Stevi Daft

At age 7, Stevi Daft had a serious bone to pick with her younger sister: lil’ sis’ percussions were all off-beat on their homemade cassette recordings, and that simply did not live up Stevi’s standards for her own music. Even when the drum set was a pot and pencil. These standards grew with her aversion to the mediocre. Her whole life turned upside down when she muscled the courage to move to Los Angeles, where she came out as a gay woman— unfathomable during her conservative Christian upbringing in Burlington, Iowa. And one of the reasons she ultimately left, driving 2,000 miles with her record collection filling up the entire trunk: PJ Harvey, Patti Smith, Led Zeppelin and Heart at the top of the pile.