Girl In A Coma is an all-girl trio from San Antonio whose sound combines Smiths drama with punk energy while maintaining their Tex-Mex roots. The band has been touring non stop since the release of their first CD on Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records, and they have picked up some iconic fans along the way. They will be performing at Sunset Junction on Sunday and they recently spoke with L.A. RECORD’s Scott Schultz outside a club in Cambridge, MA after a frantic car ride through rain and Boston rush hour traffic to make the show on time. They discuss which member’s face Dave Navarro tattooed on his arm, performing a Selena song in front of her family at this Summer’s Tejano Awards, their upcoming CD of covers and more.

You guys are playing Sunset Junction this year, which is awesome. I’ve noticed that every time you three come through LA you tend to play Hollywood and east of Silverlake, but you always seem to bypass Silver Lake.
Phanie Diaz (Drums): There’s no particular reason. It just happens that we get booked at the Troubadour, East LA or whatever. If it works out, we’ll finally get to play. Our manager lives in Echo Park and Silver Lake area, and we know there’s a lot going on there.
Jenn Alva (bass): And now we’re hip, so we can play there.
You guys were always hip.
Phanie: We’re not nerdy anymore.
I actually remember hearing Dave Navarro on his old Indie 103 radio show, gushing about you guys. And then one of you called in…
Jenn: I called him!
Afterwards he said, “Man, it was like talking to the Pope!” Did you ever meet up with him after that?
Jenn: Yeah we did! He’s been a big supporter of us. He’s a big fan. He totally fell in love with Nina.
Nina Diaz (Guitar – Vocals): Toootally!
Jenn: He even got a tattoo of her face.
Really? Wow!
Phanie: We kind of dared him: “If you really like us so much…
Nina: No that’s not how it went.
Jenn: She’s not a part of it (referring to Phanie).
Phanie: I was there when we dared him!
Nina: He said about the cover of Trio B.C., “Wow this would be a great tattoo!” I was like, “Yeah? I dare you to get one.” He ended up cutting the girls out and just getting my face.
Jenn: It’s right here on his forearm; he has Nina’s face.
Nina, I think you have rad tattoos by the way.
Nina: Thank you!
Who does your ink, and do they have any interesting back stories?
Nina: His name’s Jedi. He’s a San Antonio artist. He works at Element Tattoos. I’m kind of taking a break on them now, but I got the first big one when I was 18. All of them kind of mean something, except for the train. I got a Train. It doesn’t mean anything.
That’s cool. I remember the first time I saw you guys, it would have been late 2007 maybe, it seems like you’ve been on the road nonstop ever since. Do you take any breaks?
Jenn: That was good for us though in 2007. We had just gotten signed in the end of 2006. It was good to tour that much, because we were ready for it. We were excited that we were on a record label (Blackheart), and we were touring like crazy. Right now it’s a little more equaled out, but we loved it… Wait, what was the question, I’m sorry.
With all the touring you do, does the band take any breaks?
Nina: Even when we’re at home, we’re working on new material. We’re constantly doing some kind of new project to better things, our situations.
You toured for your first CD, Both Before I’m Gone was out for two years, and then you had a new CD (Trio B.C.) and a bunch of cover songs on vinyl popped out within a year. Was that because you had so much energy left over from putting out new songs?
Nina: The cover albums were just to promote the Trio B.C some more.
Jenna: Right. Trio B.C is kind of random. There’s a lot of different stylings of songs going on and so are the cover albums. We picked random artists that we were influenced by.
Phanie: We wanted to show people, “This is why we sound the way that we do.” It’s very random.
No Smiths cover.
Phanie: We didn’t want to do the obvious. We didn’t do Joan. We didn’t do Elton John (Laughs.)
I heard you guys performed at this year’s Tejano Awards.
Phanie: We did!
Nina: We did the Selena song Si Una Vez there.
Jenna: We got to do the red carpet! That was awesome! They were like, “What are you doing here?”
Nina: Yeah like, “Why are you here?”… “I don’t know!”
Is that a big deal for you coming from San Antonio, the Tejano capital?
Phanie: We’re just influenced by Tejano music, and if we wanted to or not, its just everywhere in San Antonio. And to play a Selena cover, it was just..
Nina: Selena’s family was actually there, so it was an honor to play for them and not hate it.
Phanie: We played right in front of them.
Did they approach you afterwards?
Nina: Yeah we talked! They were happy with it, so it was good!
Jenn: Yeah it was really good. Because you know, we rocked it out, so we were like “Errr!”
Nina: We kept remembering the line in the Selena movie when Selena’s father says “We’re not a disgusting Punk rock group!” And we are a disgusting punk rock group.
Were you able to see her family’s faces while you were performing the song?
Nina: I was just looking away. Anywhere but there.
Phanie: Ab (Quintanilla III), the bass player, he was jamming out, so that was good.
I saw a video performance on Youtube of you playing that cover in San Antonio, and I know you said the song title before you played it. But if you hadn’t, do you think the audience would have still recognized the song?
Nina: Oh definitely! As soon as you hear the “dun-nun-nun dun-nun duuun,” you’ll be like “What? Is that a Selena?” As soon as we go “Ah chaah chaah” This is why our songs are so random. Because we’re random.
Phanie: Especially in Texas.
How old were you when Selena died?
Nina: I was like seven.
Phanie: Jenn and I were fifteen.
Can you remember the moment you heard she had died?
Phanie: I was in class I think. The next day we found out that she had actually died. It happened in the evening, the shooting had gone on.
Jenn: It was a Friday night. I was supposed to spend the night at your (Phanie’s) house, but my mom said no, “Spend some time with your Grandma,” so I slept at my Grandma’s. And we were talking on the phone (her and Phanie) together and we were like, “Oh my God! Are you watching the news? Selena’s been shot!” So we were talking on the phone about it. We were really upset about it.
Nina: I just got out of class, and my dad was like “Selena’s dead,” while eating an ice cream.
Does the sisterly dynamic ever overlap into the band dynamic at all?
Phanie: Yeah it can. There were times when we started as a band, it was more like we were taking care of her (Nina.)
Nina: We’re like business partners now. There’s no relationship.
Phanie: I think it’s a good thing because even if we get into the nastiest fights, we’re going to laugh about it the next day.
Do you have a control word that puts the fear of God in her as an older sister?
Phanie: No it’s the other way around now. We’re like “Oh Nina, don’t make her mad!”
On a day like today when you’re racing the clock to reach the next show, who’s the one that says, “Fuck it. Give me the wheel?”
Phanie: It’s me.
Nina: Yeah it’s her. And Jenn’s the one that says, “I’m going to eat an ice cream.”
Phanie: Yeah Jenn’s taking her time.
Jenn: Yeah, I really was going to get an ice cream.
Phanie: While we were trying to hurry.
*Scott refers them to a “great gelato place around the corner.”

Phanie: Enchiladas?
No gelato, not enchiladas.
Phanie: Oh I was like, enchiladas over here!”
There’s no good enchiladas in Boston. Trader Joe’s maybe?
Jenn: Yeah we don’t touch much Mexican food when we get up North.
Nina: We get angry.
Jenn: We got some good stuff back home. We don’t want to be food critics like, “Oh this isn’t real Mexican food, or this isn’t real Tex-mex!”
Being on Joan Jett’s label for several years now, and for Nina several years on Blackheart as a teenager, what is a typical conversation with Joan Jett like and what’s the best piece of advice she ever gave you?
Nina: The last couple of times I’ve been talking to her, I’ve been talking to her about zen and yoga and stuff like that. She just tells us to enjoy it, enjoy the times, enjoy the moment, because she never really did.
Jenn: She lived very fast, so enjoy it.
Nina: But um, just really calm things.
What movie do you like better? Selena or The Runaways?
Jenn and Nina: Selena!
Jenn: Yeah Selena’s always been a favorite anyway, and La Bamba and The Buddy Holly Story.
Phanie: Those were like the classics.
Jenn: Sweet Dreams is really good.
Nina: Oh that one makes me cry.
They’re all Texas. Next week, you’re performing at The Polish Woodstock? That’s such a weird lineup!
Jenn: Yeah it’s Tonic, Papa Roach, us?
It was like 8 different genres and eras all thrown together.
Phanie: They seem to be very receptive of everything, of all styles out there. From what I’ve seen online, it looks like a lot of fun.
Have you ever been to Eastern Europe?
Phanie: The furthest we’ve gone was probably London and Paris.
Jenn: Well Scotland, but I don’t know. We need to learn our geography a little better.
Have you toured Mexico?
Phanie: No we want to. That would be our goal.
Jenn: Actually our booking agency, they were at our show in NYC last night, and we were just talking about that. He was like, “Oh I’m working on that. I got some connections.” That’s going to be the next step. It’s going to be great! It’s going to be fun. We did France, and we really didn’t know very much of the language at all. When you’re trying to communicate, you realize that you know a lot more Spanish than you think.
Phanie: We were trying to talk Spanish to the French people, and we were like, “Why are we doing this?” So we’ll talk French to the Mexican people.
Were they digging the sound in France?
Phanie: They were! Actually our better shows were in France, more so than London.
Will the band be performing any more Spanish songs, because your vocals sound great in Spanish!
Nina: I’d love to someday make a Spanish album.
Phanie: That would be interesting to do a full on Spanish album and get it out in Mexico and stuff.
Like The Bronx.
Phanie: Sure, like the Bronx, and LA and other places.
No I mean the Los Angeles band, The Bronx.
Phanie: I’m like not on it today!
Jenna: She’s still in drive mode.
Nina: Enchiladas in the Bronx? Oh my god…
I’ll fix it afterwards.
Nina: No feel free to keep it. We don’t want to lie to people.
Is Morrisey as popular in Texas with the Mexican Americans like he is in L.A.?
All: Yeah!
What’s the deal with that? Is it just his overly romantic/dramatic singing style?
Nina: That’s exactly how Mexicans are, overly dramatic and romantic.
Jenn: He’s got that swagger that just appeals to the Latin community.
Phanie: And we tend to make things icons too. There’s a velvet Elvis next to a Jesus cross, and they just make him (Morrissey) iconic as well.
Jenn: And Texas is good man, because our Latin community adores Morrissey even though Morrissey is not a big fan of Texas.
Oh really? I didn’t even know that.
Phanie: He doesn’t like the laws. It’s a strict state.
Jenn: It’s alright.
What would you say the differences are when you play in Hollywood and when you play Long Beach or East L.A., and how would that compare and contrast to the Texas scene?
Jenn: L.A. and San Antonio are very similar. There’s a lot of energy, and our fans—our sweethearts are very devoted. Even Long Beach, California in general is really, really good to us. We get all kinds of diverse fans. We get gay people, you know because she and I are lesbians.
Phanie: We get the Latino community coming out and supporting us.
Jenn: We get girls, just people who adore girl music.
Phanie: It’s a good mix. I see the audience, and there’s a gay audience and a Latino audience, the people who support female rock. It’s kind of cool to see that mix in the crowd.
Jenn: Yeah, definitely.
I notice in L.A., when I go to your shows, I see the same people in the audience. It’s obvious that they really have a bond with you, the way they stare up at you. It’s a stronger band/audience connection than most of the shows that I go to. I was watching today to see if it would be the same thing here or if it was just an L.A. thing.
Jenn: Oh heck, no!
Scott: No, I could spot who came to see your band!
Phanie: You can definitely tell the kind of people who are here for us.
Scott: Do you get these huge letters/e-mails from your fans?
Phanie: We get a lot of e-mails. It’s all very supportive. It’s all a pride thing, like “we’re proud of you, you don’t know what you’re doing for us” type thing. It’s kind of cool. We’re just doing what we love and we’re not realizing that it’s something bigger.
What’s your take on Prop 38? You’re all Mexican-American, and live in Texas, which is a border state… do you have opinions on it? If so do you want to express it?
Nina: It’s wrong!
Phanie: Yeah it’s horrible.
Nina: Just plain old wrong.
Nina: A lot of us wouldn’t be here, because our families came over here, it’s just silly.
Jenn: It’s just a start in the wrong direction. It’s going backwards. We’re not going to play Arizona even though we have amazing fans there. One girl was from Arizona tonight, and we were like, “Yeah! You came over here! Okay good!”
Let them know when you play the border cities!
Jenn: Yeah, it’s just retarded. I was telling Phanie, “It would be so much better if we could just unite as a continent.” You know like, Canada, Mexico. Start some great jobs and we wouldn’t have to buy from overseas. I don’t know. I think we should help Mexico instead of being like, “No don’t come over here!”
Nina: Nooo!
Jenn: Nooo!
Plus America’s made of immigrants.
Phanie: Exactly! We’re all Americans.
Nina: It’s how we started.
Is there anything else you guys want to share with the L.A. Record readers?
Nina: I thought you were going to say, “Is there anything you want to get off your chest!
Yeah… anything you want to get off your chest?
Nina: Yeah I killed a man once! I just kept driving, you know? So scared.
Are you going to do the Selena cover when you’re in Silver Lake?
Phanie: Oh yeah, we have to.
It’s a community fair.
Phanie: Oh definitely. We’ll be playing it a lot in the West Coast.
Are you going to be touring straight through next year again?
Jenn: Yeah we need to catch up. We kind of had a late start. We’ll usually start touring towards the end of May, but we were working on some new projects. I think it’s kind of good because we waited for so long. Now we’re like, “Oh tour!” This was a two-week tour, so it was a little taste.
Nina: We’re going back home tonight. It doesn’t feel right. We’re supposed to do more dates. In the beginning we did short tours, now it’s like, “What? It’s only two weeks! I’m not even tired yet!”
Phanie: We haven’t even fought yet!
Nina: I know! We’ve been so nice to each other! Usually a week before we get home, we get into a fight. There wasn’t even enough time for that! I feel a little bit short-changed. So maybe we should just start a fight.
Phanie: So we’re sad that we haven’t even fought yet.
Jenn: Maybe we will.
Phanie: Maybe we’ll fight tonight.
Nina: Maybe we will.
Do you three know pretty much every mile of this country now? Like, “Oh, this is that weird Mesa that someone spray painted a UFO!”
Jenn: We do remember a lot. We’ll be like, “Oh we’ve been to this gas station.”
Nina: Usually it will be for hotels and gas stations.
Jenn: If we were smart, we would have left earlier today. We just weren’t thinking!
Nina: I don’t know why.
Jenn: Want to go? Alright let’s go.
Nina: Do you want to play a show tonight?
Phanie: And then we were like, “Man we’re late!”
Jenn: I think it was the worst traffic we’ve ever been in. It was just bad.
Boston’s just bad traffic-wise. There are a limited number of roads leading into the city.
Phanie: We knew better, but I don’t know.
Nina: Our brains just wanted to go on a vacation and not work.
Phanie: Manager got mad at us.
Nina: (Sing-song voice) We got in trouble!
What do they do when they’re mad?
Phanie: It’s just your mom yelling at you.
Nina: “You know better than that! Not mad. Just disappointed.” That’s worse!
“Don’t make us have Joan call you.”
Nina: Don’t make me get your father! He has the belt.
Do you feel like women bands are being properly represented in the current rock and roll scene?
Jenn: We would like to see more girl bands. That would be awesome because we’re trying to say it’s a good time to start just out of nowhere. Just because the music industry is completely weird.
Nina: Spice it up! Girl power!
Jenn: That would be awesome if all of a sudden there would be a shit load of girl bands!
How difficult was it for the band writing material for Trio B.C. when all of the rock and roll icons gushing about you and the first CD, and it’s like, “Okay, here’s the new one.”
Phanie: We don’t let it get to us at all.
Nina: If it did, we would end up writing things that’s not us. It’s like, “Cool they like us. We’re going to keep doing what we do then.” We don’t want to impress anybody. We’re just playing music.
You three sounded really tight tonight. Every time I see you live, you sound tighter and better.
Nina: I just pictured a buttocks getting tighter and stronger and smackable.
Phanie: Working out? Just working out.
Nina: Just working. I’ve just been working out you know? Just working out.
Do you prefer performing the opening slots at the bigger venues more? Or do you like playing these smaller clubs where you can make direct eye contact with everybody?
Jenn: There are pros and cons absolutely.
Or Polish Woodstock?
Jenn: That’s all we want from now on. After we do that, we’re going to be like, “We want half a million people.” It’s definitely good. It’s always a challenge when you’re an opener because you’re like, “if we can just get 10 percent of the crowd to like us, to know of us, then it’s fine. I’m totally fine with that.”
Phanie: It’s interesting to see the different crowds other bands bring in. Kinda see what you can do.
Jenn: The last time we were here at this venue, we opened up for The Wedding Present, and that was just a completely different audience. It was a lot older, but it was awesome because they really liked us and they were like, “It was a great show!”
Phanie: Compared to Steel Train, it’s a lot of younger kids who don’t know about bands that we like.
I don’t know about Steel Train. I thought you were headlining.
Phanie: It’s really interesting to come here. We grew up with the Buzzcocks and if we named these bands they’d have no idea who we are talking about. So they don’t understand what we’re trying to do. So it’s been a challenge.
Jenn: Yeah it’s kind of in their faces where they want to kind of like you, but “nobody has told me to like them.” They weird me out.
Phanie: We’ve even read tweets of conversations of them saying, “Girl in a Coma is very strange. “ It’s kind of interesting. Maybe we were scaring them a little bit.
Jenna: Definitely last night we were scaring them a few kids.
Really? You aren’t a scary band though.
Nina: BOO! – Didn’t see that coming did ya?
AAAH! No I didn’t! Maybe if you’re like racing to get to the show and I’m the guy in front of you, and you guys would be like, “Get the fuck out of the way!”
Phanie: We would be very angry.
I think you guys are going to be the band people will get freaked out by in Sunset Junction. Not freaked out in a bad way, but like, “Holy crap this band’s really good!” Anyway thank you for giving us the time for this interview.