fuck yeah, kathleen hanna!: Archive

fuck yeah, kathleen hanna!

June 2012

9 posts

May 2012

47 posts

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Julie Ruin and The Julie Ruin are two separate tags on this blog, as they are two separate music projects. Julie Ruin is used for all things about Kathleen Hanna’s solo project, where she called herself Julie Ruin. The Julie Ruin is used for all things relating to her new five-piece band called The Julie Ruin. I hope this will clear up any confusion when searching for posts. Thank you!

As part of The Kathleen Hanna Project, Sini was... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: [Laughs] I guess that I am a feminist artist and people should know who I am because I am a feminist artist. I’ve made some good work and made some shitty work. If you’re interested in music and feminist art then you should at least know a little bit about what I’ve done so that you can, put it in your pipe and smoke it! [laughs]. Posted on Sunday, February 12th,...

For part of the film they filmed The Kathleen... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Yeah I was really sick that night, it was a hard night for me. INTERVIEWER: What did you make of it all? To have a tribute to someone when they’re still very much … KATHLEEN HANNA: Alive! [laughs]. It was really, really weird. I will say there was some great things that happened at the show. There was this guy Dan Fishback who did a performance with a bunch of other guys of...

How did you feel watching back what people close... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: You know I haven’t seen much more of it than you’ve seen. I saw the same thing that they used on Kickstarter pretty much. The thing that I was most shocked about was what Kathi from Bikini Kill (and now The Julie Ruin band) said, this really sweet thing: she’s a perfect front person. I never knew she thought that. That’s not the kind of thing you say to somebody’s face. The...

I wanted to ask you about the film The Punk... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: I think talking about why I haven’t performed in so long was really difficult. Singing is my life and I haven’t done it publically for a really long time. While that has been something that I have needed to have a break from it’s also something that I have missed quite a bit. It’s really hard. I really touch on some personal stuff in it that I have never talked about publicly...

Having studied interior design then how would you... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Oh my home! [laughs]. I kind of describe it as it’s like ‘The Little Match Girl’, that fairy tale but, it’s like if she had some money [laughs]. If she married someone rich this is what her house would look like. I like bright colours. I like to be comfortable. I think my house is cosy and comfy. We always have people staying with us and lots of life and energy in our house. My...

On The Punk Singer Kickstarter, I noticed it said... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: [Laughs] Yes that is true. I’m trying to do set design now. I’ve done that for a couple of shows. I went to school for it after I left Le Tigre. I still have one class I need to do to get my Associates degree. I’m really interested in a lot of design. I don’t know if I’m the kind of person that is going to be able to work with rich people to design their apartments and stuff. I...

Is there any ways in particular that he [Adam] has... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: In every way imaginable! I really can’t say enough about the guy. I think he is … [pauses] have you ever seen that movie Evita with Madonna in it? INTERVIEWER: I actually haven’t. KATHLEEN HANNA: There’s this scene in Evita and she is dying, it’s super sad. Her husband is standing over her (she’s playing Eva Peron) and she sings this really beautiful song. The lyrics are like:...

Oh I truly know that feeling. Me and my guy hang... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Yeah and it lasts! How crazy! It’s really amazing when you realise, wow! This just keeps getting better. I keep waiting for it to suck [laughs]. There’s been bad times for sure but you just think, when is this going to start sucking? and it hasn’t happened. Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

I also read that in high school as a teen you were... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Oh wow! Well, I’m obsessed with watching downtown performance artists such as Neal Medlyn and Erin Markey who is just a fucking genius! Cole Escola. I just really like seeing performance art in New York and just all of the great things that are going on here. That’s what I’m obsessed with more than going to shows. Shows for me became work because I toured so much that walking...

In an interview from late 1998 you said that in... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: You know I don’t really have an overall vision for it. I think that’s the exciting thing. I am trying to be a little bit more present in the moment as much as a total control freak stress out person can be. I’m not trying to save the world at the moment. I’m not trying to make this thing to please other people. I’m really making something I want to make with my friends and I’m...

Do you revise your lyrics much? →

KATHLEEN HANNA: I totally have to work at my lyrics. The way that I usually work is that I have some kind of music going on like a loop I’ve made or something that the band plays and I just start singing what feels natural to me or I try a more formal idea that I’ve always wanted to try. Sometimes the lyrics just start coming. A lot of times though, I sing nonsense for a long time. There was a...

I was checking out people’s interpretations of... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Oh I didn’t know about that. Oh that is so scary! I’m not going to look at that but … you’re obviously going to tell me [laughs]. INTERVIEWER: Some of the ideas people had about the meaning of the song were: it’s your alter egos battling; it’s a song about two people looking at the same thing differently; it’s a response to the ‘Kill Rock Stars’ song Nofx wrote… KATHLEEN HANNA:...

What’s one of the biggest challenges to you in... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: I guess lyrics are a little bit hard for me actually. I’m really trying to be a lot less literal. I’m a very literal person … actually it’s not that I’m a literal person … I don’t even know what kind of person I am — I’m probably a total jerk. When I started making music I really saw a space for women singing about feminism in a really obvious way, because no one was doing...

Yeah I sure do. Silence and space in music can be... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Yeah! When she plays there’s something really sexy about her playing. I know that might sound gross [laughs]. It just makes my hips shake and makes me feel ecstatic and happy. It’s a really visceral experience. I worked with her at Rock Camp for Girls, it’s where we met. We were coaching a band of girls between the ages of 11 and 17. Watching her work with them and having such a...

I’m so excited to hear the new record! I’ve been... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Oh my god Sara is such a good guitar player! I love rockabilly guitar and I love surf guitar, love it! She does too. She’s somebody that is very technically good and a total distortion pedal and amp nerd, I say that with total admiration and respect. She knows when not to play and when to play. Do you know what I mean? Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

I read a comment from you that said there are... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Well I hope there is. There is this one sing called, ‘Oh Come On’. I was really thinking about Lydia Lunch when we started writing. We wrote a song that was like if Lydia Lunch was singing a Stooges song. I was really proud of it and loved the practice tape of it. It just sounded like the way she clips stuff at the end of phrases and yet sounds like she’s doing this total wild...

You’ve recorded 19 tracks for the record so far.... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Over the course of the past year or so. We got together once a week and played. Kathi wasn’t in the band at first because she lived in [Washington] D.C. We learned a bunch of the songs off The Julie Ruin record because I’d always wanted to perform those songs live. Le Tigre actually started because Johanna [Fateman] from Le Tigre and I were trying to learn the songs from the...

“I think that the thing that you’re meant to do just finds you and you’re kind of...”

– Kathleen Hanna, in an interview at CollapseBoard.com in 2012

I’ve put together different bands over the years... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Well you have to do it the way you want to do it. That’s the whole thing. I’ve had time periods where all I have wanted to do was be on stage. Now I just want to hole up and write. We’ve written so many songs for this album because I just want to keep writing. I took a really long break from writing almost anything and then all of sudden I was really excited about it again. In Le...

I read a blog post that Kenny did recently saying... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: [Laughs] It’s totally true. My big start in show biz was when I was nine years old and me and my best friend Maureen Gaines went to the auditions for our grade school play Annie. At the time I sang Christmas carols at home by myself but I didn’t think I could actually sing, I had nothing to gauge it next to. She really wanted to go to the audition and I was her best friend so she...

What’s it like to be creating with her [Kathi]... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: It’s really exciting for me to play music with her again! It all just came together. When I needed a break and I told the members of Le Tigre (which was the band after Bikini Kill), I was like, guys I just really need a break, I’ve been touring since I was 19. I was in my 30s and I needed to just be in one place. I was really, really, really in love with my boyfriend, who I am...

In a more recent interview you mentioned that with... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Yeah [laughs]. It’s really funny because we’ve been recording the record for so long. We’ve been doing it really slowly partially because we’re all involved in a lot of other projects. Carmine [Covelli] our drummer was actually in that Neal Medlyn production, Wicked Clown Love. Kenny [Mellman] our keyboardist works constantly with other downtown artists making music, he is in a...

When did you realise you [Bikini Kill] were... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: After I moved. I was like, I just have to get out of Olympia. My best friend and her girlfriend Kaia (who you mentioned before) they lived in North Carolina and I hadn’t been around my best friend Tammy for years because she had moved out of Olympia. The band had taken over my life and we just saw each other whenever I was in the town that she lived in. I always vowed that if it...

When you started your project The Julie Ruin in... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: It was really a way for me to not go crazy. It seemed like my band [Bikini Kill] was deteriorating, no one wanted to practice. My life was my band. In my 20s that is all I cared about. I didn’t care about anything else. If I ever had a boyfriend or a girlfriend who ever got in the way of my band, they were gone. If I ever had a friend who I felt got in the way of my band, they...

I’ve read in an older interview once that you said... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: I think when I went to college. I was away from my parents and away from some negative influences in my life. I was able to start making stuff. I was excited about it and I kind of couldn’t stop. It was almost as if I felt like I had been dead. I started college when I was 17. It really felt like I had been walking through my life numb up until I left for college. It was like I...

I saw a preview of The Punk Singer film about you... →

The Punk Singer: link KATHLEEN HANNA: That’s a good question. I mean I want to lie really bad right now [laughs]. I want to say that I never think about things like that and that I always live in the present but, I just donated all of my archival stuff to the Riot Grrrl collection at NYU so I would be a complete liar if I said, no I didn’t want to leave my mark. For me, the kind of mark that I...

I recently did an interview with Kate Nash, she... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Wow! I mean it’s a whole different world now. We have American Idol and that new ‘the whole package’ idea where it’s like you have to be a model first and a singer second. I think there’s a whole other way to keep women from playing music, it’s to say that you have to look a certain way. The thing is there is always some kind of thing! Getting back to the Babes In Toyland show,...

Didn’t you go to a Babes In Toyland concert and... →

KATHLEEN HANNA: Yeah definitely! I was with Tobi [Vail] and Kathi [Wilcox] from Bikini Kill too. We really bonded on the fact that we had just experienced such an amazing, life-changing thing. That show! Kat Bjellend played guitar better than Greg Sage from The Wipers! She was wearing a tiny dress with a huge bow in her hair and she looked so beautiful and so fucked up; she was doing the...

Did you ever intend on being a musician? →

KATHLEEN HANNA: No! [laughs] not at all. Growing up I just thought musicians were men. I thought, oh I could be like Linda Ronstadt or Olivia Newton-John, who were kind of my idols. I knew there were female singers but I never thought I could be a singer that people wanted to listen to. I didn’t have that kind of confidence. Posted on Sunday, February 12th, 2012 at CollapseBoard.com

How did you learn to sing? →

KATHLEEN HANNA: I took lessons when I was in high school because I joined a musical theatre troupe but I got kicked out because I got caught smoking. I probably took three lessons and didn’t really learn much. I just sang at school when I could, I was in a choir. I joined a church so I could be in a choir. I just always enjoyed it since I was a tiny kid. It just made me feel good. Posted...

How does singing make you feel? →

KATHLEEN HANNA: It’s different. Right now I’m at the end of finishing our [The Julie Ruin] album and I can’t watch singing on TV, I’m having a weird relationship with it, it feels like work right now. I’m stressed out because I have a little bit of a sore throat and I’m like, am I going to be able to get these songs done? Will they sound how I want them to sound? In general, I find singing just...