I am sick like you wouldn’t believe – snotting and sneezing backstage in D.C.’s 9:30 club. Down the hall, cowering against the wall, Adrienne Verhoeven, keyboardist and singer for up-and-coming rock act The Anniversary, nurses me back to health. Intoxicatingly beautiful and possessing a pleasant disposition, Verhoeven is definitely a charmer. Her technique of mothering in my case had a lot more to do with beer and cigarettes than my real mom, but who am I to complain?
“I’m used to playing the mother,” Verhoeven said. “I live with a guy.”
At home she lives with one, but on the road Verhoeven has to put up with four guys. The Anniversary is a five-piece rock group hailing from Kansas. Fusing rock and pop with the chic shrill of keyboards, the band coined its eclectic sound by trading off vocals between the guys and the girls. Spending three years on the road with her band has given Verhoeven a unique perspective on male-female relations.
“Guys can be total dicks and they’re dicks to me and I’m a jerk to them and life goes on and whatever.” Verhoeven said.
That’s certainly one way to deal with the stresses of the road. Verhoeven is just glad she’s not in a band with a group of girls.
“That would suck,” she said. “Girls are brats to each other.”
Band relations are not the biggest challenge Verhoeven is facing right now. The Anniversary is a rock act on the predominately punk label Vagrant Records. Overshadowed by label mates such as Saves the Day and Dashboard Confessional, The Anniversary has been touring incessantly over the last few years trying to spread the music and also gain a name for the band’s distinct brand of rock.
“We’ll play whatever comes our way,” Verhoeven said. “We do whatever we can. This is what we want to do for a living.”
The Anniversary’s most recent tour with Dashboard Confessional created a number of difficulties for the band.
“Half the nights kick ass, and half the nights are dead,” Verhoeven said.
This is because the subdued acoustic style of Dashboard Confessional does not necessarily mix with the energy-driven rock of The Anniversary. Verhoeven’s solution?
“We just go out there and try to rock ass every night, for whoever we can,” she said.
The Anniversary has taken the rock to a new level on the most recent record, Your Majesty, a tighter more filled out sound for the band compared to the first release, Designing a Nervous Breakdown. A more complex rock sound is something Verhoeven attributes to a new slate of influences.
“We’ve grown quite a bit. We’re listening to different music. The boys listen to a lot of blues now,” Verhoeven said. “We were listening to indie rock. I mean that was what was out there for us at the time.”
Verhoeven’s biggest issue with the indie rock scene today, which she is arguably a part of, is elitism and the refusal to accept new sounds.
“The people that do that – aren’t open to new things – are stupid,” Verhoeven said. “We had a kid sign the guestbook and say, ‘If you like The Anniversary you must be a dumbass, you must like Tom Petty and stuff.’ If you don’t like Tom Petty, you’re a dumbass.”
Verhoeven sees evolution as a necessary element of the rock experience.
“You’ve got to grow up and respect the fact that people expose themselves to new things,” she said. “If someone doesn’t want to listen to our record, that’s cool with me. It’s their loss.”
The sound has changed in the last year. Verhoeven once toured with two small keyboards and now uses keyboards, moogs and an organ, all lined up on stage around her.
“Its amazing. Look how much we’ve evolved that we need all these keyboards and pedals,” she said.
There’s no pressure in Verhoeven’s life when it comes to music. She says being in a band is something she has always wanted to do.
“I took piano lesson for seven years,” she said. “I was born to be a musician. That’s all I’ll ever do with my life.”
If The Anniversary doesn’t work out, Verhoeven is confident she will continue in music.
“Even if this doesn’t work out for me, I’ll go on. I’ll be a music teacher,” Verhoeven said. “Life goes on, and we deal with it. That’s what my best friend and I say.”
The Anniversary is a band that is all about positive motivation. Verhoeven has her mantra that she lives by on the road.
“If you act like you know where you’re going, you’re going to get there.”
With a number of high-profile tours and a fan base that is growing by the day, The Anniversary is certainly going somewhere. Verhoeven admits this mantra has more than just metaphoric applications in her life.
“The reason my husband and I made this up was because we were learning how to sneak backstage. You just walk back, don’t even look. If they ask you what you’re doing, just squint at them and say, ‘who do you think you are?’”
So where is she left at the end of the day? As Verhoeven explains, for now its all about enjoying the ride, and seeing where you end up.
“Its like all aspects of life. Have a beer and a cigarette and go on,” she said. “Have a great night every night.”
