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Katlyn Conroy, an 18-year-old high school senior from Kansas City, Mo., steps up onto the slightly elevated wooden stage. It’s bitterly cold outside, but Conroy is dressed in a thin lacey white top and a short denim skirt. An asymmetrical slip peeps out from underneath the frayed denim, and Conroy’s bare legs meet white leather boots that fold at her ankles.

When I first saw Conroy walk into PJ’s Restaurant and Pub, 1129 Laramie St. in Manhattan, I assumed she was dating someone in the band. I watched the doorman place pungent black Xs on her hands and wondered why she was at the club long before the show would start. Though I’ve been the only girl in a five-piece band for the past three years, I still made the assumption that this girl wouldn’t be sharing the bill with me that night.

Conroy plays with Another Holiday, an indie-pop band based in Lawrence. As they took the stage and she settled herself behind her keyboard and pushed her unkempt hair out of her face, I wondered about her. Was she the lead singer? Did she do any of the writing? Did she always dress up for shows?

Conroy is part of a relatively small population of female musicians in the Lawrence area. Though www.lawrence.com lists 317 local bands, only a handful of those bands have an active female presence.

Rock and roll has traditionally been a boys’ club, and women who have pursued careers in rock have faced struggles since the 1950s. However, the expanding presence of an alternative and independent music scene has helped to carve a niche for women whose voices may have otherwise gone unheard.

Elvis stole my music

Most people place the birth of rock ‘n’ roll around 1954, with the arrival of Bill Haley and the Comets. Women’s presence in popular music actually pre-dated men’s, says Susan Shaw, co-author of Girls Rock! 50 years of Women Making Music. For many years, both female and African-American music was essentially co-opted by white men, she says. “Big Mama Thornton recorded ‘Hound Dog’ long before Elvis got a hold of it,” Shaw says.

Because these women were kept out of the public eye, young girls had very few role models to look to, Shaw says. Without examples of women succeeding in rock, young girls had no proof that it was possible.

Aaron Couch, Overland Park junior and guitarist for Another Holiday, remembers when he was in middle school and first started playing guitar. When he was younger he listened to classic rock musicians like Jimi Hendrix whose songs, he says, were pretty misogynistic. “The song ‘Foxy Lady’ is a pretty politically incorrect song,” Couch says. “These old rock ‘n’ roll guys were all about the conquest of women, not necessarily seeing them as viable artistic people.”

Parents usually aren’t much help either. Julie Lane, keyboardist and vocalist for the Lawrence-based band Ad Astra per Aspera, says most young girls’ parents don’t encourage them to buy electric guitars or amplifiers. Lane, who took piano lessons throughout her childhood, says that most young girls took lessons for some other instrument instead.

“A lot of boys saw a video on MTV when they were 12 and thought, ‘I want to be the front man of a rock ‘n roll band,’” Lane says. Most girls don’t have that kind of egotistical drive, she says.

Women like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and even Pat Benatar are not rock ‘n’ roll musicians, Lane says. They are pop stars. She also says the women who are in rock are often perceived as scary or trashy. “You just don’t see the badass ‘I write my own music and play in a good rock ‘n’ roll band’ woman,” Lane says.

Not that there aren’t female musicians out there who are successful and influential. Conroy can list several female-fronted bands she listens to regularly (Rilo Kiley, Tilly & the Wall and Matson Jones, for example), but she says that she looks more often to male musicians for inspiration and influence. Conroy writes the lyrics and melodies for Another Holiday and tries to incorporate techniques used by singer-songwriters such as Bob Dylan and Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. Conroy likes the idea of writing in a way that someone wouldn’t necessarily expect from a female.

Women and rock have had a tenuous relationship. The concepts of rock ‘n roll and femininity just don’t go hand in hand, Shaw, the author, says. “Rock is about rebellion, machismo and sex,” she says. “It’s anything but feminine.”

Shaw even points to the physical design of instruments like the guitar as another subtle reminder that women are out of place in rock ‘n’ roll. Shaw says the guitar was originally a women’s parlor instrument. “Then it just kept increasing in size until today. Women tell me that it smashes their boobs!” she says.

Conroy doesn’t have to deal with a guitar, though. She spends her time on stage sitting upright on a stool with a mic positioned in front of her mouth and piano keys just below her fingertips. Couch says he doesn’t feel like Conroy is out of place in his band. In fact, when his band was looking for a new vocalist, the fliers specified that they preferred a female lead, though they would have considered males as well. The appeal of the female lead vocal can be elusive to pin down. “There’s just something charming about female vocals,” Couch says. He says that when a band wins him over because of a voice, the singer is usually female.

Female leads are usually used to add sensitivity to music. Conroy likes to hear a female voice that is harder or loud, but it’s not that common, she says. “Girls can’t necessarily be badasses on stage,” she says. “Or if they do, somehow it’s not honest.”

One of the guys… in a skirt

Conroy peers over her right shoulder to catch the eye of Couch as they begin to play. She smiles at him and he returns the gesture while bobbing his body to the gentle and precise beat coming from their drummer.

Another Holiday’s music is not up-tempo, and I suspect this is a conscious choice to show off Conroy’s talent. She has the kind of voice that makes you slow down. It rests confidently in the back of her throat and is pure and strong — until she flips into falsetto. Then it becomes light and slightly breathy. Conroy turns back around and begins to tap her feet on the floor in time with the music.

Having Conroy join the band didn’t change their dynamic that much, Couch says. As far as telling crude jokes, he says the guys in the band just don’t hold back. He remembers wondering if one band member with an especially small bladder would refrain from using the restroom located smack dab in the middle of their rehearsal space as often once Conroy joined the band. Nothing changed; the frequent bathroom trips lived on.

Standing on stage, illuminated by spotlights and exposed to however many people may be watching on a particular night, it’s only natural for any girl in a band to be aware of the way she looks to an audience. Conroy wants to be taken seriously as a musician. She never wants to be seen as an accessory or as the “visual pleasure” or “hot-ness factor” in Another Holiday. However, she does put time and thought into dressing up for shows. “I have a unique, crazy sense of style and it does add a visual effect,” Conroy says. “I can pull off a lot of things the guys in my band couldn’t.”

Skirts, make-up and strategically exposed skin can change the audience’s perception of a show. Appearance can even be a way to draw in fans, but most female musicians are uncomfortable with this. Megan Dudley, a DJ for the all-female group Dolly Surprise, also based in Lawrence, relays some mixed experiences about appearance and music.

“My friends tell me that people will come up to them and say, ‘Oh, Dolly Surprise, you should see them, they’re hot,’” Dudley says. “We don’t promote ourselves as these sexy girls — we like to emphasize the fact that we’re women, but there are no naked pictures of ourselves on fliers.”

Where my girls at?

Dudley says she’s surprised by the lack of a strong female presence in the local music scene. She says that because she views Lawrence as a progressive city, she would expect to see lots of different kinds of people in bands.

However, Lane, who has been touring with Ad Astra per Aspera for five years, says that she sees more women in bands now than she used to. “There have been three or four nights on this tour where every other band we’ve played with had a woman in it,” Lane says.

It’s almost becoming cool to have a girl in a band, Lane says. This is great in many ways, she says, but it’s also nice to have competent musicians in a band instead of having a girl just for the sake of

having a girl. “There still aren’t that many girls shredding on lead guitar, but when you see it it’s really cool,” Lane says.

While Dudley works at Rudy’s, 701 Massachusetts St., she mentions upcoming shows to people and says they are often surprised to learn she is a DJ. “They give me this look, like, ‘Are you serious? You’re a girl.’” Dudley says people have a certain idea in their heads of what a DJ or musician looks like, which she doesn’t always fit.

There was a band in the Northwest known as Swamp Mama Johnson who had a regional following, Dudley says. They were about to sign with a major label, but when an executive told them that they needed new hairdos, sexier clothes and to lose weight, they refused to sign.

“Women want to be themselves and express the sexiness of rock ‘n’ roll in a way that’s empowering,” Shaw says, “not in a way that conforms to pressures and expectations about how they should look.”

Slowly but surely

Women are often ignored or misunderstood when they go into music stores to buy equipment, Shaw says. Women often report male employees assuming they’re purchasing equipment for their boyfriends, or simply being rude if a girl is trying to purchase an electric guitar, bass or drum kit.

Doormen, bartenders and other men who also sometimes prejudge women. Lane recently had a negative experience on tour at a bar in Missouri. After loading in her equipment, she approached the bartender and ordered a PBR, explaining that it was free because of a drink special for the band. The bartender responded that the special was for the band, not girlfriends of band members.

“I’m sure my face got really red because I was mad,” Lane says. “I wanted to say, ‘Why would you assume that just because I’m a girl I would never be in a band?”

Instead, Lane corrected the bartender, who she says was especially nice to her the rest of the night. Lane says she has often been called “sweetheart” or had people assume that she was setting up her boyfriend’s drums.

Women are also routinely mistreated in the record industry, Shaw says. She credits improved technology as a step toward gender equality in rock ‘n’ roll. Women no longer have to rely on a record company to give them a contract, because they are able to make a living by making CDs and selling them independently. “It might not make as much money as having a record deal,” Shaw says, “but a lot of alternative rockers aren’t interested in making the big bucks. They just want to be able to make a living playing their music.”

And what about those women role models? The more girls who show up in bands today, the more younger girls may decide to pursue careers in rock ‘n’ roll. One of the best parts about being a woman in a band is being at the merchandise table and talking with younger female fans after the show, Lane says.

The younger girls are really excited to see her and her bandmate Brooke Hunt playing, she says. “They realize, ‘Oh, I can use all of those piano lessons I took for years and years,’” Lane says. She says she feels good because the girls are a lot less frightened to approach her or Hunt than to talk with the guys in her band.

Curtain call

The music fades out and Conroy hunches up her shoulders, tilts her head and demurely thanks the audience again, as though no one has ever liked her band’s music before. Her face spreads into one last shy smile as the between-set music gets louder and conversation resumes. She unplugs the black cords from the back of her keyboard and smiles as she walks into the shrieks and admiration of her friends. I stop her to tell her she is fantastic, and she thanks me. As she turns to leave, I cannot help but feel both embarrassed for doubting that Conroy was a musician and pleased that she has proved me wrong.

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