Kelly Ogden, The Dollyrots’ Night Owl, Embraces Motherhood, Music, and Tour Life with Kids

by Marisa Torrieri Bloom

The Dollyrots had an incredible run in the early 2000s, with Kelly Ogden, the punk duo’s lead singer/bassist, and her husband, guitarist Luis Cabezas, living a life in Los Angeles that eclipsed their wildest dreams.

The high school sweethearts, who relocated to California from their home state of Florida after college, became mainstays in L.A.’s emerging “Kiss or Kill” music scene, played the Vans Warped Tour, acted on CSI: NY, and signed with Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records. That partnership ultimately fueled their 2007 breakout hit, “Because I’m Awesome” — a catchy, cheeky, empowering anthem that made The Dollyrots a household name.

So in 2013, after years of touring and recording — with a couple of different drummers — Ogden, who was 8 or 9 months pregnant with her first child with Cabezas, figured it was time to take a break.

“We sold our tour van, and we were getting ready to get rid of our rehearsal space in downtown LA,” Ogden tells me over a Zoom call from her home in Tampa, which she shares with Cabezas and their two children, ages 9 and 6. It’s a sunny, late August afternoon, and they’re in school while we’re chatting about all the things: mom life, PTA fundraisers, and the band’s upcoming shows on the third leg of their Year of The Bunny tour in celebration of their new full-length studio album, Night Owls, which drops Friday, October 13, on Wicked Cool Records.

“We just weren’t sure what was coming,” she continues. “But then, right at the very end of my pregnancy, we got offered Black Flag dates in Southern California! And yeah, and we’re like, alright, we’ll try!”

Once Ogden stepped onstage again in 2014, post-C-section, the self-doubt faded. She felt like herself again — albeit a teeny bit different, physically. But in those first few moments on the stage, armed with her electric bass, Ogden was same sunny, punk-loving girl she’d always been since she and Cabezas started their first band at the New College of Florida, in Sarasota. She was awesome — and she certainly wasn’t ready to retire.

“When I became a mom, I definitely had this, like, crashing sense of like, ‘oh, no, I can’t do this anymore, I’m a mom now,’” Ogden recalls. “The ‘getting on stage’ is the really hard part. And then once you’re about 30 seconds in, it’s like, ‘Oh right, I know this person! I can do this!’ It just kind of comes together.” She laughs. “It was, like, my only time I didn’t have a baby on my boob!”

If anything, The Dollyrots’ post-parenthood band is the strongest iteration to date. Shortly after their son River was born, their record Barefoot and Pregnant — which The Dollyrots wrote and recorded during Ogden’s pregnancy — was released through the band’s own label on February 18, 2014, and debuted at #7 on Billboard Magazine’s Heatseekers Chart.

By the time their second child, daughter Daisy, was born in 2016, they’d outfitted a new RV with a co-sleeping area, which doubled as a kid-friendly “green room” during tour stops. It also helped that by then they’d moved back home to the Tampa area from LA to be closer to family and friends who could babysit.

“Those were some of my favorite tours we ever did when they were babies,” she recalls.

But just as Ogden and Cabezas were getting the parenthood-band-tour thing down, Covid happened. And between homeschooling their two young children in isolation to sleeping and working in shifts — Ogden had just started deejaying for Sirius XM — life got hard. Finding time to write and play music together became more challenging. Not playing live shows with other bands or connecting with fans in live-music settings dampened their spirits. The songs they wrote felt like fragmented, siloed bits of verses and choruses that lacked cohesion.

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Things started looking up in 2021, as “normal” life slowly resumed, and The Dollyrots began booking multiple shows. Inspiration flowed, and after a five-day period of concentrated songwriting, The Dollyrots were ready to lay down tracks. By the time Ogden and Cabezas flew out to Minneapolis to record Night Owls with longtime producer John Fields, the fog had lifted.

That’s probably why their forthcoming release, Night Owls, is loaded with some of their best and most kinetic material to date. The title track “Night Owl” — inspired by Ogden’s love of the wee hours — is catchy, classic pop-punk Dollyrots, with a distorted-guitar riff chugging atop a cowbell-kissed drumbeat, and Ogden’s sweet, sunny vocals taking a sexy turn in the pre-chorus. There’s a mirthful cheekiness throughout tracks like “Hot Mom with the Skinny Pants On,” which is so relatable to those of us working the kiddie-playdate circuit.

The first single, “Hey Girl,” is so much fun, too, evoking ’90s band Veruca Salt or early Katy Perry. It’s co-produced by Stevie Van Zandt (aka Little Steven), a fitting collaboration, considering Ogden’s side hustle as a DJ on Little Steven’s Underground Garage on Sirius XM satellite radio, 4 a.m.-8 a.m., Monday to Friday. (Side note: If 4 a.m.’s too early for you, check out The Kelly Ogden Show’s femme-leaning New Music Spotlight Spotify playlist).  

One thing I love about Night Owls is that the bouncier, more upbeat tracks are nicely counterbalanced with weightier material like “When We’re Sober.” I also love “The Vow,” a sweet song that reminds listeners that The Dollyrots wouldn’t exist if teenage Ogden hadn’t asked her then-platonic buddy Cabezas to teach her how to play the guitar. She initially wanted to impress a crush but ended up falling for Cabezas instead.

“I think I’m very, very lucky in life, and I just I appreciate everything,” Ogden tells me. “When you live life with a lot of gratitude, then things come better. I think you get what you put out and I try to be positive. I have times of deep sadness, but, you know, overall, life is really good.”

Marisa Torrieri Bloom is the editor and founder of Rockmommy.