Housewife rallies a new generation of young musicians at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival
Brighid Fry and Pascale Padilla have been vocal about environmentalism, feminism, and LGBTQ2SIA+ rights
Brighid Fry and Pascale Padilla,
Vancouver Folk Music Festival presents Housewife on July 15 at 5:15 pm on the East Stage
AT 19 AND 21, Brighid Fry and Pascale Padilla, of Toronto’s Housewife, have already released two full-length EPs—all since their debut five years ago.
Housewife’s music features rich lyricism and lush indie melodies awash with teenage longing, such as the shoegaze-esque “Halfway” off their 2020 EP Better Daughter. Their music documents the experience of being young, both personally and within a cultural context through youth activism and community building.
Both Fry and Padilla identify as youth activists, rallying around movements such as environmentalism, feminism, and LGBTQ2SIA+ rights through their musical careers. The band has collaborated with Music Declares Emergency, a musician-led environmentalist group, to push government policy on climate action.
The pair is also vocal about their struggles in a male-dominated music industry. Being young, femme-presenting people has introduced challenges for the band. Fry and Padilla say it’s been hard to occupy space in a male-dominated industry and be taken seriously as musicians.
“I remember how many male bands there were in high school, and they’d all hang out and play shows together, and we were never included,” Fry says in a phone interview with Stir. “Fostering community spaces is really important. As people who were assigned female at birth, these experiences are baked into our perspectives of the world.”
“Growing up, I felt that in many ways my identity was under attack,” Padilla adds. “I identify as nonbinary, and there’s a lot I had to process, growing up from a young kid into someone who is perceived as a woman.”
Fry and Padilla have been friends since they were children, but reconnected in high school over a shared love of the arts. Soon after they began playing music casually together, they won free studio time through a music auction. The songs they recorded were released as their debut EP, Moscow Apartment, in 2017.
That EP opened doors for the band. After the release of their first album, their single “Orange” was selected as winner of the It’s Your Shot competition, a Canadian music contest that selects musicians to develop and fund. Soon after the release of Better Daughter in 2020, the band signed to Hazel Street Records. Better Daughter received critical acclaim, including a CMW Indies nomination.
The band’s debut EP leans into the folk genre, with Fry and Padilla citing artists such as Joni Mitchell and Joanna Newsom as influences. However, Better Daughter marks a departure from folk, evolving into bubblegum-toned indie rock.
“We don’t put restraints on genre or what we write about,” Padilla says. “It’s fun to collaborate and write songs that we love, and our music is a reflection of who we were at the time, being young and in high school.”
As young musicians, Fry and Padilla have been learning to play music and develop their musical style as their career progresses.
“For a long time, I didn’t feel comfortable on guitar—I still kind of don’t,” Padilla says. “It’s hard to feel comfortable, as the guitar world is very male dominated. I’m getting over that hump and telling myself it’s okay to be learning to play guitar.”
“A big part of playing music is being okay with messing things up,” Fry says. “Something we learned when we attended Girls Rock Camp is that men are given the chance to mess up, given the chance to learn from each other.”
Girls Rock Camp is a community program for girls, transgender and nonbinary youth to connect over music and find empowerment as youth musicians. Fry and Padilla both attended the program in high school, early in their music careers.
“There’s a lot more pressure for non-men to prove themselves. Music shouldn’t be about proving yourself, and that’s something we’ve really held onto over the years. We’re here to have fun, we’re here to learn, and it’s okay to not know everything,” Fry adds.
These challenges have fuelled the band’s creativity and rallied a community of girls and queer people around Housewife’s music. When asked about their goals and dreams, Fry and Padilla are humble about their future prospects, noting that they want to further develop their musical practice and focus on building a community of femme and queer musicians, and musicians of colour.
As young musicians who don’t fit into the predefined notion of a typical band, it’s clear that Housewife has a hand in creating community for young people in the Canadian music scene.
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