The Littlest Lunachick

Brittany and Eric Hartman photograph by Bruce Dye

The last time the Lunachicks visited Emo's, they brought with them tornados -- a furious, torrential storm that battered Austin and surrounding areas, leaving people dead and property destroyed. You remember. Nine months later, the foursome's return to the local club has brought winter -- an icy cold front expected to blow snow. At 4pm on a Thursday afternoon, then, the streets are mostly empty, and down in the Sixth Street area, it looks like a Siberian ghost town, the cold giving everything a white/blue hue. Inside Emo's, which specializes in punk rock and lower forms of musical evolution, things are worse. It looks like a bomb went off. The floor is covered with cigarettes, broken bottles, newspaper -- all matter of debris. Pushing it all with his wide, industrial-size broom is the club's owner, Eric "Emo" Hartman. In the dim light, standing well over six feet tall with broad shoulders and close-cropped blond hair, Hartman looks like a college kid in his hooded "Swinging Utters" sweatshirt. He's not. A college graduate certainly, but at 35, Hartman is also a successful businessman, owning and operating three separate clubs: two Emo's, one in Austin, another in Houston, and a third club, the Orbit Room in Dallas. How successful? You be the judge; by day he's an air-freight handler for Bax Global.

Which maybe explains Hartman's exploitative employment practices, because just then, a much smaller pile of trash starts bunching up around one of the pool tables, and into view comes a little blonde-haired girl in a pink jacket and green tights pushing a much smaller broom. Intent on her work, she doesn't even look up. She's helping daddy.

"She told me yesterday she helped her daddy sweep, because she didn't want him to have to do it all by himself," says Diane Hartman, the child's mother. "She's daddy's little helper. And it's neat, because they get to spend a lot of time together, which is really good. I know growing up, I never got to see my father, because he was working 9-5. She gets to spend a lot of time with her daddy. And even though it's at work, no one else is there, so it's quality time. She'll at least be able to tell people she spent time with her daddy growing up."

Not that she would miss being at her daddy's club today for anything in the world. Not today. Seems the Lunachicks have swept something besides cold air into Emo's. Like one of their littlest fans, Brittany Kaylyn Hartman, age four.

"Who's your favorite group?" asks her father.

"Umm," she stammers.

"What's the CD you always ask me to play?"

"Umm."

She's shy, of course -- this being her first interview. Sitting at a small table on the indoor stage, she looks up at her father. Looks just like him.

"What do we do in the daytime?" he asks.

"Sweep," she says finally in a little voice.

"What do we do in the office?"

"Paperwork."

Now we're getting somewhere.

"What song do you like by the Misfits?"

"Um."

"You can say it," prompts her father. "It's okay."

"`Teenager From Mars,'" says Brittany with an impish smile.

And there it is, just like the story that's already become a part of Emo's lore.

"We were sitting here," recounts her father, "having dinner at the bar, and I can't remember the name of the band -- a touring act -- but they were sitting at the bar, and the jukebox -- if no one's playing the jukebox, every 20 minutes it'll kick out a random song -- all of a sudden it picked a Misfits song. I can't remember which song it was -- it might've been "When Eagles Dare." But just the first couple beats to it, Brittany goes, `Hey, it's the Misfits.' All of a sudden, the band, who are sitting there talking, stop, froze, looked down at her. At that time, she was about 21/2. `Did she say Mistfits?' `Yeah,' she says, `the Misfits. "Teenager from Mars." Misfits.'" And they just thought that was hysterical that she knew what that was."

Watching the child run around the empty club, it's apparent she knows what a lot of things are. Thirsty, she makes her way behind the bar and picks up a bartender gun. She doesn't know which button will produce cranberry juice, but she knows one of them will. And on the photo shoot with her father; she knows just when to smile and to how lean into the frame.

Later, when her father has gone to deal with the holiday season at his other job, Brittany gives me the guided tour, demonstrating how to work the jukebox ("you put the money in here"), and which of the pinball machines/video games are her favorite: "Area 51," and yes, the aliens are scary. So is the maniacal clown waving a gun just above our the game. And the distorted lady just around the corner -- another of the bar's unsettling wall murals; she'll put a spell on you ("turn you into a rabbit"). Finally, at the bar, she explains the lay of the land.

"I'm little Emo, mommy is Mommy Emo, and daddy is Big Emo," she says carefully.

Kneeling comfortably on her bar stool, Brittany lays her head down on her arms, which are folded on the bar. She is comfortable here. And yet when the Lunachicks finally arrive a little after 6pm, she leaps off the stool, and runs back around the bar, hiding. As she waits for her moment, the girls in the band shuffle into the club wondering if they can play inside tonight instead of outdoors, where they're scheduled to perform. Scruffy, tattooed, pierced, they too are at home in Emo's, and suddenly the club begins to look like it does on most nights -- like "The Home of Alternative Lounging." Into this midst finally creeps Brittany.

While the rest of the band, along with their tour manager and various friends, gather a few feet from the bar, Brittany isolates the Lunachicks' singer, Theo Kogan. Extending a short arm, Brittany offers her up a Christmas card with her picture on it -- signed -- which the tall, bleach-blonde musician bends down to receive. Looking into the face of the sincere little moppet who has shyly offered up her gift, Kogan is clearly touched, her face breaking into a smile that starts in her eyes. They hold each other's gaze another split-second before Kogan whirls to share this charmed moment with the band. Right then, it seems like maybe a 4-year-old in a punk club isn't such a shock after all.

photograph by Bruce Dye

"I don't see that big thing where music is bad for people," says dad. "I'm not into, `That song made me do it' type thing. Parents call me all the time and say, `My son wants to come see so-and-so play there. I heard bad things about the club.' Well, you're more than welcome to come down here. I'm a father. My daughter is such-and-such age, she's been in here. I have no problem bringing her in my place.

"I've always looked at music as a positive thing. Like my parents took me to see Led Zeppelin. I was too young to go, and my dad was able to get tickets, and so I sat there and saw Led Zeppelin with my mom and dad on each side of me. I felt stupid, in the sense that I got mom and dad there, but I wouldn't have been able to go without them. I think I take from those experiences and teach her. I mean, I've been around a lot of stuff in that sense."

Mom, a full-time realtor well-versed in the hardships of maintaining a household where both parents work (and non-traditional hours at that), feels the same way -- more or less.

"I guess I was a little bit nervous when she first came to the bar," says Diane. "But everyone's really good around here. They watch what they say around her. Other than that, shaping her, I guess we'll have to see what happens in the future. I think it's a positive. I'm not always real thrilled that she's at a bar with her daddy at
4 years old. A lot of people don't think that's a good thing either, but she's got people here that look out for her -- care for her.

"And it has opened her up to creativity a little bit, which is a good thing. She's meeting lots of different types of people. That's good, too. Maybe when she gets a little older, she won't be so prejudiced into stereotyping people by what they look like. Definitely, between me and my husband, we don't look like we'd be a couple. So, she gets both sides. On my side she gets, I don't know, normalcy? I don't know what you'd call it, and on the bar side she gets..."

The Lunachicks.

"Diane told me later that as they were leaving, Brittany wanted to stay and see the Lunachicks," says Big Emo at the back entrance of his club on the downside of a frozen 2am. The Lunachicks are almost done. "Diane goes, `Honey, it's a "Big People Show," you too little.'

"And Brittany just goes, `Hmmph,' and walks out the door."