Orlando punks Stiletto just wanna bash out ‘good music for the girls and the gays’

Stiletto simply won’t stand still. The Orlando-based punk rockers, self-identified proudly as “feminist, ecstatic [and] queer,” are a whirlwind of activity of late, with gigs at Orlando Museum of Art and a pro-choice benefit show coming mere days after Amendment 4 goes before the voters of Florida.

Orlando Weekly spoke to the band in a rare quiet moment post-Milton about their music, messaging and urgent sense of mission.

Stiletto the band has only been around since early 2023, but the core members’ connections to each other stretch further back.

Drummer Deanna Gonzalez met bassist Tia Milan all the way back in 2006. Singer and synth player Brie Schafer entered the picture more recently, recruited into the nascent band by Gonzalez during the pandemic.

As Milan explains, Stiletto proper came to be after a long night of informal jamming. “It really happened by accident. We were in the rehearsal room that Dee [Gonzalez] set up, putting our first song together, and we all looked at each other, saying, ‘This is magic. This is the real deal,'” says Milan. “And it’s been on the roller coaster ever since, which has been pretty great!”

Each of the core trio of the band brings a wildly different musical background that combines, well, wildly in the form of vicious shows and anthemic punky new wave.

Through the 1990s, Gonzalez was part of seminal Southern alt-rock outfit Sugarsmack, based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. Schafer, meanwhile, is a classically trained pianist who holds a music degree from Rollins College in Winter Park. Her religious upbringing meant that music and the church were intertwined, often less than harmoniously.

“Being in Stiletto has been a journey of healing and self-realization for me, in my autonomy as a female artist and as a queer woman,” Schafer explains, adding that her time in the band has “healed my relationship with my musical background, which was kind of forced on me.”

Milan was a musical-theater kid who decided to pick up the bass guitar at 12, falling in love with the instrument immediately.

Shockingly, Milan and Schafer had never been in a rock band prior to joining Stiletto.

Once the initial kinks were worked out in rehearsals, Stiletto began their live journey by performing Bikini Kill covers at Uncle Lou’s — surely a rite of passage for an Orlando band if there ever were one.

The local punk scene immediately embraced Stiletto’s serrated blend of riot grrrl politics and new wave twists.

“Orlando is one of the few cities left where live music is really embraced and supported,” Milan posits. “It’s a real blessing to be a part of a new emerging scene of artists that are trying to push the next generation of sounds.”

Among these artists are hardcore band M.A.C.E., whose “energy and messages align with ours, even though we communicate them differently,” Schafer adds. “[M.A.C.E.] are very queer-forward and in your face.”

Buzz on Stiletto’s electric performances led to them sharing a stage at Conduit with infamous no-wave icon Lydia Lunch in late 2023, a match made in heaven and hell. Orlando Museum of Art even came knocking, booking the band for the opening reception of their ambitious exhibition Torn Apart: Punk + New Wave Graphics, Fashion and Culture, 1976-86.

As part of a glitzy opening-night party, Stiletto ripped a set that vividly amplified and modernized the DIY aesthetics festooning the museum’s walls, performing in close quarters with glass sculptures by Dale Chihuly — attendees giddily moshing or rooted to the spot in awe.

“We thought Tia was gonna break that thing with her bass!” Gonzalez jokes. “We caught a serious buzz off of that show for a week!”

While the Chihuly glass sculpture lived to swirl another day, Schafer admits that the OMA performance “was a merging of the things that make me who I am: the classically trained and punk rocker parts of me got smashed together.”

With mere days to go before Americans may elect the first woman president, the feminist and queer-forward future Stiletto seeks to usher in seems actually possible, regardless of political outcomes.

“We’ll keep the positivity on our end. We’re not gonna be forced out of the state just because we have [DeSantis] trying to make decisions for us,” Gonzalez says.

As Stiletto gets ready to record studio tracks, Schafer reflects on the power of music and live performance. “The cool thing about music is that it unites us in a very deep and meaningful way. That’s so important [to achieve] in our deeply individualistic Western society,” says Schafer. “No matter how many times we sing the same songs, and everything happening in our state … it all reaffirms why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

“We are going to keep creating good music for the girls and the gays,” Milan concludes. If there were a mic to be dropped, it would happen there.

You can catch Stiletto — joined onstage by live guitarist Aerin Osteen — strutting once again at the Orlando Museum of Art at their “Anti-Gala” on Friday. You can also rock the boat and (hopefully) celebrate the vote for reproductive rights with them during Rock & Roe 3 at Will’s Pub on Wednesday, Nov. 13.

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This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2024.