Sue & Marcy (Scrawl)

Marcy Mays and Sue Harshe are an institution within the Columbus music scene. They are co-founders of the band Scrawl, who between 1985 and 1998 released six albums and an EP. They toured endlessly, both in the US and Europe with the Meat Puppets, Afghan Whigs, Superchunk, the Wedding Present, Shellac, Wilco, Mike Watt, Jon Spencer Blue’s Explosion, and Spoon, to name a few. They performed at Lollapalooza, the Reading Festival, and two All Tomorrow’s Parties. 

Scrawl started out on the local label, No Other Records, who put out their debut album, Plus Also Too, but the band soon signed with Rough Trade, recording two albums (He’s Drunk and Smallmouth) until the label went bankrupt, sending the band scurrying to New York to bid on its master tapes. A one-off recording with Chicago’s Feel Good All Over Records produced the anger-fueled Bloodsucker and association with Steve Albini, who then recorded Velvet Hammer for the Simple Machines label and Travel On, Rider (along with Memphis producer Jeff Powell) for Elektra. One more album, Nature Film was released on Elektra before the label and band parted ways.

“Through the rise and fall of American indie rock, the years of hardcore and hair metal, college radio and Nirvana, Oasis and No Depression and Riot Grrrl, from the early 1980s to the Y2K bug, the Columbus, Ohio trio were making stripped-down rock music that performed—sadly, angrily, beautifully, roughly, then elegantly— just the opposite of what we usually expect rock music to do. It could be a bummer, but it was a glorious bummer, and its propulsive, melodic and serious sounds—as well as its no-nonsense lyrics—embodied the truths that most rock music tries to deny.” – Stephen Burt, At Length Magazine

“Long before the riot grrrl movement opened the floodgates for the widespread emergence of female artists in the male-dominated world of indie rock, the Columbus, OH-based trio Scrawl carved out their own tough-minded yet feminine niche within the underground community.” – Jason Ankeny, All Music

“It’s little things like a label dropping you and then going belly-up that separate the women from the girls […]” – CMJ New Music Report

RESERVATIONS: Reservations are strongly encouraged for our free Happening Hour Shows!