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Sensory overload is the bane of the Ladyfest attendee. Over the course of several days, despite your best intentions, it is inevitable that at some point during the numerous lineups of mostly up-and-coming artists, you're going to suppress a yawn. Or realize that maybe a few of the performers didn't make so much as a blip of an impression on your indie art-soaked brain. And then out of nowhere comes an act that jolts you out of your involuntary numbness until you are not only amazed that you've never heard of them, you're wondering why the hell they aren't playing on the main stage along with the guaranteed-to-pack-the-house bands like Amy Ray and the Butchies.
The Kitty Kill is one of those acts. After the Boston-based trio took the stage Friday, October 11, it was clear that not only were they the audience favorite among the groups that played that evening, but if they had been on the Echo Lounge's main stage they would've had no trouble rocking the house.
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The Kitty Kill
(left to right)
Jenn Dagger (bass, backing vocals),
Jen Chouinard (drums),
Sandrine Merhy (guitar, lead vocals)
pix by Cheryl Coward |
With Sandrine Merhy on guitar (and lead vocals), Jen Choinard on drums and Jenn Dagger on bass (and backing vocals), The Kitty Kill is an outfit of talented musicians who can belt out well-crafted melodic rock songs of insightful and sometimes caustic lyrics of the lovelorn. And that combination makes for one kick-ass live performance. Their seemingly upbeat catchy punk-influenced rhythms are actually laced with words that upon closer inspection tell stories of broken hearts and grrls on the outside looking in:
you can just forget everything you felt
everything i said to you
but i ripped up all that was yours
threw it all right out that door
realized you were just a lie
well now that i can look back at all that you've done yeah
well i regret spending time with you
i take it all back
i wish i'd never laid eyes on you
The three-year-old band is well known on Boston's live music scene. They came together to form The Kitty Kill when Merhy and Dagger's former band, Uncool Niece (is that a Dead Kennedys reference?) were looking for a drummer. Chouinard had been playing with another popular Boston band but left to pursue playing with another group. The three ladies were already friends due to their mutual admiration - they had been attending each other's shows for a while before Chouinard became bandless.
"I was playing in a band called Chelsea on Fire and I remember seeing them at the shows that I played," recounts Choiunard. "I just remember seeing them [Merhy and Dagger] in the background at one show and then I saw them at the next show. And the next show. They were big fans."
Soon after the former Chelsea on Fire drummer came into mix, they changed their name to their current moniker--a combination of something soft and hard according to Chouinard.
All three members began their musical training during childhood. Merhy, who went to Boston to attend Northeastern University, started off on piano.
"When I was 7 my parents started my sister and I on piano lessons," says the lead vocalist who hails from Brussels, Belgium. "I played piano for about 10 years and then in high school I really wanted to get a guitar. So I got one and that's when I started playing."
Dagger, who was raised in Scranton, Penn., also attended Northeastern. Her first instrument was a violin.
"I played the violin from when I was six into college and then I got into riot grrl music," she says. I felt then liked I needed to play a cool instrument so I started playing the bass. I was about 18 or 19. I wanted to be in a cool band. I had never listened to that kind of music when I was growing up in Pennsylvania and when I heard it I just wanted to be a part of it."
Choinard, a native of Chicopee in western Massachusetts, joined her first band as a teenager after learning how to play drums in an elementary school music program and a stint in drum and bugle corps. But her parents refused to buy her a drum set for years because they thought that drums were too loud.
"I've always wanted to play the drums," she says. "I finally got a drum set I was 15. I started playing in a band when I was around 17."
The trio's inspiration runs the gamut from Fugazi to Sleater-Kinney to another Boston-based band, Helicopter Helicopter. In between day jobs (that they'd quit in a millisecond if they were to receive backing from an indie label) and twice a week rehearsals, they've managed to garner a dedicated audience in the Boston area. They released their first album "Plastic" in 1999. They've also played Ladyfest East in New York City and Homo a Gogo in Olympia, Wash.
"It'd be cool to not have to work and go on tour," says Dagger. "None of use thinks that we're going to be millionaires like Britney Spears," she continues. The rigors of being a DIY indie artist does take its toll as Merhy listed all of the tasks they have to manage as an unsigned band: securing and paying for studio time, disc duplication, marketing and publicity, booking, the list goes on. All that plus nine-to-five jobs.
"We only have so many vacation days," says Chouinard, who called in sick a day in order to play at Ladyfest South.
Their upcoming album "Domesticated" is an impressive mix of their trademark feisty and unapologetic songs rounded out with Dagger's strong bass, Chouinard's intense drumming and Merhy's talented vocal stylings and guitar licks.
The only drawbacks: their songs are too short and they didn't play long enough at Ladyfest South. The audience wanted more. Much more. "Domesticated" drops on Nov. 8. Visit their web site and buy their CDs at: www.thekittykill.com
Cheryl Coward http://cherylcoward.com is a Chicago-based freelance writer and novelist. Her work has been published in such publications as the Chicago Tribune, the Village Voice, Essence and Black Enterprise.
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