How much more “March in Milwaukee” can one day get? I asked myself this question after spending a Thursday morning at Colectivo Coffee, catching a fantastic Opening Day for the Crew at American Family Field, walking home in the very-March sideways wind and rain, and concluding the day at Cactus Club with local acts Nineteen Thirteen (performing as a duo) and The Fainting Room. The answer I gave myself was none more than today, and for that I was very thankful.
It’s time to pick your Milwaukee favorites for the year!
Interview with Nineteen Thirteen’s Janet Schiff and Renee Luna Bebeau
The newly remade Nineteen Thirteen is cellist Janet Schiff, percussionist Renee Luna Bebeau and vocalist Jen Janviere. Schiff plays a cello that was made in Romania in 1913, providing the group its name, not to mention its sound, which sounds like the past sent through a wormhole to our future unknown. We spoke by phone before their March 26 concert, and our conversation included misinterpreted childhood drawings, the value of air-drumming and healing soup.
Tell us about your new single.
Janet Schiff: Our single is called “Jaguar.” It’s about power, liberation, standing up for oneself. Being protective of what we worked so hard for. It kind of symbolizes this transition for Nineteen Thirteen, this female-owned business. It’s about female empowerment.
What’s inspiring you these days?
Janet: The response we’re getting from this new song is inspirational and uplifting. We’ve got a few more songs we’re finishing up. We should have a four or five song EP done by May. We record at Renee’s art studio, over at the Nut House – I mean the Nut Factory. [Laughs.] Renee and I also have a cello and live painting duo called Luna and Cello. She paints live while I play cello.
Renee Luna Bebeau: We like to create an environment. We’re not just playing songs. I am honored to be the heartbeat of the band. We make soundscapes, we make environments. And we’re all therapists, professionally.
Janet: Yeah, I’m a licensed professional counselor. I wanted to help people on a different level, so I do music therapy and art-assisted psychotherapy. It’s all part of the same thing.
There were times when I went in to see a therapist, and I would’ve preferred had she just played the cello.
Renee: Seriously, right? And Jen [Nineteen Thirteen vocalist] is going to school to become a psychotherapist.
The three of you need to invent some healing version of the Mystery Machine and drive around the city!
Renee: Yes! That’s it!
What’s good in the current MKE music scene?
Renee: We are lucky here in the Milwaukee scene. Everyone looks out for each other. Many more women in the music scene in general.
Janet: It’s the young people. I’m seeing a lot of great talent.
Janet, what music did you love as a child?
Janet: I used to take naps under my mom’s piano. I always chose the low end of the piano; my twin chose the higher end, the treble side of the piano. And we’d take our naps while our mom practiced. The music is in my bones.
Do you think sleeping on the low end of the piano had any influence on you sonically?
Janet: Yeah, thanks for picking up on that – that low-resonance sound from a piano, which is a stringed instrument but it’s classified as a percussion instrument – my mom played it more like a stringed instrument. She was a beautiful pianist.
Renee, what music did you love as a child?
Renee: ’70s and ’80s. It was disco, but also The Doors and Led Zeppelin. Pat Benatar, the Ramones and Heart for sure. My brother was always in a band, but my parents said no, you can’t have drums. I would air drum; I knew the beat to everything.
When did you first start hitting actual drums?
Renee: Years ago, my friend Matt Pittman offered to give me some lessons. I’m a lefty drummer. We’d face each other and he’d say, “Follow me!” We would play beats together.
Janet: When I was 7, I gave my parents a drawing of the instrument I wanted. They thought I drew a guitar. They came home with a guitar. I was like, where’s the rest of it? I used a metal coat hanger as a bow and taped a ruler to the bottom of my guitar. Eventually, I got my mom to rent me a cello from Beihoff Music. I’m happy to say once I got my hands on a cello, I never let it go. My twin sister is no longer on earth, but I’ve always thought that she can hear me play cello. I’ve always dedicated all of my life’s work to her.
Renee: Through our music we’re connecting with our ancestors, inspired by them.
Janet: She [Renee] is a really good cook. She makes wonderful soup.
I’m already envisioning this Nineteen Thirteen Mystery Machine driving around Milwaukee this summer: painting, cello, drum, therapy, Reiki…and soup!
Renee: Healing soup. It’s all the healing arts, it’s what we do.
Nineteen Thirteen Live Show
Sonorous and slowly prowling with melodious intent, Nineteen Thirteen welcomes us to wander hypnotically, together, through this next unknown. Cellist Schiff feeds looping daggers of cello through a live recording controlled by her foot pedal, allowing her to sow simultaneous harmonies of strings. Sorcery.
Like Nirvana’s “Something in the Way,” “The Reason Why” demands we turn the corner, never mind the lengthening shadows, and convince ourselves that whatever we heard was not at all just the wind. Bebeau’s percussion encourages us to follow our gut with patterns both mesmerizing and navigational: Keep moving if you’d like to outpace the growing darkness.
And ready or not, here comes “The Jaguar,” dressed in black, jagged and smooth, gorgeous and terrifying. When hearing the duo perform it wordlessly, less than a minute into their fresh single, the song stings and soars like a hornet with butterfly wings, pairing the lovely and dangerous – something Nineteen Thirteen does so effectively. It’s something I’d listen to for a long time, maybe forever. Check out the single’s studio version, which includes Jen Janviere’s sublime vocals.
Ending the too-soon-to-be-over set is “Cello and Drums Forever”, which arrives like the healer here to help in ways you’ve never once considered, encouraging atmospheric explorations, unexpected pairings, cold spring evening wanderings. Nineteen Thirteen has had and will continue to have many iterations but one constant remains: They remind us not to forget that the past is with us every day, and to honor it we must agree to improve the future.
Nineteen Thirteen Set List from Thursday, March 26 at Cactus Club
- “Trick Zipper”
- “The Reason Why”
- “Sonata”
- “Mr. Panicker”
- “The Jaguar”
- “Cello and Drums Forever”
Interview With The Fainting Room’s Lisa Ridgely
I had a wonderful wide-ranging conversation with The Fainting Room’s Lisa Ridgely prior to Thursday’s show at the Cactus Club. Lisa Ridgely started the band with guitarist Ryan Elliott and bassist and vocalist Sara Moilanen. The band delivers lovely harmonies with an Americana/folky sound bolstered by lyrically tart and sweet songs of Wisconsin and beyond.
Tell us about The Fainting Room.
Lisa: I’ve been a solo artist for a long time. Normally, in The Fainting Room full band, there are four of us. At Cactus Club, it will be just myself and Ryan (Elliott), who is the guitarist and also my partner. Ricky Ganiere is the drummer and our bass player is Sara Moilanen. Everyone is mega-talented, and I’m really fortunate to be surrounded by them.
What is inspiring you these days?
Lisa: I’ve been so focused on family and life stuff. I lost my brother and sister last February. That put a real halt on life as I knew it. It’s been a very abnormal year for me.
Oh my. I’m sorry to hear about your brother and sister.
Lisa: My brother is the one who most influenced me in life with music. He was a musician also – a really great guitarist in some bands here locally in the ’90s. He left an imprint on everything I do. My sister was also an incredibly talented singer and actress. I can keep their memories alive and make them proud through my music.
What else has been inspiring the way you create?
Lisa: I’m loving Waxahatchee, Jason Isbell, Kathleen Edwards, Boygenius. Sound baths, music meditation and music healing. It’s been a tough year – that’s an understatement – but I think it’s also made me a lot softer and stronger. I can see a project coming that really focuses a lot on grief and loss, and recovery and healing.
Such a project could benefit a lot of people.
Lisa: I hope so … I just want to help people to learn how to prepare for death, in a way that’s going to make it easier on their loved ones.
What music made you feel good when you were a kid?
Lisa: Well, I grew up on 94 WKTI. ’80s pop was where it was at, for me. George Michael was my favorite. I loved Bananarama and Culture Club. Later, it was Nathaniel Rateliff and Mason Jennings. Travis is a meaningful band to me because I saw them with my sister.
What’s it like in the Milwaukee music scene for you in 2026?
Lisa: I’ve been in the Milwaukee music scene for over 15 years. I don’t know what to say other than perimenopausal women are probably my target audience. [Laughs.] Given what’s happening in the country, in politics, a lot of people are anticipating and interpreting what’s going on as an affront to women’s freedoms and our rights.
I think there’s an awareness now when it comes to menopause that previously wasn’t there.
Lisa: Yeah, previous generations, it was not talked about. I feel like every woman I know is going through perimenopause. The symptoms all across the board, women are putting it together. “Oh, that’s why I have insomnia. That’s why I’m feeling full of rage all the time.” I hope our generation of women can shine a spotlight on it from a research perspective.
Right? This is real.
Lisa: It feels like it’s never going OK for women to express emotions like rage. And that’s problematic because it’s in the full spectrum of natural emotions.
How are these tensions in our society impacting the way you create music?
Lisa: I think they’re definitely affecting the way I create. We’d walk around our old neighborhood and see a Confederate flag, so I wrote a song called “Flags.” There’s a lot of apprehension in the air these days.
What’s helping you these days to be constructive and creative?
Lisa: I’m trying new things and to connect with people in new ways. I went to a ceramics class at Tooth + Nail, a locally owned ceramic studio. You forget about the power of getting together with people and trying new things. I want to invest more in our community overall.
Anything else we should know about The Fainting Room and live music in Milwaukee?
Lisa: This is where I encourage people to go out and see live music: Check out a band you’ve never heard before, there is so much talent here in Milwaukee, it will make you feel good!
The Fainting Room’s Live Performance
Lead vocalist and songwriter Lisa Ridgely begins the show with a warning: She’s not sure if her stage banter is quite up to midseason form. She and her partner/guitarist Ryan Elliott exchange brisk barbs and loving quips that quickly dismiss the warning. The duo is ready to talk and ready to rock. “February Song” starts things off with a “Drink Wisconsinbly” tale of wine in bed, with Ridgely’s wonderfully expressive vocals evoking a Lisa Loeb/Edie Brickell tag team arm-wrestling match. Elliott provides lovely turbulence on electric guitar, sparking in all the right places.
In both “Lake Song” and “Medicate Me,” Ridgely’s voice reaches out into the darkness, catching hold of the corner of our stars, her vocals a confluence of uncertain smiles. “Medicate Me” seemed to reach the audience where we stood, eliciting collective nods for the line, “I’m way too much and I’m not enough”. Elliott’s guitar work rises to the occasion again, electrifying “Medicate Me” and framing it almost as an Americana answer to Of Montreal’s “” which features the lyrics “Come on chemicals…”.
The centerpiece of The Fainting Room’s set, in my opinion, was “Flags”. Written as the country shifted toward further instability, Ridgely sings “This feels different,” as she describes strolling her neighborhood of Confederate and other flags of hostility hung high. The lyrics don’t back down, however: “I don’t trust this town, but I’ll stand my ground,” Ridgely sings.
As the crowd’s cackle simmers down to an attentive hum, Ridgely lets us know that Elliott’s guitars all belonged to her recently departed brother: “He’s channeling him, channeling the good stuff.” Speaking of good stuff, The Fainting Room brings the show home with “Eleanor the Dutchman”, dedicated to Ridgely’s grandmother. As Elliott said about his guitar work, he plays a riff until it sinks in…which he clarified by spelling it out for us: “I play it until it s-y-n-c-h-s in.” By the end of the show we were all synched in, if only for a March moment.
The Fainting Room Set List from Thursday, March 26 at Cactus Club
- “Wine in Bed”
- “Dusk”
- “Platitudes”
- “Lake Song”
- “Medicate Me”
- “Flags”
- “Miscast”
- “Love Hurts”
- “Eleanor the Dutchman”
