Grunge isn’t dead: Leadpetal shreds alt-rock music across the Lehigh Valley

ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Below the five-story Fegley’s Allentown Brew Works building at 812 Hamilton St., in a quiet corridor, sits the entrance to the Silk Lounge.

Accessible only through a side exit past the Brew Works’ first-floor bar, the alternative club-like venue for comedy shows and music is distanced away from the restaurant and formal upstairs event spaces.

But on March 27, the Silk Lounge turned into a punk rocker’s haven — a one-way ticket to the 610 Fest, an annual festival spotlighting local rock music.

More than 70 people shuffled into the underground lair, on the threshold of the 75-person capacity limit. More than a third of the crowd were members of one of the 10 bands performing.

As indie artist Christina Giacoletti strummed her set’s final notes, Bella Calamia and Sam Marencik of Leadpetal walked onstage as the bill’s fourth act. Calamia flashed silver chains, bracelets and rings as distorted notes bellowed from her guitar. Like a crescendo, each noise grew louder, awakening the previously sleepy crowd.

On cue from Marencik’s bass drum kicks, Calamia shredded the opening riffs of their first song. As the raucous chords filled the air, hordes of people in leather jackets bolted down the stairs, with the door slamming behind them. 

Throughout the set, Calamia sprinted to both ends of the crowd, her rhinestone-engraved guitar strap dazzling at each turn. Marencik bashed her half-open hi-hat, echoing sloshy metallic sounds across the lounge.

This raucous style has always been Leadpetal’s signature sound — they play loud, fast and often. Now led by just Calamia on guitar and Marencik on drums, Leadpetal is a Lehigh Valley female alt-rock band that has persevered despite a rotating cast of members.

Before she would perform across the Lehigh Valley, it took time before Calamia found her musical performing niche. 

Through high school, she had a “classical music upbringing,” she said, practicing and performing piano. Around the same time, she also tried to learn guitar, but gave up after struggling to play barre chords.

“I like music in general, I listen to all kinds of (genres),” Calamia said. “But grunge, it just happened to me — I just had a connection to it.”

On campus, she immersed herself in grunge subculture; captivated by Nirvana’s live MTV concert, “Unplugged in New York,” and Alice in Chains’ cameo in the film “Singles.” 

So when her father gifted her a guitar after she graduated from college, she had newfound motivation to give the instrument another try. 

“Kurt Cobain made the guitar seem so approachable,” Calamia said. “After watching (grunge shows) and seeing (that) you can make mistakes, you can be messy, it’s still fun, and people will still enjoy it — it was inspiring.”

Guitar in tow, she moved to the Lehigh Valley in 2023. There, she met Becca Buhler, the former camp director for Lehigh Valley Girls Rock — a nonprofit empowering cisgender women, nonbinary and transgender individuals through music — who was hanging up band camp flyers.

Calamia was hooked.

She enrolled in the Band Factory, a fundraising program for LVGR that groups strangers into bands. There, she met Grace Young, who became Leadpetal’s first bassist. Alongside Emma Bockrath, the three practiced, wrote songs and performed their first live show as part of the Band Factory’s camp-ending showcase.

“After we played that showcase, it solidified (to me), like yes, I want to be in a band,” Calamia said. “This is the only thing I really want to do.”

Although Bockrath would go on to pursue a career as a solo musician after that show, Calamia and Young agreed to play together after camp. The two drove to a show in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, and recruited percussion major Tarrah Bilto to be their new drummer.

Combining grunge influences with riot-grrrl energy, the trio took their overdriven guitars and screaming vocals on the road, traveling across dive bars and clubs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey for over a year. In April 2025, they released “Glass Teeth,” the group’s only studio album.

However, in the subsequent months, Calamia was left alone. Bilto moved away; Young pursued opportunities performing in pit orchestras.

At that year’s 610 Fest, Calamia was in attendance, but not as a performer. The following year, she said Marencik stepping up allowed her to take the stage once again.

And after Leadpetal ended their second song at Silk, Marencik didn’t let the crowd react before slamming her crash cymbal to open the next song.

As Leadpetal’s current drummer, Marencik has always led a musical life. She excelled as a saxophonist and studied woodwinds in college. Currently, Marencik is a general music teacher at South Mountain Middle School in Allentown — one of her dream jobs.

But another dream, one she kept since she was a child watching “Hannah Montana” and playing Guitar Hero, was to be a rock star. Through her younger sister Jordan’s connections to Leadpetal, that dream would come closer to reality.

Jordan Marencik, Sam’s sister, became the band’s hairstylist after a haircut appointment with Young led to regular consultations for the other two members. While working at the Eskandalo Salon in South Side Bethlehem, she also booked Leadpetal’s first live show in the neighboring thrift store.

“When I first saw (Leadpetal) perform, I just fell in love with their sound,” Sam Marencik said. “I was like, ‘This is rock. I want to rock out.’”

And when Calamia’s search to find a new drummer stalled, a determined Sam Marencik purchased a drum kit off Facebook Marketplace — the date, July 24, still circled on her calendar — and began practicing in her childhood home’s basement.

“I did not want Leadpetal to die,” she said. “Not on my watch (is) this band going out. Whatever I gotta do, I will do.”

Jordan Marencik said she remembers hearing loud clanging noises downstairs that scattered the house cats. To her surprise, she saw her sister lugging a bass drum into the basement. 

Learning from scratch, Sam Marencik repeatedly blasted Leadpetal’s music by sections and at slower speeds to comprehend the notes and rhythms of each song. Occasionally, she’d watch session recordings of Bilto drumming, keenly watching her arm movements to connect drums to their corresponding sounds.

“She blasted Leadpetal nonstop for days,” Jordan Marencik said. “I think she became Leadpetal’s top listener because of that short amount of time learning.”

While she may have been surprised by her sister’s basement practice sessions, Jordan Marencik said her relentless effort to learn the craft was on-brand. She said throughout life, her sister has been “unstoppable” in learning new skills, even completing firefighter training just to prove she could.

Just a month later, as the 2025 school year began in September, South Mountain Middle School’s general music teacher played her first official Leadpetal show. 

Even now, Sam Marencik said she’s always looking to improve. At shows, she musters the courage to talk shop with other drummers regarding different sound techniques and feedback, and still hears new rhythms in Bilto’s recordings. She’s even incorporated stick-gestured choreography into live performances.

Jordan Marencik, who stands front and center for every Leadpetal gig, said she’s most proud of seeing her sister grow into a charismatic and fearless performer.

“(Bella and Sam) both get the fear of being up (onstage), and like to talk about it, especially with teaching other people getting into the community,” she said. “I think (Sam Marencik) is inspiring a lot of people, and inspiring Bella too.”

The group is currently actively recruiting a bassist. Naturally, they’d prefer a woman to continue their LVGR roots. Calamia, however, has never wanted to pigeonhole Leadpetal as a “girl band.”

She believes anybody can make music in any scene. And for themselves, the two would rather let their riff-heavy sound do the talking. 

Concluding their set at 610 Fest, Calamia leapt onto Sam Marencik’s bass drum, holding the final note. She jumped, pulled back her guitar strings and exchanged a smile with her drummer as she landed. The backdrop slowly faded to black to queue up the next act.

As the cheers and applause for the duo subsided to mere murmurs, all that remained were distant footsteps climbing up the stairs.