Flora Wolpert Checknoff

A Real Grrl is a lesbian “grrl next door” who is doing something unique, interesting, creative, and – most importantly – something that they are proud of and want to share with others. Each week Cherry Grrl features a special reader… next week it could be you! Write to info@cherrygrrl.com to learn how.

Age: 23

Hometown: Baltimore, MD always. And for now the farm lands of Parkton, MD – 40 minutes north of my city.

Get Real with us. Entering round two of poking my musical head out into the world. I was in Metal Hearts (Suicide Squeeze Records) at 19 with which I released two full-length albums and toured internationally over the course of two years. At the end of 2006 we split up and I decided I needed to go and live a bit, accumulate experiences to inspire the writing process. Traveled around the country on my own for a while, lived in places like way down on the border in Arizona, or the Rockies in Wyoming, worked on farms for room and board. Took very long trains. Drove aimlessly. Didn’t do much music aside from a little baby guitar I brought along to keep me company. Here and there I wouldn’t be able to resist recording, and when I did, I made the move into totally acoustic compositions, much of them raw and low-fidelity thanks to my preference and/or impatience.

I’m definitely a purist for acoustic music now, and I attribute it to my love of its almost tangible texture. Anyway, the songs have been sitting in my head or in scratched up and label-less CDs rolling around in my car all this time, or hopefully aging like wine, and I’m just about ready to let people know they exist. I have the honor of playing with my good friends Zach Mattix (guitar, vox) and Nick Bourland (violin, vox, piano) on a few of the songs, as is noted on my Myspace page, and they play with me in a couple of burgeoning projects as well – The Woodpeckers and holy holy vine. In terms of standing out, I don’t know if I do or will or how. I do know that if I end up getting to where I want to be, I would like to have done it by answering to Tom Robbins’ order as well as a mere songwriter could: “I am looking for the novelists whose writing is an extension of their intellect rather than an extension of their neurosis.” – Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates