s Katrina Del Mar on her latest artistic creation
BY BOB KRASNER
There’s a lot going on in
Katrina Del Mar’s head.
Take the time she was
driving from a funeral in Louisville
and passed a sign for a
town called Tracy City.
“I’ve never been there, but
in my mind it’s a sad little
place full of girls named Tracy,
who are a combo of Ramona
the Pest and a Riot Grrrl, full
of adolescent longing and anger,
ready to beat you up,” Del
Mar says. “I thought it would
be a great name for a band.”
Now Del Mar fronts a combo
named “Tracy City,” and
it’s just the latest step in her
artistic development.
Since moving to the East
Village from New Jersey in
the late 80s to attend NYU,
Del Mar has constantly been
involved in the arts one way
or another.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
“I always wanted to be in
New York City, where the culture
was,” she recalls. “I was
fascinated by Andy Warhol,
etc. and I wanted to be where
the artists were. Also, I was
a queer kid and I wanted be
where I felt safe.”
She “fell in love and dropped
out” of NYU, where she had
“majored in German, art history
and drugs” and started
to concentrate on photography,
which she had originally
picked up as a teen. Del Mar
began photographing performances
in places like the Pyramid
— Karen Finley was one
— and hanging out in edgy
spots such as King Tut’s Wah
Wah Hut and 8BC.
A series of self portraits,
done when she was feeling low,
got her friends excited about
her talent and led to photo
sessions with people like Kembra
Pfahler (“The Voluptuous
Horror of Karen Black”) and
Theo Kogan (“Lunachicks”).
Working on hip-hop music
videos gave her a chance to
grab behind the scenes shots
of the various artists, including
Janet Jackson, Missy Elliott
and Lil’ Kim , which she sold
to magazines on the side. Other
gigs helped pay the bills —
gardening, decorative painting,
stencil work, dishwashing,
video editing, product photography,
even a stint working in
a cornfi eld.
But one the worst gigs was
ironically her “only paparazzi
gig — waiting for hours in a
car for the boyfriend of the
Princess of Norway to come
out of a hotel.”
Del Mar stretched out into
fi lmmaking in 1999 with a seven
minute short, “Non Dairy
Creamer,” made on expired
fi lm and shown once at P.S.
122 before being stolen on Avenue
A. Inspired by John Waters
and Russ Meyer, her second
fi lm, “Gang Girls 2000‘
was helped along by Kembra
Pfahler, who loaned her a Super
8 camera and appeared in
it as well along with a bunch of
Del Mar’s friends.
“That fi lm got me fl own to
New Zealand, England and
Germany!” she marvels. “It
was really fun being in that
little world.”
In 2015, after having
”played guitar really badly
for 30 years,” she joined The
Shirtlifters with Craig Flanagin
(God is My Co-Pilot),
which resulted in a few gigs
(and a Facebook page). After
leaving, Del Mar decide to
write a screenplay about her
father but she couldn’t get the
movie made, so she started
her own band.
Which brings us back to
Tracy City, a hard-rocking
PHOTO BY BOB KRASNER
Tracy City: Monica Falcone,
Genny Slag, Katrina Del Mar,
“queercore” quartet featuring
lyrics by Del Mar and music
by Genny Slag (drums), Monica
Falcone (guitar) and Betsy
Todd (bass). The band gets a
big thumbs up from the noted
Irish musician Cait O’Riordan,
the DJ behind the “Rocky
O’Riordan Show” on Sirius
and bassist for Poguetry, who
claims that, “If Katrina came
to Dublin, she’d be treated like
a goddess!”
A few tunes are available
now on all the streaming
services and there’s more to
come. Of everything, most
likely, as Del Mar is not one to
sit still.
“Having done most of my
work on the margins of a
working class existence, time
is of the essence,” she muses,
adding, “and I have the
patience of a hand grenade.”
More about Katrina at katrinadelmarphoto.
com and on
Instagram at @katrinadelmar.
Tracy City will be at
Bowery Electric on April 10.
Find them at tracycityband.
xyz and on Instagram at
@tracycityband.
20 March 3, 2022 Schneps Media