Clawing Their Way to the Top

Everything that could have gone wrong for this Canadian metal band, did -- but the girls of Kittie continue to do everything right.

Words by Sean Flinn - Photos by Dan Shoenblum | November 26, 2003 An axe to grind: Kittie's Morgan Lander shreds and shrieks at the House of Blues in Anahiem, Calif. Buy Kittie's music Visit Kittie's Web site Visit Kittie's current label: Artemis Records SPECIAL: Click here to listen to this interview and selected tracks from Kittie's albums on Choler's Radio Futurismo! Amusingly ironic Kittie story #1: On the night that we're scheduled to interview the band, Kittie is playing the House of Blues in Anaheim, California in the dead center of Downtown Disney, an elaborate mish-mash of upscale restaurants and boutiques a stone's throw from the Magic Kingdom. We are in the mouse's house, and we are here to see a death metal band. Later on, I'll cackle gleefully whenever the doors to the club open like a hell mouth and a blast of furious riffing explodes into the milling crowd of unsuspecting tourists gathered in the club's placid theme-restaurant. After what Kittie lead signer / songwriter Morgan Lander later tells me about the band's recent past, I take the scene as a poignant metaphor for what Kittie has been going through over the past few years: No matter how hard you try, you can not silence this band. Amusingly ironic Kittie story # 2: For a band whose relationship with its label has all but totally collapsed, Kittie runs itself like a well-oiled machine. The folks at the band's merchandising table take great pains to head backstage and locate someone for us to speak to - and then, while we're standing around expecting a tour manager, we're greeted enthusiastically by Morgan herself, who bounds out from backstage to shake hands and lead us back to the Kittie dressing room, taking a few seconds to first greet and hug fans who squeal in delighted recognition. We are in the mouse' s house, we are here to see a death metal band and they're insanely courteous. The vibe from this meeting will flavor the rest of the night: not only are Morgan and the rest of the band extremely friendly and welcoming to us, but they extend the same warmth to their fans - even when said fans are busy bashing one another with kidney punches as they stomp through the pit. It's that vibe - that laser-beam focus on keeping things well-organized, positive and more about "us" instead of "me" that has earned Kittie a rabid fan base that endures despite the fact that the band has not released an album in 2 years. The fans are well rewarded for their dedication: Kittie puts on a brutal, audience-inclusive live show whose set list includes songs from its two, progressively ferocious albums (1999's Spit and 2001's Oracle) as well as a liberal dousing of new tracks. It's the new stuff that really elevates the show; the newer tracks, which, due to a bitter lawsuit between the band and Artemis Records, may take years to see official release, exhibit a band that's evolved light years beyond its already impressive debut. Their chops are mightier; their song structure is more complex. Their sense of dynamics and their willingness to experiment with harmony highlight an epic growth in the band's performance and songwriting skills. And while the group has long been both victimized and advantaged by the diminished expectations of critics, labels and peers, it's clear that the band does not hold the bar low for itself. During our half-hour or so with Morgan, we discovered a woman - and a band - that's earned its stripes on all fronts, whether fighting legal battles with its label or winning over skeptics who earlier dismissed the group as a pre-fab gimmick whose biggest selling point were its age (the band began when Morgan and her sister, drummer Mercedes Lander, were in high school) and its collective gender (although original guitarist Fallow Bowman, now fronting Amphibious Assault, was replaced by the band's very male guitar tech, Jeff Phillips). Take it as a warning: mess with the Kittie, and you'll get the claws. Sean Flinn: So, first off - I don't know how far this question is going to get, but let's dig right into the controversy. Morgan Lander: Ah! What controversy is that? There have been a couple, actually. I've seen press releases coming through as you've torn a trail across the United States. But the first one was about your relationship with Artemis Records falling apart. Ah yes. How much can you talk about that? Well, I can pretty much say what is in the press release already: it's very apparent that they didn't have the band's success and potential in their interests. This has been going on for quite some time now - the poor relationship - but just recently (as of April) we decided to speak up about it because of the whole audit thing with Garth Richardson [who produced both of Kittie's albums, ed.]. He's involved with the suit as well. What was the deal with the audit? Was it just royalties not being paid to him or ? Well they actually didn't pay him. At all? No. We recorded Oracle in May of 2001, and only this year did he get paid. He was like, "OK, they haven't paid me yet," so the audit happened. And it ended up that there were some glaring things there in terms of where the money was spent and how many times they charged us for recoupable things and moneys in royalties owed, which totaled up to $900,000. Holy crap. Yeah, this is a 100% legit auditing company. They do this for major corporations all across the United States. They [Artemis} deny it, but you can't deny a professional going in a doing the audit. I mean, it's real. So yeah. There haven't been a lot of things - support, both financially and emotionally, for the band. We haven't been allowed to do videos, we haven't been allowed to open up for bands, we haven't been allowed to do movie soundtracks Check out these pictures of Kittie in Action at the House of Blues in Anaheim, Calif. on Nov. 17, 2003: Morgan backstage #1 Morgan backstage #2 Morgan backstage #3 Morgan and yours truly Morgan and her axe Morgan in red Morgan points to the godz Jen bends over backwards A two-headed Jen Jen rocks the crowd Jen in shadow Which is weird, because Spit seemed to do so well when it first came out, that you'd think they would have been trying to build on that success with Oracle. I know, but I mean midway through the year that Spit was released was when they pulled all of the tour support and all of the other things. Did they ever give you any reasons for that or ? No. It was just yanked out from under us. And we've been paying out of our own pockets ever since for touring and stuff like that, to let the fans know that we're still alive, we're still out there and we're still making music. It's just unfortunate, because the money that we're making should actually be our money, not going back into the band. You should be making a living on that. Exactly, and it's just we're sort of, I guess, eating ourselves in a way. We're making this money that we have to put back into the band. Just kind of cannibalizing it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, that leads perfectly into my next question -- a lot of artists seem to be trying to make a go of it on their own. They've been building up a certain reputation and then leaving their labels for exactly the same reasons that you guys are leaving Artemis. Well, we're hoping to leave Artemis. Do you foresee, at some point, signing with another label, or do you think that you're going to start releasing music on your own, or using the Website more to put stuff out? That's a good question. As it stands, right now we pretty much are our own label and have been doing things ourselves in terms of our publicists, booking our own tours, doing merchandising. We own all of our publishing and that sort of thing, so it is pretty much that we're running a label out of our home except for the distribution. So that could very well be a possibility. But, on the other hand, it would be interesting to see what could be done with this band from a major label point of view - or a bigger label point of view. I mean, we've only ever known being on a small label like Artemis, so the potential could be absolutely huge, which would be amazing. Has there been any interest from the major labels at all? Well, we can't really talk to anybody, but we've heard some things. That's promising at least. It's cool. That's not the problem. Getting signed to another label, I think, would be fairly easy it's just getting free of that first one that's tough. Well, I think you're probably in good company, suing your label to get released from a contract. I'm sure there're many people who have done it. And also, the band Boston is on our label as well and they're currently in a lawsuit of sorts for the same thing, but for $4 million. So it's a lot larger. Obviously, Boston is a very big band, and they're very financially successful, and they released their last album on Artemis and it did, like, 20,000 copies? They were promised a lot of things, as we were, and they didn't end up following through. | Next Page >