Local female musicians take to the stage for Femme Fest

Femme Fest 2025 spotlights women musical artists on Saturday when a handful of solo and duo players take the stage at 4 p.m. at T & Jay’s Bar, 6351 Zebulon Rd.

The festival was owner Terry Landry’s idea, with several of the musicians and others involved pitching in to get the whole thing organized.

Featured acts are Ginger Brown, Annamarie, Mom Brain and Paige Cait.

“I don’t think there’s really a headliner,” Brown said. “We’re all just area musicians who love to play and this is a chance to highlight what women are doing in music around here. I volunteered to go first and am doing two hours beginning at 4 p.m. and the others are doing about an hour or so sets following that. I appreciate Terry making room for us because music is such a male-dominated culture, especially in the local scene. It’s nice to have a special event to show what we have to offer.”

Brown said there’ll be a variety of styles presented, including covers and original music. There will be a lot of covers from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s through to modern tunes with classic rock, indie, pop, R&B and other styles represented. 

According to plans early in the week, the order of performers following Brown is Annamarie, Mom Brain then Cait with their roughly one-hour sets.

Brown said she’s been playing since the ‘90s, but intervening decades have included life and family taking precedence over performing her own creations like “Thank You Joline,” her take on a sequel to Dolly Parton’s hit. She said it amounts to being, “Thank you, Joline, for stealing my man – which turned out to be a great blessing after all.”

The whole lineup is noteworthy, but you must admit there’s one name that stands out: Mom Brain.

Comprised of sisters Lucy Kemp and Alma Fely, née Lucy and Alma Pardo, the two originally played together in a nearly all-female Middle Georgia band called Porcelain back in the ‘90s. Other members were Natalie Roberts, Kelly Wallace and Scott Collier.

Kemp played drums and Fely bass.

People talk about something being in the Ocmulgee water that makes Macon such a musically prodigious town. Along somewhat similar lines, there seems to be something about the Kemp/Fely/Pardo DNA. Their bent toward music and the arts runs deep.

Let’s start with their grandparents. Kemp told me back in the day, her grandmother and her grandmother’s sister sang with famed Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat. They were known as the Peralta Twins. A grandfather sang and played guitar in mariachi bands.

The music bug didn’t skip Kemp and Fely’s parents. Their dad, Dr. Alfonso Pardo, played guitar and their mother, who became Linda Manfreda, played keyboards and later took up bass.

Kemp started playing drums when she was 15 and Fely began playing bass the same year at 12.

The Pardos moved from Marietta to Warner Robins in Kemp’s junior year and she graduated from Warner Robins High School in 1992 and Fely in 1995. 

Before I get back to Mom Brain itself, I have to continue with the family tree and the two sisters’ kids. Talent seems to only compound with them.

After high school, Fely took off to California to pursue music, where she and her husband, Tom, were in a band called Loss Ratio. They have two children. 

“My kids grew up listening to us play in our band, so they get their love of music from both me and their father,” Fely said. “My daughter, Vianne, grew up loving to sing. Lately, she just sang lead in the musical ‘Ghosts’ with Warner Robins Little Theatre. In California, we led worship and sang in our church together and that’s where I switched from bass to guitar, which is what I play in Mom Brain. My son Stephen plays guitar and has surpassed me. Now I go to him to show me chords.”

The Kemps have four kids. Back in the Porcelain days, Kemp kept running into this other local band, competing against them in battles of the bands and such. She ended up falling in love and marrying their drummer, Chris Kemp, who today is an electrical contractor and operates HoCo Power.

Shocking, right? A drummer marrying a drummer.

Their son Evan plays piano and recently completed service in the U.S. Air Force, settling in Nebraska as a fiber optics project manager.

Another son, Christian, just completed his first year at Berklee College of Music in Boston, studying music business, production and film scoring. He’s spending his summer in Los Angeles working as a keyboard accompanist to an “American Idol” vocal contestant.

Their daughter, Hanna, is successfully following her childhood ambition to be an actor, having starred in commercials and independent films. She’s at work now as a lead character in a feature-length film. She also sings, plays piano, composes music and writes scripts. She’s used her considerable talents through the years to both act and direct with the Perry Players.

Their son, Brandon, works with his dad at Hoco Power and fronts the band KEMP on vocals and keyboards.

That’s right, as well as Mom Brain, most of the Kemp family is part of a group where their dad gets to play drums again.

Get why I think something is going on with all these guys’ DNA?

So, how in the world did the two sisters come up with Mom Brain?

“With our kids grown and Alma moving back to Georgia from California, the two of us somehow decided to start playing together,” Kemp said. “At first, we thought about a whole band where I would play drums, but we started getting offers to play as a duo so to keep it acoustic, I started playing a drum box, a cajon.

“As for the name, we were on the phone one day and Alma had a lapse of memory – couldn’t think of a word or something – and excused herself by saying something like, ‘Uh oh, mom brain.’”

They laughed and thought the term was perfect for them. Then, when an offer came out of the blue for them to play their first gig, they were stuck for an actual name so just ran with Mom Brain. They’ve played for the past couple of years at clubs and events.

“Right now, we’re just doing covers of songs but hope to write in the future and maybe adapt some of the old Porcelain songs,” Kemp said. “We started with favorites from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s but added some modern stuff our kids would like too. We’re not out to be famous or make a lot of money like we once hoped, we’re just enjoying the music and audiences and Alma and I are loving playing with each other again. It’s kind of therapeutic.”

And Kemp said she’s excited to be linking up with more and more female artists.

But again, how about that whole family talent thing?

“I don’t know, I guess it really is in our genes,” she said. “Chris and I being drummers and him being creative in drawing and humor and improvising. He was great at playing character roles with the Perry Players after Hanna pulled the whole family into that. We like to laugh and have always had fun as a family. It’s just part of who we are.”

Along with musicians at Femme Fest, organizers said they also plan to have female artists, jewelry makers and others showcasing their work.

You can find and follow Mom Brain on Instagram as @mombrain.official.

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com. Find him on Instagram as michael_w_pannell.