The Badass Penelope Houston of The Avengers
Interview By: John Wisniewski
I speak with Penelope about her current projects, playing folk music and The Avengers.
Punk Globe: What are you working on now, Penelope?
Penelope: I’m mostly working on art projects with some gallery shows coming up Spring, 2024.
Punk Globe: Could you tell us how The Avengers formed?
Penelope: I was going to SF Art Institute in 1977 and met Danny “Furious” O’Brien, who had just asked his boyhood friend Greg Ingraham, to come to SF and start a band. They were looking for a singer and I jumped in the ring.
I found Jimmy Wilsey playing guitar on Polk Street and asked him if he could play bass (he got one from a pawnshop on his way to the audition.)
Punk Globe: What was it like working with Steve Jones? Do you still speak with him?
Penelope: Steve was interested in producing but really only had experience with guitar sounds so he didn’t speak to me much. He mostly dealt with Greg. I’ve tried to connect with him on social media but have not succeeded.
Punk Globe: Could you tell us about recording the Avengers classic “The American in Me”?
Penelope: It was recorded at Different Fur in 1978 and the vocals were re-recorded with Renee Daalder and Geza with different lyrics in 1979, but I sing the earlier version when we perform live these days.
Punk Globe: Why did you decide to release folk albums?
Penelope: After The Avengers broke up and I moved to England, I began to listen to Tom Waits, The Violent Femmes, Leonard Cohen and decided to go into a darker, more acoustic direction. Since 1987 all of my recordings have fallen into the acoustic rock/folk rock/American vein.
Punk Globe: Why did The Avengers break up?
Penelope: It was mid-1979 and Greg had left (replaced by Brad Kent) and we’d had a 7″ out but no label. I wasn’t the one who called it quits… maybe Danny can answer that question better than I.
Punk Globe: What was it like for The Avengers releasing their first single”We Are One”?
Penelope: Our friends at Dangerhouse Records brought us to LA to record in the summer of 1977 when we’d only been together for a couple of months and we did all three songs at Kitchen Sync Studios with Rand McNally, John Doe, and other label people doing background vox. A beautiful mess. It was released in October 1977 and was one of the first west coast punk singles out there.
Punk Globe: It is great that you have got the band back together and you toured Japan. What was it like performing onstage with Pearl Jam?
Penelope: That was a bit scary… The Bill Graham Auditorium was sold out with 8500 people. Pearl Jam had changed the key of the song which wasn’t a problem for me, but a challenge for Greg who was playing the lead.
There were no lead vocals in my monitor as Eddie had in-cap monitors in. But we made it through the song and the SF audience loved it!
