There’s a gift that Abby Rouillard, budding expert in production management, discovered within herself not too long ago: the ability to unlock whoever she’s working with and reveal their true self.
“I remember multiple times seeing musicians fully just crack right open,” Rouillard says of her time in GiiiRLBAND, a short-lived but formative multimedia production team she cofounded years ago. She found that, in the process of drawing music videos and other content out of a musician, she was summoning something much deeper than mere image. “To this day, they are that person we pulled out of them.”
She recalls the early days, making quixotic music videos out of her Everett apartment or in Tacoma’s Platinum Reign Studios, for a bunch of artists who, at the time, were relatively new to the process. She recounts one such session with ex-Seattleite pop singer Chelle, who was struggling to warm to the process, only to watch her confidence slowly bloom in front of the camera. The results speak for themselves.
“To this day,” says Rouillard, “She's like ‘Thank you so much for doing this. I found my shit.’"
Being an artist whisperer is not an easy task. And while music is often a product of collaboration, especially when it comes to creating visual components, the work of communicating and translating an idea so that it makes sense to the people bringing it to life involves a great deal of that whispering. Fortunately, Rouillard is really good at it. So good that this special touch—what Rouillard used to call the “GiiiRLBAND experience”—is now an established part of the 26-year-old’s package. It’s come to include stage design, makeup design, gaffer work, and tour management: anything and everything behind the scenes that a musical artist needs to build their world.
After relocating from Michigan to the greater Seattle area as a teen, Rouillard spent her angsty adolescent days searching for a purpose. “I felt very stuck and didn't know what I wanted. But I knew that I loved concerts,” she says. Early infatuations included Brockhampton and The 1975. “Music was one of the things that made me look forward to life.” And Roulliard’s love of pop music set to video started with one of the genre’s paragons and points of origin: Madonna’s Immaculate Collection, which Roulliard owned on VHS. “I would sit and watch for hours,” she says of the classic.
Rouillard found her purpose after being thrust backstage at the high school plays in which her younger sister, Lily, would often perform. She felt like a square peg in a round hole when expected to don her own stage presence and personality, but after throwing herself into the behind-the-scenes of these productions, she was a natural, earning two 5th Avenue Theater Award nominations for best makeup and best set design. After high school, she picked up a gig working the KIDSTAGE program at the Village Theatre in Issaquah, where she learned set carpentry, airbrushing, and prosthetic work. She loved the work, but she struggled to envision a career made from something that paid very little. “I thought, ‘If I'm gonna make money, I need to do, like, homecoming makeup,’” she says, “and that's…dumb.”
Instead, Rouillard started spending time getting closer to the community of local underground musicians. She began attending house shows and became the tour manager—or "glorified roadie,” as Rouillard put it—of the Bellingham-based band Foxy Apollo, of which her friend Sike (formerly TyeLeah) was a part. It was at one such house show that Rouillard met Gemma Cross, soon after which GiiiRLBAND was formed. Among the collective’s first projects would be TyeLeah’s debut music video, the candid “Do You Wanna (Get to Know Me).” In the following years, a team made up of Rouillard, her sister Lily, and Cross provided creative assistance to a range of acts across the area: the drag artist Viper Fengz, emotive rock act La Fonda, jazz upstarts I///U, singer-songwriter Samara Lennoxx, and multifaceted alt-pop queen TeZATalks.
Roulliard’s work with TeZATalks started with “Not Your Body,” a campaign TeZA launched in 2022 promoting body positivity and combating rape culture. Soon after, GiiiRLBAND moved into Platinum Reign, where TeZA and producer Mackenzie Sinclair (aka Poison Jamz) operated in a studio just down the hall. Rouillard in particular would spend full days in a creative frenzy, sleeping in the studio instead of her apartment, as TeZA and Poison Jamz toiled on what would become TeZA’s debut album, Black Girl American Horror Story. “I'd wake up at 9 a.m. and those fuckers would still be up, like ‘We made a song.’" she recalls. “And it would be a vibe, just the best shit you've ever heard. The momentum and drive that TeZA has is fucking insane; once she's decided it's gonna happen, she's finishing that damn song. It was just so refreshing to have that powerful energy.”
So much energy in such close proximity inevitably led to a collaborative flurry. GiiiRLBAND would help TeZA with music videos, photo shoots, and live performances in the lead-up to the release of Black Girl American Horror Story—the cherry on top being the album’s haunting, sparse artwork.
“We ended up shooting the cover on a random night at 4 a.m.,” recounts Rouillard. They weren’t sure at the time if it would even be usable, but the final product paired perfectly with the album’s hard mix of growling high-octane rage, gothic camp, and harrowing, emotionally potent storytelling. TeZA’s body, color-graded by Rouillard for maximum cadaverousness, is dually corporeal and ghostly; one copy lays lifeless, the other stares straight into your eyes, just daring the vultures to come near. For Rouillard, the cover is one of her proudest achievements to date. The album artwork signals a proper close to her chapter at Platinum Reign, as Rouillard moved out of the space last year.
Despite having been a highly visible presence in GiiiRLBAND, Rouillard understands herself well enough to know that she thrives most behind the scenes. Today, she works as the production manager at the Crocodile, having graduated from managing Here-After and then Madame Lou’s. In the recent past, she constructed visuals and set design for the inaugural Belltown Bloom music festival and managed tours for both electroclash artist Sofiiak and pop artist ARCHIE, the latter opening for the famed drag queen Alaska Thunderfuck 5000. No matter the gig, she never forgets her gift.
“I really hope that I can continue to be a safe space for people,” she says, “because honestly, that's really what it’s all about. I just want to make art happen. I want to make people shine.” ◼︎
