Tobi Vail

Tobi Celeste Vail (born July 20, 1969) is an American independent musician, music critic and feminist activist from Olympia, Washington.

She was a central figure in the riot grrl scene—she coined the spelling of "grrl"—and she started the zine Jigsaw.

A drummer, guitarist and singer, she was a founding member of the band Bikini Kill.

Vail has collaborated in several other bands figuring in the Olympia music scene.

Vail writes for eMusic.

Tobi Celeste Vail was born in Auburn, Washington, to teenage parents.

Both her grandfather and her father were drummers.

When she was young her parents moved the family to rural Naselle, Washington, where her father worked in a youth detention center.

The family moved to Olympia, Washington, where Vail attended high school.

The first concert she went to on her own was a Wipers show in 1984.

One of Vail's first bands was the Go Team, a punk project started with Calvin Johnson in 1985.

The group released several cassettes and nine singles on the independent label K Records, mostly on the 7" vinyl format. Billy "Boredom" Karren was one of the rotating musicians who played with the Go Team, and it was in this band that he and Vail played together for the first time. The band toured the West Coast in 1987 as a two-piece, then added Karren for two U.S. tours, both in 1989. After the Go Team disbanded, Vail played in various project bands and made a record as the drummer for Some Velvet Sidewalk; she toured with Some Velvet Sidewalk during early 1990. Since the beginning of her teens, Vail had tried to form an all-female band to "rule the world and change how people view music and politics", including a group named Doris.

In 1988, Vail left Washington to live in Eugene, Oregon.

After a year, she returned to Olympia.

While still in high school, Vail volunteered at KAOS (FM), the campus radio station at The Evergreen State College.

At KAOS, Vail was exposed to a wide variety of independent music.

She served off and on as a disc jockey from age 15 to 21.

In October 1990, Vail and Evergreen State College classmates Kathi Wilcox and Kathleen Hanna determined to form a band, which they named Bikini Kill.

Vail played drums and on some songs she sang.

Through early 1991, Hanna and Wilcox swapped bass player and lead singer duties halfway through the set, and Wilcox also played guitar.

After trying out a lot of female lead guitar players, none of whom seemed to fit, the band finally asked Karren to join as he was already known to Vail and a familiar figure in the Olympia music scene.

Soon after the band formed, they started a zine called Bikini Kill to promote the band and describe the band's social and political views.

Hanna, Vail and Wilcox contributed articles to the zine.

In Bikini Kill #1, Vail commented on the punk music scene and its overemphasis on males.

She wrote about the "Yoko factor": the time when a male musician tells his girlfriend that she should not break up the band (comparing Yoko Ono's influence on the breakup of the Beatles) and that the girlfriend would never be as important to him as his band.

Through the Bikini Kill zine and publicity for the band, Vail voiced her belief that the world would change for the better if the number of girls joining bands increased until it was equal to the number of boys.

Bikini Kill performed at the International Pop Underground Convention in August 1991, and Vail and Hanna each performed separately on "Girl Night".

Despite frequent mainstream media misrepresentation and serious violence at shows, they continued for several years and today are largely credited (along with Bratmobile) with starting riot grrrl, a movement that merged do it yourself (DIY) punk culture with feminism.

The band Bikini Kill tried to reclaim feminism for the punk scene in an attempt to disrupt its male bias.

The band fought against male aggression at their shows.

Largely because of Hanna's leadership, Bikini Kill encouraged girls to stand at the front of the stage for solidarity as well as for protection from male aggression.

Vail and the other members of Bikini Kill encouraged girls to start their own bands.

The general idea that girls should create their own independent culture grew rapidly in popularity through a largely underground network of similar-feeling fans, artists, musicians and writers, and soon regular meetings started taking place, usually in punk houses like Positive Force.

By the summer of 1991, the riot grrrl movement had coalesced, with Bikini Kill moving to Washington, D.C., for a year.

In 1992, while still involved with Bikini Kill, Tobi started The Frumpies in Washington, D.C., with Bikini Kill bandmates Wilcox and Karren, and also with Molly Neuman of Bratmobile and the PeeChees, and later Michelle Mae.

The Frumpies were distinctly less overtly political in nature than either Bikini Kill or Bratmobile, with a different sound.

The band toured the U.S. with Huggy Bear in 1993 and they toured Italy with noise rock band Dada Swing in 2000.

In 1993, Vail started Bumpidee, a low-cost method for unsigned bands to increase their listener base, using the distribution of cassette recordings of their songs.

This was another embodiment of Vail's strong DIY principle.

In February 2016, Vail issued a YouTube takedown request after a pro-Hillary Clinton video utilizing the Bikini Kill song "Rebel Girl" began to go viral.