I play guitar, bass, do vocals (I won't say "sing" as that's not necessarily the vibe), program drums/beats, arrangements, synths, and engineer/do music production. I've written lyrics in the past, but in my last band that was the domain of our singer. In that particular context, I was the lead guitarist, had my hand in some songwriting, shared production duties with the drummer, and helped generate concepts as well as art and all online media.

I'm not in a band at the moment. The last one I was in was back in Portland, Oregon... well... going on four years now. On top of almost meeting no women since moving back here to Phoenix, Arizona, I've not run into any prospective band mates either.

When I was active, I only got one number from a girl after a gig (who I texted her a few times, and she never replied). That said, we didn't play out much at all. We were a five-piece with a lot of expensive gear, so it was a hassle (and a risk) playing out at venues, so we did it sparingly.

In this day-and-age, playing out is generally a waste of time. It's a DIY and Internet driven world, so your time is better spent crafting your songs, getting them recorded and produced in the studio & writing spaces, and feeding them through your crafted social media presence online. That's generally the best way to get your art to the ears that will appreciate it. Grinding local gigs just isn't the way to do it... and it's not like labels scout clubs anymore. You play out because you like to perform. We were artists, not performers I guess you could say.



Not really. It's VERY heavily male biased, particularly in the States. The media on this side of the pond hasn't been very kind to what, statistically speaking, is a rather popular genre. I won't pretend to understand the social science of it, but scenes which aren't given much credence in the mainstream are very unappealing to women en masse over here. Places like Scandinavia, Northern Europe, heck... even Mexico, have better M:F ratios at metal and hardcore gigs. The U.S. cranks out a lot of heavy music acts, most of which sell all over the world, but in general we are treated like garbage and looked down upon for our craft in our own boarders.

As for women simply interested in musicians for the sake of being musicians (or creative, et. al.), I don't get any of that... ever. Outside of what I play, I'm interested in a lots of different forms of music from blues to alt hip hop to ambient electronica, but I've never had a girl inquire about my being a musician on my profile. I don't beat anyone over the head with it, but I'm not coy about it either, and have had a picture of me playing live on there a good part of the time:



I get the general impression women don't care much about music and musicians anymore.

You're part of the heavy metal community by participating in it on any level. At the most basic level, it involves buying albums, going to shows, buying shirts, representing the artists, being part of discussions. As much as it's a collection of artists, commerce drives everything in our world, and the heavy music community is no different. A lot of it is online these days: Forums, blogs, purchases. Metal doesn't work well as a local phenomenon. It's not like the local jazz society. Metal is constantly evolving and refreshing it's ranks, so it's actually driven by the young (and followed by all ages), and is fueled like anything new these days: Kickstarters, Patreon, social media promotions, YouTube vids, e-commerce, and so on.