Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú

Whether you liked them or not, The Tommys, armed with their old school, punk influenced GB flag, set out to prove that girls can do it just as well as boys - if not better in some cases! Where are they now?

Searching for the girls

If you type the ‘The Tommys’ into Myspace’s search now the first result found is a death metal band from Lecanto, Florida. There is no evidence of the biggest all-girl band to come out of Crewe. Even their Myspace page says deleted.

So what ever happened to cause the feisty pop punk girls to lose all ties with the band that had such a huge following and a future set for stardom?

In The Beginning

For everyone who has no clue what the hell I’m talking about I will give you a brief history for you to catch up.

The school girls came together through jamming sessions at the Playground studios in Crewe, already with dreams of making it big and getting rich. The original line up (it ends up pretty confusing) was Jess Bell belting away raspy attitude riddled vocals, Tania Kawalit on bass, Fran Robinson on drums and Stevie Shepperson knocking out the guitar solos.

The punky foursome soon got hold of the kids on the scene and Signal Radio caught onto the buzz (which I imagine was from hundreds of kids texting in requests to a band the station had never heard of.) Soon the Tommys’ demo track, "5 Star Queen on the Backseat", could be heard through Staffordshire and Cheshire airwaves.

Lyrics By Teenage Girls

From then on the girls faced many critics, some couldn’t see pass the age, others didn’t think girls could rock out that well. But they shut most of them up and went on to impress many. One critic from The Guardian, Alexis Petridus thought, “ [The Tommys]…are snappy and snotty with chorus’ to die for and lyrics that could only have been written by a teenage girl.�

The spirited band weren’t pretending to be something or someone, they were just being themselves. New role models were born, for girls who wanted to be more badass than Avril Lavigne.Ìý

Band members came and went. The first was Tania who dropped out in September 2006 but was soon replaced by Anna Naberrie. Vocals were then lost as Jess Bell left and Cara Lee took over. Looks like the rock and roll lifestyle does take its toll.

When the band took a more serious note, Fran and Anna backed out. The 2 who were left took no time to draft in Chelsea Bishop, Loz Bennett, to carry on finding fame, as The 2008 Tommys.

Dead End Town

A European tour, supporting Motorhead, continuous gigging through the UK and thousands of fans still wasn’t enough though. New material had been produced and was set to be recorded.

But the new single, ‘Dead End Town’ seemed to ring too true with the girls as in September 2008, unexpectedly The Tommys split. The 3 remaining rockers (they lost Cara Lee) invited long term friend, Kat Upton to join them and out of the Tommys' ashes rose, Out Of Embers.

Most fans followed them but that still wasn’t good enough, they ‘Did It Again’ (wanted to get a song title in there!). In January 2009, they announced on Myspace that they’d split for a second time.

From a band that toured with iForward, Russia! and Towers of London, this was a disappointing end for the ladies who were acclaimed to be, possibly, Britain’s answer to ‘The Donnas’.