Potential Enemies by Virginia Reed

Virginia Reed’s name, as the story goes, originated from the discovery of a portrait at an estate sale of a ghostly figure that founding member Keith Hendriksen felt he had encountered earlier in life—a 1940’s painting of a woman wearing, peculiarly for the time period and style of art, a cowboy hat. Where many band names seem obscure, irrelevant, or downright intentionally odd, this particular choice manages to encapsulate perfectly the band’s ominous, mysterious, vaguely dark sound.
The Los Angeles-based band’s second album, “Potential Enemies”, haunts and howls, delving into the human psyche with brooding guitar lines and intense vocals; there is a definite feeling of past struggle and ongoing turmoil being unearthed and confronted throughout. A history of vices violently spill from lyrics which reinforce everything the music already emits on its own, and carefully unravels a story that keeps itself shrouded in some ambiguity, starting with the single and opening track “What I Learned from Getting Shot” and leading deeper into a lyrical labyrinth from there with “The Denouement”, “Tie a Rope”, and ending with “The Work of a Stranger”.
All of this dark verbiage is not to say that there isn’t also an element of fun to “Potential Enemies”—there is. From the swirling, surfy guitar line at the outset of “All These People” to the upbeat drumming in “Young Punks”, Virginia Reed undoubtedly makes music that is impossibly hard not to move to.
Of course, that is a key part of what the band is able to capture about trouble: it wouldn’t be so alluring if there wasn’t something so wickedly playful about it.

-Becky DiGiglio

2005-Current

Current and past recording and live members include:
- Daniel Secuya
- Kramer Ruppe
- Sean Rodriguez
- Bobby Solano
- Dustin Krapes
- Graham Beers
- Kenn Deaton
- David Kelly
- Robert Fulps
- Jim Goodwin
- Lance Webber
- John Klein
- Miles Porcaro
- Alex Maslansky
- Jeff Watson
- Bryan Hamilton
- Grant Hendriksen
- Keith Hendriksen