Low-brow rock-and-roll

The Fabulous Minx gears up for an album release and a weird party

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.”