Winona Fighter, courtesy Lindsey Byrnes.

SACRAMENTO — Years of grinding on the road as a DIY punk band are finally paying dividends for punk band Winona Fighter. The band’s rise is a throwback to a bygone era of playing as many shows to as many people as possible.

“There’s been a lot of times when we’ve played to zero people, and then there’s five people and then there’s 10 people,” guitarist Dan Fuson said recently at Aftershock Festival in Sacramento. “It’s made it easier to feel like all of this is normal.”

The momentum led to a label deal with Rise Records, festival shows across the country and the release of the band’s debut LP, My Apologies to the Chef. Winona Fighter will launch into the new year with a nationwide headlining tour, including a stop at Cornerstone in Berkeley.

“We’ve tried to not base our success off of getting a viral video on social media. We’ve really just hopped in the van!” frontwoman Chloe “Coco” Kinnon said. “It’s been years and years and years of that. It’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears, and I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.”

Fuson and Kinnon met while responding to a Craigslist ad for another band.

“We got about a half a rehearsal in and realized, ‘This ain’t it. Let’s sneak away and do something else,” Fuson said. “Quickly after, Chloe suggested we work on some of her stuff; that sounded so much better to me.”

Meanwhile, Kinnon met bassist and producer Austin Luther during a brief stint in Los Angeles. With some of the band’s early material coming together, Luther immersed himself in the project, and the trio came together.

“I was like, ‘I’ll play bass for you guys,’” Luther said. “I’m here, I’ve already got my bass; it’s cool.”

“We didn’t ask!” Kinnon shot back.

Kinnon created community where one didn’t exist. Growing up in Boston, she was surrounded by punk and a tight-knit ecosystem of bands and fans that flourished in the city. Later, she moved to Nashville.

“Nashville was a major shellshock, because you hear Music City, and you know a lot of it is country. But when I moved there in 2015, it was, like, just country music,” Kinnon said. “It’s not like the melting pot it is now.”

Playing with Winona Fighter, Kinnon helped to cultivate a welcoming and inclusive punk scene in the city, one that continues to grow.

“I was like, ‘Well, someone’s gotta do it!’” Kinnon said. “I just felt like it was important to create that sense of community that I loved. I think we’ve done a pretty good job of keeping our heads down and creating something that we’re really proud of, and I feel proud to relate to the scene that I grew up in.”

Now, as for the elephant in the room: the band name, which was one of the most difficult decisions the trio made at the outset. It was originally Luther’s idea, and yes, he had one of Petaluma’s most famous former residents on the brain.

“One evening, I was hanging on the couch, maybe a little stoned, and I was thinking of bands like The Dandy Warhols … that have done spins off celebrities,” Luther said. “I wondered if anyone had ever done anything with Winona Ryder—’Is Winona Fighter cool?'”

Kino wasn’t sure but didn’t reject it. The next day, the two went hiking and again started wondering whether whether the name worked.

“It’s the perfect balance of aggressive and feminine, which I think describes all of us,” Kinnon said.

Despite the growing success of their band, Kinnon said she found herself down in the dumps and not sure how to process negative feelings when she should be happy.

“The dream was happening, but personally I was just going through it mentally,” she said. “If I’m feeling this, it means I’m not grateful for all the good stuff happening with the band.”

That’s what single “Swear to God that I’m (FINE)” is about. She still grapples with with those feelings but now she realizes that it’s a universal feeling.

Winona Fighter had plenty of freedom while creating My Apologies to the Chef, and Kinnon said that space helped the trio get creative. Rise Records didn’t want to change the band’s DIY aesthetic. Their assignment was to do it how they would have otherwise worked and to let the label know when they were done.

“There’s a fear in signing with a label when you’re a DIY band. You start releasing stuff and people say ‘Oh, this doesn’t sound like them, they totally sold out,’ and that’s not our situation at all,” she said.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at mikedewald.bsky.social.