Although their sound, reminiscent of bands like Veruca Salt and The Breeders, is firmly rooted in the 90s, Atlanta-based band The Txlips delivers tracks that feel modern and youthful, that address the various angsts of American millennials.

Wanting to learn more about the band’s sound and the young, gifted and black women behind it, Blavity sat down with the leader of the group, Gabriella Logan.

The group began with a job for Crime Mob rapper Diamond, when Diamond’s manager asked “if [Logan] could play guitar in one of her videos.”

The gig went very well. “Shortly after that, I kind of approached [Diamond’s] management and the label about me putting together an all-black-girl band for Diamond,” Logan said. “They said, ‘Yes,’ and I started managing Diamond’s band which was called Girl Code, and maybe two months after we were doing that, I started the Txlips band.”

Where did Logan learn the guitar skills that afforded her these opportunities?

She taught them to herself.

“I’ve always loved music,” Logan said, “I’ve always been one to be in the corner writing lyrics from the time I was very, very young … and I wanted to be able to express what I was hearing in my head.”

Logan found expressing the sounds populating her head to be tricky. She’d try to explain what she was hearing to her father, but something would inevitably get lost in translation. 

Frustrated, “I said, 'Well, if I could teach myself to play an instrument, maybe I could express it, maybe I can share with you what I’m hearing since you can’t hear inside of my mind.'”

Logan’s mother bought her a guitar, “and I taught myself how to play. And then from that point forward, I was able to find out how to express myself, with the music that I was hearing in my head, I was able to play it on guitar, and then once I was able to do that, it was easier for me to share this vision for a song that I had with my dad.”

After sharing her music with her father, Logan began sharing her vision with others, playing in a band while at Spelman, and eventually — you guessed it — playing for Diamond.

As you probably know from band movies, getting the band together is never easy.

“The only original members are me and my drummer,” Logan said.

The Txlips’ drummer, Monique Williams, arrived in Atlanta by way of Chicago, and honed her skills playing jazz. She also featured in that fateful Diamond video.

The other two members of the band are fairly recent additions.

The third member, JWhales, plays many instruments and is a production ace. With The Txlips, she plays the keyboard. “My keys player, J, she jumped in about the end of last year.”

“My bassist,” Logan said of Sarina, who cut her teeth at Atlanta’s Girls Rock Camp in her teens, “I actually had her jump in maybe two or three months ago.” And with Sarina, The Txlips were officially in business.

The band currently has two original songs available online, “Die Today” and “Lost Ones,” both of which were written by Logan. 

“I write everything for the band,” Logan said, “And I kind of created the band’s sound around what my general style is, and once I presented the music to the band and the sound that I have, we all kind of came together to add our own different flairs on it.”

When it came to distilling all of those different flairs into a unified sound, Logan said, “It was very important to me that everyone was able to express themselves through the music. So we kind of developed our own sound by just working together and just being around each other, and our energies kind of all came together musically, and that’s kind of how we got our current sound, kind of meshed and formed together.”

Together, the four created a sound that Logan describes as “Nirvana-esque” and having a “rock edge.”

Although the process of creating the songs was collaborative, lyrically, both are incredibly personal.

The hard-hitting “Lost Ones” was written not long after Logan arrived at Spelman.

“I was going through — you know, you’re a freshman in college — everyone has that little rough patch when they first get into college, kind of you’re out on your own, and gotta be an adult now, thing … I was actually dating someone, and shortly after we started dating, the relationship ended. And that was my first, I guess you could say, real heartbreak. I wrote that song based off of that relationship because, shortly after we broke up, I realized I was looking for something to fill the void and the only thing that I found that could do that was music.”

The grungy “Die Today” had a similar genesis.

“Die Today actually I wrote that about a band situation I was in,” Logan said, “I think this was my sophomore year of college … I guess a lot of the heartaches that I was going through with being so passionate about music and having this band to work, it just started to kind of weigh down on me. It kind of felt like my band was breaking apart, and I didn’t want it to because music means a lot to me, and expressing myself to the world means a lot … and so I wrote that song based off that experience.” 

Fortunately, Logan’s current band situation is far less painful. In fact, The Txlips are in something of a triumphant phase at the moment — the group is putting the finishing touches on an EP that will include several original songs, plus “covers with our twist.”

And, this summer, The Txlips will be performing at AFROPUNK Brooklyn.

Now that the band has this platform, Logan wants to use it for good. 

As part of that effort, the group is working on a partnership with Black Girls Rock!, a nonprofit that endeavors to empower black girls through the arts. 

“I reached out to Black Girls Rock! … because I think that we have the same vision.  And their mission and what my mission is specifically align with each other in … having representation of black women in music. And a little bit of a spin that I would like to bring to it is specifically women playing instruments.”

Showing young black girls that there are black women playing instruments is important to Logan in part because “I only imagine what I would have been like today if I had seen a black women playing a guitar when I was 10-years-old.”

Too, she said that “even as an adult, when I see black women playing instruments, it inspires me, and it gives me more energy and fuel to not give up.”

When she was young, Logan didn’t have a black woman like herself to look up to. But one woman who did inspire her was Tatiana DeMaria.

“There was a British punk band called TAT, and the lead singer, she is a Latina woman, her name is Tatiana DeMaria, and she was one of the first women of color that I saw playing an instrument. And listening to her band’s music, it really, really, really got me motivated too, and I think that’s what got me in my, that little bit of a punk edge, that’s what influenced me.”

Logan hopes that she can be the Tatiana DeMaria for the next generation of black women musicians.  

“What drives me is the bigger picture, and how necessary and needed it is for us to have an image of black women playing instruments in the industry.”

In order to embody that image, Logan plans on continuing to make music no matter what. She believes that being in The Txlips “magnifies the vision that I have in my head,” which allows her to not only serve as inspiration, but to “create a common vision that brings people together.”

And in service to that common vision, in service to being a living inspiration, Logan said, in true punk fashion, “I fully intend on having my band be a thing until the day that I die.”