Tish Ciravolo

Early years

Ciravolo grew up in Merced, California, where her best friend Barbara taught her to play guitar while they were still in high school. The young Ciravolo—whose first exposure to a female playing rock bass was Suzi Quatro as Leather Tuscadero on Happy Days—was a quick learner and by age 16 was on tour with a band called Plateau.

When Plateau ended up playing in Kansas City, she decided to stay there and enrolled in Penn Valley Community College as a journalism and business major. After receiving her degree, she relocated to Los Angeles, where she balanced a series of day jobs (waitress at Duke’s Coffee Shop, temp positions, assistant to Jay Leno and his former manager, the late Helen Kushnick, to name a few) with amateur night performances at The Improv and Comedy Store.

Intent on being a rock star during the middle 1980s, she gravitated towards what would become her primary instrument, the bass. Like her influences Simon Gallup and Tim Butler, she played with a pick. “They kicked me out of the Dick Grove Music School after five minutes,” she recalls, “because I didn’t want to play with my fingers.”

Bands

Ciravolo played in several bands over the years, including Rag Dolls, The Velvets (a female Psychedelic Furs-type outfit), They Eat Their Own (new wave pop), and eventually, her own group, Shiksa and the Sluts. Then she entered her “big hair metal phase,” as the bass player for the band Lypstik from 1988 to 1992. “We had a billboard on the side of the Roxy and everything,” she says. “We did the windmill head shaking routine when we played, which was big at the time. We were also house band at the Whisky for a time, and played in the Battle of the Bitches at FM Station.” Finding other creative outlets, Ciravolo also made two independent films (The Wake, and Birds & The Bees) and wrote sitcom with partner Karen Peterson.

In her early 30s, Ciravolo chose to put her bass down for a while and have a family.

“Through all those years of playing music, of great success and crushing disappointment, I always had so much fun,” Ciravolo says. “It’s physical, it’s artistic, and it’s who I am at heart. These days, I’m in this punk band called sASSafrASS, and we do covers like “Cherry Bomb” by The Runaways plus original material. I’m kind of over the whole ‘getting the record deal thing,’ and it’s more fun than I ever had before. If I got a record deal now, it would probably interfere with everything I’m doing with Daisy Rock.”

Daisy Rock

Since being founded in 2000, Daisy Rock has increased in size, with 2006 sales reaching $2.4 million and Daisy Rock guitars and basses available in more than 25 countries worldwide. The catalog includes acoustic and acoustic-electric guitars, electric guitars, and electric basses in a vibrant selection of colors. The company offers an ample range of models from popular lines such as the Butterfly, Daisy, Heartbreaker, Star, Pixie, Wildwood, Stardust Elite, Stardust Retro-H, Tom Boy, and Rock Candy series. 2007 marked the launch of the Stardust Retro-H De-Luxe Series, the Rebel Rockit Series, and the new Rock Candy Custom Special Bass. 2007 also marked the release of the very special Rock Candy Pink Label guitar that was hand crafted in the USA by John Carruthers.

Publications