Worcester-rooted rockers Tysk Tysk Task on Boston Calling bill with Hozier, The Killers

When Tysk Tysk Task frontwoman Samantha Hartsel opened her email inbox to see that her band had been invited to perform at the 2024 Boston Calling music festival, she couldn’t contain her joy.

“I called everyone in the band screaming, I was so thrilled,” Hartsel said.

This year’s Boston Calling festival will take place in May, and Tysk Tysk Task will take the stage on the afternoon of May 26, kicking off a day of outdoor live music that will end with sets from internationally known artists Megan Thee Stallion, Hozier and The Killers.

In October, Hartsel, who lives in the Worcester area, received a message from the Boston Calling organizers through Tysk Tysk Task’s Instagram account.

The festival’s booking team had seen her band bring their flavor of ‘90s-influenced feminist grunge to the 2023 Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble, a Cambridge battle of the bands, and wanted to add them to the bill.

“I freaked out and wrote back a long response saying it would be a dream come true, and they wrote back saying, 'It's not a done deal. Don't get your hopes up,'” Hartsel said. “Four days later, they sent a contract to our inbox, just like that.”

Worcester roots

Tysk Tysk Task is made up of guitarists Hartsel and Rick Martel, bassist Kyle Griffin, and drummer Matt Graber. The band is currently based in Lowell, but Hartsel has deep Worcester roots.

The singer-guitarist grew up driving into the city to see DIY concerts, got her start as a musician playing at Worcester open mic, and at one time worked for the Telegram & Gazette. She now runs the Bloom & Book vintage reselling booth at the Canal District’s Crompton Collective market.

“There's something about the cities that used to be iconic Industrial Revolution spots, with the old mill buildings that got converted and the artists that find a way to make the space work for them, that will influence the trajectory of your art,” Hartsel said. “It definitely influenced mine.”

Hartsel outlined Tysk Tysk Task’s journey into the Boston music scene, saying independent bands can face significant obstacles in a major city with a strongly established in-crowd.

Tysk Tysk Task formed in 2018, and Hartsel and her bandmates regularly submitted each new release to Boston radio stations and called Boston venues to ask about bookings, but for the first few years, pickings were slim.

“What is Boston to a DIY artist? It's a massive behemoth, it's impenetrable,” Hartsel said. “(I was) literally calling Boston all the time from Worcester and Lowell and being shut out. It's incredible now that it's coming full circle and we have this opportunity on a huge stage in that city.”

Calling and response

In the past, some longtime Boston musicians have noticed a similar exclusivity at Boston Calling itself.

In 2019, Boston rapper Cliff Notez put together the Boston Answering concert, a night of homegrown hip-hop, in response to a pattern he saw at Boston Calling. He felt the festival regularly ignored local musicians, particularly hip-hop artists, in favor of national touring acts.

“Boston Calling, ironically one of the few major music festivals named after its home city, isn’t for actual Boston people,” Notez wrote. “For the Boston music scene to really thrive, artists need more support on main stages and exposure to bigger audiences.”

In the four years since, the festival has added more Massachusetts musicians to the bill, including Worcester-rooted rockers Blue Light Bandits and Boston rapper Brandie Blaze last year.

Hartsel said she and her bandmates have long been friends with the members of JVK and Senseless Optimism, two other local groups in this year’s Boston Calling lineup, and she viewed the inclusion of all three bands as a win.

“I think of everyone in the Greater Massachusetts community as peers and compatriots, so it's hard to look at them as competition,” Hartsel said. “We're all unsigned indie artists trying to make it work.”

Hartsel said although the situation is generally improving for Massachusetts’ independent musicians, she still sees a gender gap when she looks at most smaller Boston music venues’ calendars.

“If you look at the (local) bills we play, the majority is cisgender straight men. Maybe 10 to 20 to 30 percent, maximum, of a good bill will not be cisgender straight men,” Hartsel said. “Older men hold the keys to the city's scene and its stages.”

Sometimes, Hartsel’s solution is to go back to her roots. She said she noticed more enthusiasm for live music by female, nonbinary and transgender performers in smaller but still vibrant cities like Worcester and Lowell.

“I've never met those barriers around here because these are grittier cities in that people who live here have to work for what we can appreciate,” Hartsel said. “That's why the art we get around here is so relevant and topical and earnest.”

'Feminine edginess'

Citing Worcester trio Sapling as a local favorite for their heavier sound and fearless, confrontational lyrics about gender, Hartsel said the experience of being treated as “less than” because of one’s gender is a major source of inspiration for Tysk Tysk Task’s music.

“In Boston there's a lot of 'cock rock.' There's a lot of bros making music for bros. The music I write is for women, for folks who can identify with feeling out of place and underrepresented,” Hartsel said. “There is a feminine edginess that we bring out that a lot of people don't like, and I'm glad. I don't want those types of people to like our music.”

Tysk Tysk Task plans to bring that edge to Boston Calling, but with a hint of something different.

Four months before the festival, the band is already rehearsing new material, including a single, “Intolerable,” that was released five days into 2024, and preparing for their biggest audience yet.

“It's a lot of emotional and mental work as well as the physicality of playing an instrument together with someone, so to make it work, you need all three of those things to gel,” Hartsel said. “We have a beautiful chemistry right now that I'm grateful for.”