Many kids could never visualize being in a band with their dad. Of course, most of those kids don’t have a father who also plays in legendary Northwest garage rock band The Kingsmen.

Despite sometimes sporting a towering Mohawk, Lexxi Vexx is not a one-dimensional singer. The Salem band KNOWN ONLY AS Lexxi Vexx covers some old pre-punk rock, such as Iggy and the Stooges' “I Want To Be Your Dog,” as well as originals. Garage rock, blues, and soul are also thrown into the mix.

Lexxi Vexx consists of Vexx, age 22 (“not my real name, but I’d have to kill you if I told you”), her dad, Tod McPherson (also known as Todzilla or Pappy to her) on lead guitar. Tod has played in the Kingsmen since 1992, a Northwest garage rock band that popularized the song "Louie, Louie" in the sixties. The drummers alternate between Stevie, also a drummer for the Kingsmen, and Brian Johnson, who sits in with them regularly. Scott Bickford plays bass and Barry Curtis, an original guitarist from the Kingsmen, will sometimes join them.

“He’s my mentor and just the coolest, filthiest old cat you’d ever want to meet and knows everything there is to know about music, starting in 1920 and going up to 1977,” Lexxi said of Curtis.

Lexxi started playing guitar when she was about 13 and started writing her own music around the same time.

“Dad was a little reluctant to show me the ropes or be my teacher. He would show me a song here or there. He wanted to see if this was something I was into,” she said. “I was one of four girls and wanted to be daddy’s little girl, the tomboy. Since he wasn’t into baseball, it turned into a musical thing."

Although it was a rough start, she had a plethora of experienced mentors to guide her.

“I started writing tunes and they were terrible. At 13, what can you write about? It just progressed and every couple of months, Stevie and Barry would come to the house for whatever gigs they would play and they would check in on my progress. They’d sit in with me and play and talk to me about what I was into. I’d learn more in the five minutes I’d spend playing guitar with Barry than six months of guitar lessons.”

Tod influenced her early musical taste, but she eventually branched off.

“We broke our teeth on the Beatles, all the girls did, but for me when it became a 'me and Dad' thing, was Jimi Hendrix and then Led Zeppelin. Then one day me and my little sister decided we wanted to be punk rockers and cut the sleeves off our t-shirts and got into safety pins and patches and everything. Dad thought that was pretty cool."

Her father seized the opportunity to introduce her to The Sonics, the band that he and others feel are the founders of punk rock.

"He played me the song The Witch. It changed my life. It was actually recorded in 1963. I think if there weren’t The Sonics, there wouldn’t be any Stooges, MC5, and no punk rock.”

The band Lexxi Vexx formed in Lexxi’s senior year of high school. In her opinion, Salem's up-and-coming bands are too focused on identifying a niche rather than rocking.

While she's not overly concerned about the labels people want to attach to the band's music, one sure way to anger Lexxi Vexx is to compare her to a certain singer.

“I get compared to Janis Joplin a lot, because I cover a Janis Joplin song. When it starts to get to Blondie, or Pink … Pink is someone that upsets me. I blacked one of my friends' eyes [for comparing me to Pink]. I didn’t expect to hit him that hard, but it was a vulnerable moment. It’s not that I think she’s a bad musician per se, but I have no emotions attached to Pink," she said.

She may not like labels, but she isn't opposed to living into one.

The band is hoping for a European tour in the near future.

“If we could get an opening spot for someone, that’s kind of what we’re after,” Lexxi said.

In the meantime, don’t request a Pink song at the local shows.