Throw the Kittie a Bone

After a year-and-a-half of marathon touring in support of their sophomore LP Oracle and recent industrial-remix / live stuff EP, Safe, Kittie are wrapping up the last leg of their tour in Chico at the one and only Brick Works on Sunday, February 16th. The band has met a great deal of adversity over their short career - coming to public attention as an unheard of all-chick black metal band, but quickly facing lineup changes and an apathetic record label. After taking a minute to get up the nervous courage to call Kittie frontwoman Morgan Lander - the black metal chick I want to both birth and then eat my babies - I dialed her number shakily and luckily found her in the middle of a Phil-Anselmo-sized hangover. Meow!

How are you doin'?
I'm all right - just waking up, starting the day. Everybody had a little bit of a wild night last night. We were in Dallas and we went over to the Clubhouse, which is Pantera's strip club and…beat our brains with liquor.

Sweet. What's your favorite drink?
Well, I was drinking red wine last night.

The good stuff or the Franzia boxed variety?
It was the cheap Ryder wine.

Jug of the Julio Gallo?
Yeah that's what it was. Seriously, I was drinking that.

Gnarly. How did you come to work with Sascha of KMFDM?
Initially, when we came up with the idea to do a remix, we had written a list of people who would probably be very plausible - and some of them very implausible - and said, "Hey, maybe we can try to work this out and try to get a hold of some of these people," and I guess the most appropriate one was right in our backyard. We share the same merchandising company, we work with the same people, know the same people, so it was really easy to just say, "Hey can you get Sascha's number, and we'll propose this remix and see how he reacts," and it was fairly easy. He was a really easygoing guy, great to talk to. Obviously he has many, many skills in his art form. We pretty much gave everything to him and said, "It's in your court. Do whatever you want." He did his thing. He's been doing this sort of thing for over 10 years now so he's got a good reputation. He's done a lot of remixes for other bands.
We wanted it to be a surprise. I think it's the beauty of getting another outside perspective of the song. Initially, Safe was one entity, and it's kinda neat to hear someone else's perspective on things and someone else's take, especially when they're doing a whole different side of music.

What spurred the interest in bringing industrial music into the mix more than you have in the past?
It was just something that we'd never done before. Its important to keep people guessing and it's not something that I think we're looking into as doing full-time or getting more heavily into. That's definitely not what this band's heart and soul really is. We really liked the way that it turned out and I don't think we'd be opposed to sticking a remix on a B-side or as a bonus on the end of the next album. But, I don't think it will be popping up into all of our songs any time soon.

Besides a few phenomenal bands here and there, the metal scene seems more stagnant than ever. Would you agree?
I think in terms of popularity and visibility in the mainstream…definitely, there's not a lot going on. It had a little bit of a resurgence during that nü-metal thing, which is kind of an isolated incident. A band would be rapping and playing metal and kids would finally wake up and think, "Hey, I'm ready to get into something heavier." But that's gone out the window, 'cause that got old real quick. I think now what we have to do as music lovers is dig deep for bands. There's lots of stuff underground, lots of bands that are connected - that are friends and tour a lot together and are in scenes. You've gotta dig deep into those scenes and find the smaller bands and I think that's probably the way. Someone's gonna have to get big eventually. Everybody's finding out about this great band on a small label. Usually that's the way that things start - from there everybody starts to build on that.

How is Kittie staying relevant within the context of this more-quiet-than-ever scene?
We're a band that's not afraid to voice our opinion. We're not afraid to really show our influences and what we're learning and to actually be a heavy metal band to that full extent. A lot of people come up to me and say, "Hey, there's not a lot of bands that can be considered a heavy metal act that are touring and playing in front of this many people." We're doing between 500 and 1000 people a night. I'm not one to dictate why we're relevant and why not. But, it's obvious that there is something still very, very important about what we're doing if a year-and-a-half after we've released a full-length album people are still coming out to see us. [They're] still appreciating the live shows, still appreciating what we're doing for music and even the whole "women's" side of things - if people want to get into that, that's cool. I think people are just happy that there's still a metal band that will refuse to stop touring.

Is there any hope of seeing Kittie back on the Ozzfest lineup this year?
I would love to. It would be a great opportunity; I think that's up to the powers that be in Ozzfest, really. Hopefully we can make that happen and work together. We had a great run in 2000. It always seems whenever we get in front of a large audience, people react to that - people really go off. It's something I'd love to do to prove to people, we're still right there, we're still kicking ass, still doing our thing.

How is the relationship with Kittie and Artemis Records?
[Laughing] Interesting, definitely…to say the least. They really haven't given us much support at all for this album - both Oracle and Safe. I don't know what to make of it anymore. They're pretty much a non-entity in what's going on. We're doing everything ourselves nowadays. We really don't see much of them anymore - kinda makes me wonder where they are and what's going on. I think we'll see what happens. We've had a great run so far. I don't think the albums got the support that they needed. Ultimately, we had to go and tour for a year-and-a half.

It looks like The Brick Works in Chico is your final stop for this tour? Do you dig playing in Chico?
Yeah! It's been great every time we've been through. We try to make it a point to come through at least once every six or seven months to remind people we're still touring, working hard, playing metal. And it's something we'll be doing for a long time, and they won't be disappointed. Come to the show, it's gonna be different than the last time.

Bookmark: