The new Winona Fighter album doesn't have any love songs
Pop-punk songwriter Coco Kinnon talked with Sounds Great about the Nashville punk scene, "I Think You Should Leave" and never writing love songs.
It’s Valentine’s Day, but Winona Fighter doesn’t have any love songs for you.
The Nashville pop-punk trio — with instrumentalists Dan Fuson and Austin Luther — is led by fiery songwriter/lead vocalist Coco Kinnon.
Kinnon said that she challenged herself at a young age to write about things that aren’t relationships. And even though she’s now happily married, she’s kept to that promise. But she knows what a good love song sounds like.
“You know that little feeling you get between your heart and your stomach sometimes?” she asked, in a recent Zoom interview. “Whenever you get that, that’s what makes it.”
This assessment adds up for Winona Fighter, a band with a knack for creating that twist in your diaphragm and then pulling it out with its cathartic claws.
The 14 songs on the band’s debut album My Apologies To The Chef — out now via Rise Records — may not be cut for Cupid, but they’ll certainly cut you up.
My Apologies To The Chef is anchored by explosive single “You Look Like A Drunk Phoebe Bridgers” and Winona Fighter’s breakout song “HAMMS IN A GLASS.” With gritty guitars and a killer bridge — the way Kinnon whispers “I’m a little stressed out” is necessary listening on the way home from a bad day at work — “HAMMS” is a perfect first unit in Winona Fighter 101.
That’s the idea for the whole album, Kinnon said.
“Hopefully this is our introduction to so many more fans and listeners,” she said. “So what’s going to make an album that’s 100% Winona Fighter?”
The first thing you’ll notice on a listen through My Apologies to The Chef is that every song on the record is titled, not after a lyric, but after a sort of in-joke. For example, “You Look Like A Drunk Phoebe Bridgers” is a song about a cruel manager, but its title is a direct quote Kinnon heard from a drunk dude at a bar.
“HAMMS” is a callback to another bar moment, where Luther asked Kinnon to grab a craft beer, and the only thing the bartender had was a warm Hamms.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, just put that in a glass and he’s not going to know the difference,’” she said. “And he didn’t.
“The song ‘HAMMS IN A GLASS’ is about feeling like nothing’s going right, and what better describes things not going right than when all you wanted was this cold, really good craft beer, and you got this shitty, lukewarm canned beer.”
More standouts on Winona Fighter’s debut include the noodly “Johnny’s Dead” and “I’M IN THE MARKET TO PLEASE NO ONE,” with a velcro hook and several satisfying middle-finger lyrics directed at an abuser.
I don't like to think you're having fun
I hope you suffer
And boys like you should rot for what they've done
Don't blame your mother
My personal favorite is single “I Think You Should Leave,” named semi-cryptically after the Tim Robinson sketch show. Kinnon said the song got its name from the lyric at the end of the first verse, “Hold on let me think about it.” It reminded her of the “Moon River Rock” sketch where a slimy talent agent convinces Robinson he’s going to be a star. The insufferable-yet-sympathetic duality of every Robinson character on that show makes for perfect punk songwriting source material.
“The whole vibe of every character he plays, you think it’s funny, and there’s a little part of you that feels bad for them,” Kinnon said. “But every fucking character you can’t stand.”
If she could use another Robinson sketch for material, Kinnon said it’s the skateboarding deep cut he made for BrainDead a few years ago.
Most of the songwriting on the record, Kinnon said, came from day-to-day experiences that felt emotionally potent enough to write about it.
The goal: have at least one song or lyric on the album that somebody could listen to and see themselves in its mirror. For Kinnon, her favorite lyric comes on album outro “DON’T WALLOW.”
Dollars turn to pennies
Pennies don't pay bills
My hair's done up in mats
I'll break my back like no one ever will
“That’s just about the struggle of being a punk musician and the uncomfortableness of seriously, seriously pursuing it as a career,” Kinnon said. “And since day one, we have worked just as hard or harder as everyone else.”
This DIY spirit — described most bluntly on the infectious “Subaru” — is fairly innate for Kinnon. She grew up on the New Hampshire-Massachusetts border and got into the Boston punk scene at a young age, playing drums in her first band at just 14 years old and going on tour with a band of college students when she was 15. It’s given her perspective.
“I've always been a very outspoken, confrontational person, but I do think being in the scene at such a young age, you get thrown into these situations,” Kinnon said. “Like, one of my first bands there, the lead singer had a severe substance abuse problem. And I’m like — I’m a fucking kid.”
For Kinnon, getting thrown into the fire that young has turned her into a torch. It’s clear on the songs, which often sound like a stick of dynamite. That’s largely thanks to Kinnon’s absolutely killer scream.
On her short list of scream influences: Babes in Toyland’s Kat Bjelland, Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante, Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris and Dead Sara (and, now, Linkin Park) vocalist Emily Armstrong.
But the best screams, Kinnon said, always come from the inside.
“When you can tell it’s coming from some place, when it’s a guttural experience,” she said. “All the Winona Fighter screams, it’s just like, ‘Okay, let’s turn the mic on and do your thing.’”
Being a born-and-raised New Englander has given Kinnon an edge, too. She grew up going to an artsy, alternative school with just 15 kids in her graduating class.
“The type of school that I went to was very harsh and outspoken,” she said. “And also, in New England, people say shit to your face. They say shit with their chest.”
So it was a mild culture shock when, shortly after turning 18, she moved to Nashville to try to make a career of music. In Tennessee, there’s a lot more country than there is confrontation. But she’s built a punk community there. Last night, locals got to hear the album first at a sold-out release show at Nashville’s Blue Room.
“There’s more of a alternative rock scene here now, but when I first moved here, it was, like, just country,” Kinnon said. “You definitely have to do some looking and some digging.”
But so far, the music career pursuit is going well. Before their first album even came out, Winona Fighter has done festivals like Riot Fest and Aftershock. Coming up, you can find them at Innings Festival in Tempe and Minnesota Yacht Club in St. Paul.
Just last year, the band shared bills with Bayside, Taking Back Sunday and The Offspring. They have dates coming up with Simple Plan and We The Kings.
Kinnon’s shortlist of bucket list tourmates includes Turnstile, Mannequin Pussy, Hot Mulligan, The Story So Far and Movements. The holy grail for Kinnon, though, would be opening for Foo Fighters. They’ve been a huge influence on the band, she said. There is just one problem.
“I think (Dave Grohl) has a history with Winona Ryder, so that probably ruins our chances right there,” she laughed.
Still, I wouldn’t count Winona Fighter out on any goal.
That’s because Kinnon is the type of fighter you bet the house on. She’s battle-tested, and the songs are living proof. Rock stardom might be around the corner for this trio, but Kinnon knows it isn’t all romantic.
Her expectations are tempered. Her aspirations aren’t.
“You’ll watch a band documentary and it kind of touches on what it’s like when you’re first starting out, but not really,” Kinnon said. “It doesn’t talk about the exhaustion, or the playing to two people, so I feel very fortunate that I got a real life look at it at such an early age.”
It’s given Kinnon and her band a certain savvy that sets them apart. It’s also given her a chance to enjoy the little moments of progress along the way. She remembers the days as a punk teen, piling into an SUV and sharing rooms at Econo Lodges.
Now, the SUV is a van. The Econo Lodge is a Best Western Plus. It’s the little things.
“Every moment to me is like, ‘Oh, wow, we get to do this,’” Kinnon said.
And certainly, that’s a good feeling. It may not be a love song, but you can feel that one between your heart and your stomach.
Listen to My Apologies To The Chef on Spotify, Apple Music and more. See Winona Fighter in your city this spring and summer.
