Lesley Rankine

Lesley Rankine was born on April 11, 1965, and is a native of Scotland. Rankine's first band was the British noise group Silverfish, comprised of the musicians Andrew "Fuzz" Duprey on guitar, Chris P. Mowforth on bass, and Stuart Watson on drums. Rankine sang the lead vocals from their first gig at London's Camden Town in 1988 through the band's demise in 1993, following their last show at the Phoenix Festival in England.

Silverfish released a collection of their 1980's EPs as the compilation album Cockeye in 1990. Their debut studio album Fat Axl (produced by Steve Albini) came out in 1991 and then they toured in support of the band Pigface. In 1992 Silverfish gained wider acclaim with their second studio album Organ Fan (produced by Jim Thirlwell for the Creation label) and then went on tour with the band Seven Year Bitch, after which Silverfish broke up in 1993. Rankine contributed the studio album Fook by industrial band Pigface, singing vocals on two tracks, "Ten Ground and Down" and "Hips, Tits, Lips, Power" in 1992. She first worked together with producer Mark Walk when they collaborated on material for Pigface's studio album Notes From Thee Underground. Released in 1994, Rankine did vocals on two tracks "Divebomber" and "Chikasaw" on the album. Also that year she contributed to the album Suffersystem by Monster Voodoo Machine.

In June 1994 Walk and Rankine began recording Ruby's debut album at the Soundhouse Studios facility located in Seattle, Washington. The duo would labor until January 1995 on the album, with Rankine singing and Walk producing and mixing the music (with additional studio musicians chipping in) on computers, but without a traditional backing band. Rankine explains this approach:


 * "I didn't use a band on this record because I honestly believe that I was not put on this earth to share my life with a bunch of other people..."

In November 1995 the finished product Salt Peter was released on the Creation/WORK labels, eventually putting out three singles, all of which had music videos filmed for them featuring Rankine. Both Walk and Rankine share writing credits for most of the tracks. In late 1995 and much of 1996 she went out on tour in support of Salt Peter, with a band consisting of Sharon Dougherty on keyboard & guitar, Gavin Fawcett on drums, and Chris Taplin on bass & guitar; mid way through the tour Dougherty was replaced by Regina Chellew. They played such venues as: Pukkelpop music festival, the Reading Festival, and at Lollapalooza.

Following the 1996 tour Rankine relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana. After living there for six months, her neighborhood witnessed several car-jackings and hold-ups, and when a woman living across from her was brutally killed and the victim's clothing left in Rankine's garbage after the crime, she decided to move five days later to Seattle. Also during this time Rankine teamed up with Tom Jones for a cover of "Kung Fu Fighting" and also participated in a Mountain Dew commercial, in which she appeared singing a minute's worth of the song "Thank Heaven for Little Girls."

Once settled in Seattle she began work on Ruby's second studio album, Short-Staffed At The Gene Pool. This album would not be released until April 2001, despite most of it completed years prior, due to several factors. Among these issues the largest were internal problems in the studio and the struggle then eventual folding of Ruby's label Creation Records in 1999, when the band (as with most of Creation's artists) was meshed into the parent label, Sony. Rankine described the situation and time frame in an interview from August 8, 2001, by Holly Day:


 * "Q: Why was there such a big gap between your last record and this new one?


 * A: Because of the people I was working with, really. I mean, the guy [Walk] I had originally been working with didn’t want to give me my record back, and held onto it for nearly a year and a half. And then when I eventually did get my record back, the American record label, Creation, folded, and I was sort of absorbed into Sony, since Creation was owned by Sony. So then I had to wait around for a year to get out of the Sony deal.


 * Q: How long ago was the record finished?


 * A: My bit was finished all the way back in 1997. I didn’t actually get my record back until June 1999, and shortly thereafter the label went down the pot. So I’ve got quite a bit of new material to try out during this tour, all written while waiting for this new album to come out."

Ruby's 2001 North American tour supporting Short-Staffed At The Gene Pool started off with a huge hitch: lost effects equipment for a group that relies heavily on effects to perform their music live. Rankine relates the story in the same 2001 interview:


 * "Q: So I heard something happened to your luggage?


 * A: Yes, it’s awful! The skycart didn’t put a tag on one piece. There were 15 pieces of luggage that were sent with us to L.A., but only 14 actually got here. The one that didn’t get the tag is apparently still flying around out there somewhere, or tied up at a different airport or something. The airline says we have no real recourse, that we’re somehow just as responsible for the missing piece as they are. It’s ironic, because that one missing piece contained all our effects units, all of our keyboards and connecting MIDI cables and power cables, and basically everything we needed to run every instrument for the tour. If they had lost any other piece of luggage we could have still pulled the tour off. If we’d lost one guitar, we’d still have another, and same with the double-bass—we have an electric that’d work just as well. But because that one piece of luggage got lost, this tour almost didn’t happen.


 * "Q: Will you be able to replace all that stuff?


 * A: Yeah, we eventually had to go buy everything we needed. We had to run around to Guitar Center and Radio Shack and some other place and buy all new stuff, so now I’m up to my eyeballs in debt. The equipment is all insured, so eventually we’ll get the money back—but still, not the greatest way to start our tour. If the equipment hadn’t been insured, I would have just turned around and gone home."

Rankine sang vocals on The Rocking Birds double album Rocking Birds on the track "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" released in 2009. Rankine currently resides on her farm in Dumfriesshire in her native Scotland.