By Kira L. Schlechter

In the northern part of the state of New Jersey, guitarist Dave “The RockDoc” Rosenfeld (a dentist by trade) and his drummer wife Karen were about to quit music altogether. The songwriter and singer they had had in their band wasn’t a good fit for them.

In the southern part of the state, about two hours away, singer Trybe (that’s Brianna Felice) was about to do the exact same thing – quit music. Until both sides got a phone call.

“We had a mutual friend, a booking agent/promoter that knew us both, and she reached out to us,” Trybe said in a phone interview. “She says, this guy Dave has got this original band that I think you would be great for, please hear him out. 

“And then I imagine on the other end she said the same – hey, I know this girl, she’s a great person, she’ll be a great fit for you. So she linked us up and then we had a phone conversation that led to an in-person conversation. And then the rest is history,” Trybe concluded.

That history became Black Rose Rebellion. The hard rock/metal band released their very solid debut album, “Hail the Rebel Queen” (Pavement Entertainment), May 29. Along with Trybe, Dave, and Karen, Michele Mayhem is in on bass.

Trybe started her musical journey on an instrument not commonly associated with hard rock. OK, not associated at ALL with hard rock.

“I started clarinet very young; I was still in grade school,” she said. “Guitar, piano, drums, all that stuff ran in my family already, (but) I was just really interested in the clarinet and stuck with it.

“I was very good at it – I wrote my first song on the clarinet, I was in the All South Jersey Band for clarinet. And then somewhere along the line, I started piano lessons. I don’t remember if I stopped before high school or sometime in high school, but I went as far as that music teacher was able to teach me. I never pursued any advanced piano lessons from there,” she said.

As far as singing, she called her parents, who both sang, her biggest influence.

“I couldn’t tell you when I started singing – probably when I started talking,” she said with a laugh. “Probably as soon as my vocal cords could make noise, I was probably singing a tune. In elementary school, I did chorus, choir in high school, just sang any chance I had.”

After high school, Trybe served 13 years in the U.S. Army in various capacities: the JAG Corps (that’s Judge Advocate General; the legal department of the U.S. military); in Civil Affairs; in Operation Enduring Freedom (the first stage of the war in Afghanistan); and as a drill sergeant. She has a degree in legal studies from what is now called the University of Providence in Montana and has worked as a paralegal. 

“I had thought about the military all through high school,” she said. “My grandfather was in the Navy in World War II; my brother was a high school dropout, got his GED, (and) went into the Army. Military was just kind of on my radar in my family.

“I was just looking for a challenge and to prove something to myself. I also needed a way to get through school. My senior year in high school, my parents divorced. We had no money for me to go to college – I was working three jobs for the first year and a half out of high school once I graduated. I was like, this sucks, so that’s when I finally decided to commit to the military,” she said.

It allowed her to go to college and get that degree. She said she had then wanted to go to law school, but after becoming a mom, she said her “priorities shifted.”

She left the military “officially, on paper, in the fall of 2021,” saying she “stayed in as long as they let me.” Going back to civilian life, the album bio noted, was “a challenging transition.”

“I think that’s a struggle most servicemembers encounter when they’re getting out of service,” she said. “I was medically retired; I didn’t get out voluntarily. The service tells you thanks for your service, since you’re no longer an asset to us, then they send you on your merry way, and then you’re just kind of lost.

“For some of us, soldiering is the only thing that we ever do. It’s the only thing we know we were good at, that we had a place in. I was always the kid that didn’t feel like I really fit in anywhere. I just really didn’t know where my niche was in this world. And then I earned that uniform and then that whole world was just all I wanted to be a part of,” she added.

Her husband and kids were a help, she said, but it was still a struggle to find her identity again.

“I went from like go go go all the time and having purpose, discipline, and structure and purpose,” she said. “That was my thing, that’s who I was as a person, and I just didn’t know what to do with myself.

“Now that I was left to my own devices, it gets the best of you. The mental struggles that you have, that stuff consumes you when you don’t have anything else to think about or do. When you don’t know what your purpose is anymore, you feel like your life has kind of been taken from you,” she said.

Getting back to music – and volunteering with the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization – helped her to “come back around and find my purpose again,” she said.

The songs for “Hail The Rebel Queen” were written in a back-and-forth collaborative process that neither Trybe nor Dave was accustomed to, she said,

“Dave sent me a bunch of demos that he already had, (and) I had notebooks full of poems and songs,” she said, “I would do a voice memo and send that over to him and have him write the instrumental part to what I was sending him. And then I was writing lyrics and melodies to what he was sending me. 

“It was backwards to what we were both used to. But I really appreciated that, because it pushed us outside of our boundaries and it forced us to open our minds and be a little more creative. I think it just made for a really, really great product,” she said.

She’s right on that one – it’s not just a great product, but a distinctly personal one. The opening track, “Burn It Down,” references her own past, especially in the chorus and second verse.

“The whole album is a reflection of that journey that I just talked about – my whole life of being this really insecure, introverted kid who ended up being in the military, who (then) became this very liberated, strong woman, and then fell back on her face trying to figure life out and then found it again,” she said with a laugh. “That whole journey is what this album’s about – it’s resiliency and strength and empowerment.”

She also pays homage to her mom in the track – and while she didn’t actually say “Don’t ever quit your daydream,” as the lyric goes, she was always supportive.

“She’s always encouraged me to pursue whatever it was that made me happy and also be smart about it – she would help me but not do it for me,” she said. “When I think about my relationship with my mom and the things she said to me, that phrase kind of came out.”

“Welcome to the Winner’s Circle” is equally autobiographical, speaking to past naysayers.

“Dave and Karen went through the same thing; they had a falling out with their old singer and they had naysayers as well,” she said. “When I joined this band, there was a couple of people out there that weren’t very happy about it and they tried to bully us and harass us – from calling Dave at his day job and making threats.

“It’s basically to the naysayers –  to past bandmates who used us as doormats, took advantage of us, that didn’t believe in us, that tried to bring me down. (It’s) basically saying, now you can watch me from the sidelines,” she added.

The spoken bridge is really specific in its detail of how they were wronged –  “you threw dirt on my name like it’d bury me” – and how they not only survived, but flourished – “Every win is a suture for the wounds you thought were terminal.”

“Dave put in that instrumental piece there, so when I got to the studio, I was like what are we going to do with this?” she said. “And he was like, I think you should say something. 

“We simmered on this in the studio. Over one or two Gentleman Jacks (that’s whiskey, FYI), I was just really getting in touch with the feelings of this song and I came out with this verse. What’s on the recording is the one take – it fit perfectly,” she said. 

Trybe said the bridge is directed at one person specifically.

“That was a friendship that had broken up, (someone who) really took advantage of me and used me and my family,” she said. “You were the shade when I tried to shine; you ghosted when I needed you. I was there for you, you weren’t there for me.

“So this song is my victory anthem – well-played but it’s not consuming me, it’s not phasing me. I’ve moved on and I’m doing really well and you’re not,” she added. 

The title track feels very much like a feminist anthem. Trybe says it has a much broader reach.

“I’m a feminist in the sense of men and women are equal and we can do the same things,” she said. “This is an anthem for everybody – everybody’s got a rebel queen inside of them and you just have to dig it out. You are your own advocate; you are your first line of defense and your last line of defense against anybody that tries to bring you down.”

She spoke of the song’s mythological references, particularly the Valkyrie.  

“If you die in battle, it’s the mythological warrior women who escort you to Valhalla – in the Army, whenever somebody passes away, we say ‘to Valhalla,’” she said. “That’s our way of saying strong warrior, we will see you in the afterlife.

“I’m leading from the front, telling all of these people in our rebel army you can stand up for yourself. You can do your own thing. You don’t have to toe the line anymore. You are perfectly perfect the way that you are, no matter where you are in your journey in life,” she said. 

It’s also the band’s personal anthem, she said.

“It’s that rebirth from the ashes; it’s starting over,” she said. “It’s not conforming. It’s being personally liberated and finding your purpose and your individuality.” 

The metaphor of the title, “Walk Along the Grave,” is keeping perspective – temptation or ruin is always in sight and you have to beware.

“Just picture yourself literally walking alongside a grave – are you going to allow yourself to fall in it and give up on yourself? Or are you going to keep going?,” she said. “Walk towards the horizon and give yourself another day. 

“Myself, many others, have buddies who fell into the grave and didn’t give themselves another chance. It’s definitely a song of hope and of letting go. It doesn’t matter where you came from, what environment you grew up in, you can be better and you are worth something. And it’s up to you to see that,” she said.

On a lighter note, “Dead Man Running” is pretty self explanatory – a kiss-off to that shitty guy who messed with the wrong woman.

“I was inspired by a specific person, (but) it’s a song about those people who come and go from your life, whether it’s an intimate relationship or a friendship or a business relationship,” she said. “It’s those people who come along and milk you for whatever they can get out of you and then they go along their way and leave hurt, broken people in their wake.

“So this is just reframing that very sad ideal – I got you, I see what you did, and that sucks for me, but I am going to play you harder and I’m going to make you pay and I’m going to hold you accountable for it,” she said. 

A real highlight is their blistering cover of “Toxic” (yeah, that one – by Britney, bitch). Trybe said it was Dave’s idea to do it.

“I’m not sure if he knows why he chose ‘Toxic’ other than it’s just a really cool song that everybody likes,” she said. “As we were playing, we developed it into our style.

“There’s a lot of pop songs out there that are meant to be rock songs and people don’t believe me until it gets remade into a rock song, and it fits – that song and the theme (is) very similar to ‘Dead Man Running,’” she said.

Plus it gave her a chance to experiment, she said.

“I love Britney Spears, and being able to sing it shows different elements of me vocally,” she said. “I go from that baby-doll singing in the beginning to just screaming in the bridge. It was very cathartic for me to do that song, especially when I got to screaming it – it’s just so fun and it fit the theme of the album and the rest of the songs.” 

The closing ballad, “Affliction,” was written, Trybe said, “(during) that couple years of turmoil once I got out of the service and I was going through a really hard time.”

“‘Affliction’ is me pouring my heart out to my husband and everything that I put him through – feeling like that burden, feeling like you’re the strongest man ever but I’m bringing you down,” she said. “That’s a song where I’m just crying out in guilt.” 

Now that Black Rose Rebellion has made their album debut, they’re looking for live opportunities.

“We’re in talks with a lot of different places,” she said. “Different bands have asked us to be on a ticket with them too, which is really awesome – we’ve had so much support from the other local bands. It’s a really good community. We’re just trying to figure out what makes sense and what works for us scheduling-wise.

“Dave has his own practice, (so) he can’t just pick up and go – logistically we’re still working that out. But we’re trying to take whatever opportunity we can. We want to get out in front of as many people as we can and have that dialogue with people, with fans – meet new fans, meet new people and just really get our band and our music out there,” she said.