wrote their first song together

In 1989, Ruthie Morris had recently moved to Atlanta from West Palm Beach, Florida —where she played a few shows as the guitarist for The Pockets. She attempted to play with local male musicians, but did not feel comfortable with any of them. Hopper and Morris were introduced by a mutual acquaintance and became fast friends; they wrote their first song together at Hopper’s apartment the day they met. The duo had a difficult time finding collaborators to form a complete band (as Hopper described it, “We had to beg people to come and play with us.”) The duo eventually recruited bassist Tim Lee and McNair on drums in March 1990. Lee left the band after a brief tenure and was replaced by Shannon Mulvaney, whom Morris met at a record store. The musicians named themselves Homemade Sister after a line from the film Baby Doll and released their first single—”Rip the Wreck”/” Merry “—on Safety Net Records in 1990. Displeased with their name, the band was briefly renamed Swell, before they found out a San Francisco band had the same name and then billed themselves as Swell Dopa.