Back in March we talked about Kittie starting up, and doing extremely well with, an IndieGoGo campaign that would fund a documentary and book to celebrate the band's 20th anniversary. Crazy! Then over the weekend, co-founder of the group Morgan Lander sat down with London Groove Machine to talk about the project and a whole slew of other topics regarding the group. She spoke on the status of the group currently and why she feels as though there just isn't enough money in touring and recording to make it a full-time thing anymore.
"The status of Kittie is kind of complicated. The last full tour that we did was summer of 2012. However, we did do one show last year in Toronto. Right now we’re sort of … I don’t want to say we’re on hiatus, because we technically are still talking about things, working on things, thinking about potential shows, ideas for the future. I guess, to put it plainly, it came to a point where doing the band full-time became too much financially, especially touring in the States. There just isn’t enough demand or money for us to support ourselves fully with the band. We haven’t broken up or anything like that. It’s just we decided that focusing on other career choices were equally as important at this time."
She got pissed off, and rightfully so, about the Internet slamming her sister and drummer for the group Mercedes Lander moonlighting as a real estate agent.
"I work at the head office at (a chain of fitness clubs). I’m in marketing, which is cool. (It’s) a place where you can move up in the world, and I certainly have marketing and PR experience, so that’s where I have my eyes focused. I’m not, like, telling people to do push-ups and stuff in the clubs [laughs]. It’s fine by me. I feel like I can apply a lot of the experience that I’ve had in dealing with people and booking shows and doing our own managing for the last few years. We all have jobs or whatever, and to me it’s not that big of a deal. I feel bad for my sister, because she went and got her real estate license and metal websites were like writing articles about her like, ‘Oh, this is so funny.’ It’s not funny. Everyone has a fucking job. Just because you have to go and find other sources (of income), does that make you a failure? Absolutely not."
What some big milestones in the band's career were.
"Oh boy. Obviously things like our first tour and getting signed were a big deal, but even then we didn’t really think it was gonna go as far as it did. When we originally signed that contract with NG, they pressed 8,000 copies of the CD, and that’s what we were gonna sell. We thought this would be over in a year and it’ll just sorta be a thing that we do after school and that was it. And then those 8,000 copies were gone in like the first fucking week. So it was like, ‘Oh shit. Time to fucking go.’ Obviously getting the tour with Slipknot, that was a big deal, because at the time they were a big buzz band. They weren’t nearly as big as they are now, but it was the beginning of absolute chaos."
Wow, let's just take a break here for a second and realize the group sold 8,000 in the first week for one of their first album. That's really good! It's easy to knock on the group on the Internet, but we're pretty sure they should be respected! Anyway, Lander also revealed future plans for the group, which included mention of the word "tour."
“As it stands right now, the main focus is getting all the things together for the book and the DVD. It’s gonna be a long process because there are a lot of people involved. Mark has to go and interview everyone, and that’s like ten people. He has to have enough time with them for them to be able to tell their story as well, so we’ll be focusing on that. With the release of the DVD and the book we’re hoping to do a box set. We’ve talked a little bit with the label about trying to re-release as a box set all of our back catalogue, so that might be in the works.
And then to coincide with that release obviously there’s gonna have to be some sort of promotional thing that goes along with it, whether that ends up being a band tour or a book signing tour or that sort of thing. There will be things that come along with that, but it’s too far out to tell right now. We’re gonna keep working on that, and if the right show or festival comes along we may look into that, but as it stands right now we want to focus on trying to get the stuff done and make those the best that they can possibly be.”
