Tobi Celeste Vail was born on July 20,1969 and is an American independent musician, music critic and feminist activist from Olympia, Washington.
25 Facts About Tobi Vail
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Tobi Celeste Vail was born in Auburn, Washington, to teenage parents.
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The family moved to Olympia, Washington, where Tobi Vail attended high school.
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In 1988, Tobi Vail left Washington to live in Eugene, Oregon.
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At KAOS, Tobi Vail was exposed to a wide variety of independent music.
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Tobi Vail served off and on as a disc jockey from age 15 to 21.
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Billy "Billy Boredom" Karren was one of the rotating musicians who played with the Go Team, and it was in this band that he and Tobi Vail played together for the first time.
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Since the beginning of her teens, Tobi Vail had tried to form an all-female band to "rule the world and change how people view music and politics", including a group named Doris.
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Tobi Vail wrote about the "Yoko factor": the time when a male musician tells his girlfriend that she should not break up the band and that the girlfriend would never be as important to him as his band.
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In February 2016, Tobi Vail issued a YouTube takedown request after a pro-Hillary Clinton video utilizing the Bikini Kill song "Rebel Girl" began to go viral.
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In 1992, while still involved with Bikini Kill, Tobi Vail started The Frumpies in Washington, DC, with Bikini Kill bandmates Wilcox and Karren, and with Molly Neuman of Bratmobile and the PeeChees, and later Michelle Mae.
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In 1993, Tobi Vail started Bumpidee, a low-cost method for unsigned bands to increase their listener base, using the distribution of cassette recordings of their songs.
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In mid-2004, Tobi Vail founded the band Spider and the Webs, with James Maeda on guitar and Chris Sutton on drums and bass.
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Tobi Vail ran the mail order department at Kill Rock Stars from 1998 to 2011, after working there part-time from 1992 to 1997.
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The Tobi Vail sisters played the festival in a band named Frenchie and the German Girls.
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From 2006 to 2008, Tobi Vail drummed with the Old Haunts, including on their final album, Poisonous Times.
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Tobi Vail has performed several solo shows, including one in Barcelona at Primera Persona in March 2012.
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In 1989, Tobi Vail published the first issue of her feminist zine Jigsaw.
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When she published the zine, Tobi Vail was working at an Olympia sandwich shop with Kathi Wilcox who remembers being impressed by Tobi Vail's focus on "girls in bands, specifically," including an aggressive emphasis on feminist issues.
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Hanna wrote to Tobi Vail and submitted musician interviews to be published in Jigsaw while Hanna was on tour; this was the beginning of their collaboration.
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In Jigsaw, Tobi Vail wrote about "angry grrls", combining the word girls with the powerful growl of grr.
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Tobi Vail moved the Jigsaw blog to its own domain in September 2008.
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Tobi Vail started working as a freelance writer after graduating from the Evergreen State College in 2009.
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Tobi Vail's work has been published by NPR, Artforum, The Believer, Punk Planet and Maximum Rock-N-Roll.
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Tobi Vail met Kurt Cobain when she was hanging around with Melvins in 1986.