Be Vulnerable, Don't Be A Bitch

You would think that industry veteran Ella Hooper — lead singer of Killing Heidi, radio presenter and TV personality — would be like a mentor to 23-year-old Gena Rose Bruce. But the pair, who perform together as the Calamine Sisters, are exactly that — sisterly love issues from the speakers as the two giggle and banter about their music, the tour and the lessons they're learning from one another.

"Gena's much more educated musically than I am," Hooper shares. "She knows the names of all the chords and," "Ella's like, the sound," interjects Bruce, "and sometimes it takes us like half an hour to get the sound and it's like 'ahh, that's what you were saying!'" says Hooper, and they burst into laughter. It's an absolute joy to hear these two having so much fun, and it's this friendship that has breathed new life into their music.

Rather than tour in a traditional 'support' and 'main' act fashion, the ladies are performing one another's songs together. "You can really get comfortable [performing solo] and then you're not giving your audience something that is edgy and fresh and full of emotion because you're a bit comfortable. So making ourselves into like a little band instead of main and support really did challenge us and made sure we were on the edge of our tippy toes," explains Hooper. So is this going to be a permanent act? "We don't know!" they scream. "Possibly!"

The pair met when Bruce was just a wee lass of 19 "four years ago, at a [competition] I was entering," explains Bruce. "And she won it!" shouts Hooper gleefully. "She won it and I was the host of the program and I though 'she's amazing, an incredible song writer'. She was so young at the time… A total baby and a total babe." "Yeah, and I was just scared to speak to Ella at the start!" admits Bruce. "I'm so scary," Hooper teases.

They're all about fostering talented women in the industry — "Women who work hard, they're not necessarily the ones getting the support already from triple j or whoever" — but avoid cliquey-ness: "They don't have to fight to get to the top. Just rise to the top, so don't stress. Don't be a bitch," says Hooper. They impart a lot of wisdom concerning feminine power, summed up as: "We can all work on just being a bit more fierce in real life... but we need to be okay to be vulnerable. Own it, it's actually really powerful to cry, it's powerful to communicate."

Their name sounds like something from the '50s Golden Era, but the origins are a little less romanticised. "It was just over lunch once with our manager. I think Ella said we were 'itching to go' and our manager was like 'ah, you guys are like the Calamine Sisters!'" explains Bruce. Hooper elaborates when asked who the act is that their manager was referring to, "That's exactly what I thought, it totally sounded like a thing!" Bruce explains that, "No, it's like the Calamine lotion that you put on when you've got a welt or you're itchy and hot and covered in hives. We were like 'we are, we are itching!' We're the Calamine Sisters!"