Kevin Bronson on April 14th, 2020

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2020 was off to a promising start for Long Beach sextet Wargirl — a new single, their second album en route, a tour plotted out in Europe, where they first gained traction. Then came the coronavirus pandemic. As they explain in today’s QUARANTUNES, they were marooned in Europe by the lockdown, and “financially, we got our asses handed to us.”

THE LATEST FROM WARGIRL

Long Beach’s Wargirl — the genre-mashing group of Samantha Parks, Matt Wignall, Tamara Raye, Enya Preston, Erick Diego Nieto and Jeff Suri — will release their sophomore album, “Dancing Gold,” on June 12. They introduced the album in February with the strong title track before setting off on a star-crossed European tour (see below). In late March, Wargirl returned with the hip-shaking second single, “Hang On,” a song, says Wignall, that’s “a reminder that our minds play tricks on us. It’s a light-hearted set of rules or proverbs about everyone’s self-importance. No matter what happens in our relationships with friends and lovers, everyone matters and we all recover from pain, and if we want it, we become better.”

TELL US ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED ON YOUR RECENT EUROPEAN TOUR

We headed to Hamburg, Germany, to start our tour on Feb 29. The first gig was March 2. There was word of the coronavirus, but it was only in Italy and China, and all the promoters in Germany, France and the U.K. assured us everything was normal. We talked about the possibility of things going bad, but it seemed unrealistic at the time. And since we already had hotels booked and airfare, etc., it would have been a huge loss. Little did we know.

About halfway through the tour some of the shows started canceling, and every venue told us we were their last show.

It started getting more stressful when Trump announced the travel ban. We were in France, and they just announced they would be closing the borders. We had no clarity on what would happen, and airfare shot up to $10,000 a ticket, so buying tickets home from Paris was not an option.

We made a run for England and got into there, and then it was business as usual for a few days. We were lucky to get our flights changed and get out of there before they went into full lockdown.

Financially, we got our asses handed to us, but it will make an amazing story one day when it all passes. MusiCares actually took mercy on us and they are sending us some money to offset the debt, which is amazing!

HOW ARE YOU HOLDING UP AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO MANAGE THE ‘STAY AT HOME’ EDICT?

We are all healthy and doing pretty well. Varying degrees of cabin fever, but everyone is feeling fine. Matt and Cha Cha have been working on an animated music video for one of our songs. Tammi was last seen on a solo motorcycle trip going towards the desert with a bug-out kit. Other than that, we’re trying to keep busy and catching up on TV shows.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO WHEN THIS IS OVER?

Getting back to our tour. Everyone wants us to come back and play when it’s over. We missed out on some of our favorite venues!

ANYTHING WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS PLAYLIST?

It’s a hodgepodge of where our heads are at right now. We tend to be fairly thoughtful about everything, so these were songs that fit our current mood, post-failed tour, mid-pandemic.