Bulletproof Stockings — Hassidic rockers in lipstick and heels who play for all-female audiences — is coming to San Francisco on its first West Coast tour. The girl band straight from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, is performing Dec. 26 at the Great American Music Hall.
The band was founded by Perl Wolfe, the singer and keyboardist, and Dalia Shusterman, the drummer, shortly after the pair met in New York in 2011. Both had loved music since childhood, and both had struggled with how to reconcile music with their religious observance.
When they met, they found, amazingly, that they shared a dream of creating music for female audiences. Just two weeks after Wolfe first contacted Shusterman looking for a musician for an upcoming gig, the duo recorded their first single.
“It was common language the minute we met,” Shusterman said. “She also wanted to make this rock band for women.”
Now their four-person band (Elisheva Maister plays cello and Dana Pestun plays violin), named for the opaque tights worn by Hassidic women, is riding a surge of interest in its unique sound and vision.
Bulletproof Stockings originally built a fan base playing before all-female Hassidic audiences. But in the summer of 2014, the group collected enough signatures from women to convince mainstream music venue Arlene’s Grocery on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to book them — even with the caveat that the audience would be limited to women. Bulletproof Stockings sold out the show and got a wave of press attention, with write-ups in Gawker, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. A successful Kickstarter campaign in the spring raised more than $37,000 to produce the band’s first full-length album, “Homeland Call Stomp,” which they recently completed.
The four musicians, who range in age from 27 to 40, are spending the month of December on the road as part of their “Homeland Winter Tour,” where they’ll bring their music to Washington, D.C., Florida, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and other cities.
They are well on the way to achieving their mission, which they define as creating music for a global audience of women, regardless of their background or religion. (The diverse audience at Arlene’s Grocery included Orthodox women in wigs rocking out alongside women wearing tank tops, according to press coverage.)
“Our whole point from the beginning was to open this up to women of all stripes,” Shusterman said. “It was never meant to be a Jewish community thing.”
The desire to reach an audience of women comes from the band’s desire to promote female empowerment, Wolfe said. But it’s also a way for the band to operate in accordance with kol isha, the modesty rule that prohibits Orthodox men from listening to women sing. The band is quick to note that under religious law, it is the man’s responsibility to avoid hearing women sing, though women may try to avoid performing in front of men as a courtesy. Still, the band has male fans, and there’s ultimately nothing to prevent a man who wants to come from attending their upcoming San Francisco concert.
“We play, and our goal is to reach women,” said Shusterman, who noted that the band has consulted with rabbis about this topic. “Whatever happens beyond that is not in our control and doesn’t need to be.”
Added Wolfe, “It’s really about empowering women as opposed to the exclusion of men.”
When Shusterman and Wolfe met, each was at a difficult moment in their lives: Wolfe had recently divorced and Shusterman was newly widowed with four young sons. They became roommates and lived together for two years while growing the band.
“Everything had just happened and then we meet. I’m in New York with my little kids and trying to rebuild, and all of a sudden there’s a band we’re building also,” Shusterman said. “It was a gift to be able to use it in the healing process.”
The pair say they are able to reach women inside and outside the Jewish religious world because they each have experience in both communities. Wolfe grew up in a Chabad community in Chicago and Shusterman was raised Modern Orthodox, but they both moved away from religious life in their teens. Shusterman hitchhiked around the country playing drums and later toured around the world playing with the band Hopewell for five years. She gave up music after returning to religious life and marrying a Chabad rabbi. However, it was her husband who, before his death, bought her the drum set she currently plays and encouraged her to reintroduce music into her life.
“I always was in dialogue with HaShem: ‘What am I supposed to do with this music?’” Shusterman said. “HaShem kept putting me on stage, kept putting me behind drums.”
Wolfe echoed that sentiment: “We see this not as our hobby. This is our life’s work; this is something we’re meant to do.”
Bulletproof Stockings, 8 p.m. Dec. 26, Great American Music Hall, 859 O’Farrell St., S.F. 8 p.m. $16. http://www.slimspresents.com/event/bulletproof-stockings-gamh/