Lauren “LG” Gilbert doesn’t just want to rock. She wants to leave you with no choice but to feel something — deeply.

Borrowing a motto from the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown, LG lives by the rule that “people should either want to fuck you or fight you” after a show. Leading Thelma and the Sleaze, her unapologetically queer, all-female rock band from Nashville, she’s been living by this mantra since 2010, ripping up the stage and pushing boundaries every chance she gets.

Fresh off their latest release, “Holey Water” (available for digital purchase on Bandcamp), Thelma and the Sleaze is here to remind listeners that rock isn’t dead — it’s just been taking backroads. But LG has strong feelings about how fans consume music today. “If you’re just listening on Spotify, you’re just paying someone else to fuck us,” she said, making her feelings about streaming services painfully clear. To her, streaming is like ordering chips and cheese at Taco Bell — quick, cheap, and leaving no one satisfied. “But if you buy the album on Bandcamp, that’s like getting a Nachos BellGrande and a big Chalupa. You’re gonna get full for a couple of hours, and I’m gonna get full,” she said with a laugh, turning the comparison into a masterclass in how to support independent artists. In LG’s world, nothing short of all-in dedication will do.

That take-no-prisoners attitude has been her signature since the band’s creation. LG formed Thelma and the Sleaze in 2010 after reaching her limit in another band. “I was like, ‘You can either be in a band with the lead singer of this band or you can be in a band with me, because she’s driving me nuts.’ And they chose to be in a band with me,” she said. That decision marked LG’s first foray into singing, shifting from rhythm guitar to commanding the stage as the lead vocalist and guitarist.

For a while, the lineup was steady, but by 2016, LG shifted gears. With a packed schedule of shows a year, flexibility became crucial. “I tour 120 shows a year and I need a band,” she said. “So if you’re not available, you’re not doing the tour, but if you are available, that’s good too.” Thelma and the Sleaze became more of an idea than a fixed group — a rotating roster of badass musicians ready to take on the road whenever LG needed them.

And make no mistake, Thelma and the Sleaze is all LG. “She’s all mine. I write all the songs. I arrange all the songs,” she said. From writing, to tracking demos, to hiring musicians for studio sessions, it’s all LG’s vision. “She’s my baby.”

Even the band’s name is soaked in attitude and a little bit of chaos. One day, while grabbing something from their van, one of her bandmates mistook LG for an intruder and prepared to attack her with a phone charger cord.

“I was like, ‘So you wouldn’t run for help or call the police, you would choke someone?’ And she was like, ‘Hell yeah!’ I was like, ‘That’s some Thelma and Louise shit’ and she was like ‘Nah, that’s Thelma and the Sleaze shit.’” And just like that, Thelma and the Sleaze was born.

“If we ever start another band, let’s call it Thelma and the Sleaze,” LG had said at the time. And they did.

At first, the band leaned hard into a trashy aesthetic — car parts on stage, over-the-top costumes, aiming to channel the aesthetic of ‘Thelma and Louise.’ But over time, that attitude evolved into something bigger, a symbol of defiance. “It’s like a bunch of women kind of fucking the system and challenging the status quo and the patriarchy,” LG said.

Thelma and the Sleaze isn’t just a band, it’s a movement.

“Going out into the unknown and kind of fending for themselves like cowgirls,” she said.

For LG, it all comes down to giving people a killer show. “Every time I get on stage, because we do only go to places once a year, my goal is to just set the bar,” she said, always striving for greatness. “I hire the best women I could possibly hire, I write the best songs I could possibly write, and I put on the best show that I can possibly put on.”

And when LG says they’re a rock band, she means it. “We’re not a punk band, we’re not a Riot Grrl Brand, we’re a fucking Rock and Roll band,” she said firmly. With their swagger, charisma, and sex appeal, the band owns the stage like a group that lives and breathes rock. “That’s how the music makes us feel. I try to perpetuate that out and project that out to the audience.”

Still, as a woman in the male-dominated rock world, LG knows the deck is stacked. “It’s always been my opinion that there are only three ways that women can be successful in Rock and Roll,” she said, pointing out the limited roles women are expected to fill — sad girlfriend types, heroin chic rockers pandering to the male gaze, or musicians like Stevie Nicks, who write all the hits but don’t get full credit. But Thelma and the Sleaze? They’re on a different wavelength.

“We don’t do that. And that is I think partly why we haven’t ever broken through,” she said. “We fucking play well-thought-out, sometimes aggressive but aggressive in a way that is sexual.”

And when it comes to all-female bands, LG has some words. “I wish that more all-female bands [...] would challenge themselves more, I wish they would raise the bar and not just settle for what they know people are going to like,” she said. She’s not here for novelty acts or superficial moves — Thelma and the Sleaze is built on something deeper.

LG is also fiercely protective of her band’s image. “You’re never gonna find a picture of ‘Thelma and the Sleaze’ looking up at the camera like they’re about to give a blow job,” she said, cutting straight to the point. And she’s not interested in using her platform to focus on the struggles of being a woman in rock. “I am celebrating excellence,” she said, turning the conversation to all the badass female musicians out there.

That frustration extends beyond gender dynamics, too. “I wouldn’t want to be successful in an industry that thinks Phoebe Bridgers is a rock artist,” she said, calling out what she sees as a watering-down of rock. “After all of these great artists like PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney and [Fur] Dixon and all these great all female Rock and Roll bands, Fanny, Versa, like that’s what they think women who play Rock and Roll are supposed to look and sound like?”

Simply getting up on stage is a political act for LG and her band. “What we’ve done as women and as queer women, unfortunately, even without us trying is political,” she said. The mere act of taking the stage is a statement in itself.

At the end of the day, LG’s mission is to give people a killer show and leave them thinking, feeling, maybe even a little shaken up. And, as she puts it, if she pisses off a few “right-wing idiots” along the way? That’s just a bonus.