Bitch fiddles around.

Bitch and The Exciting Conclusion play this Thursday, the 20th, at Iota Club & Cafe in Arlington.

What, exactly, makes the electric violin players so hot? When Ms. Cavanaugh first alerted me to the fact that lesbian rocker Bitch was coming into town, the first thing she mentioned was that instrument. Do little digging, though, and you’ll find out that there are so many other things that make Bitch cool.

She first rose to musical prominence with her old duo, Bitch and Animal. Since they broke up, musically and romantically, Bitch began seeing The L Word’s Daniela Sea and they formed Bitch’s current musical outfit, Bitch and The Exciting Conclusion. Bitch and Daniela are still very much in love, but the latter has been replaced in the outfit by Alaskan bassist/ keyboardist/ singer Gabriel Kubitz. This is getting confusing! But whatever the permutation, Bitch’s mix of rock and spoken word is the only good excuse you have for missing our party on Thursday. So if you’re not at Iota and you’re not at Solly’s, you’ve really mismanaged your evening.

Full interview beneath the fold.

The New Gay Zack: There is always a debate in the gay community about our usage of words like faggot and dyke, and whether we are reclaiming them or just furthering their influence. What were your reasons for going by the name Bitch?

Bitch: It’s in the tradition of my radical foremothers and forefather, reclaiming names and using them to mean something powerful and strong instead of dismissing. Actually, Animal and I came up with those names when we were in our twenties.

TNG: Do you ever get criticism for the name?

B: When people see me play and they understand my art, they get it. When I’m at a party and introduce myself that way, it puts people off. Lately at parties I’m just “B.”.

TNG: What about to your family? Do they call you Bitch?

B: To my family, yes. I was ten and half pounds when I was born, so my mom knew what she she was dealing with.

TNG: Your website says that your last album, “Make This/Break This,” is themed around the tension between urban and rural life. If this is an issue for you, how can you live in New York?

B: I’m just about to go on tour with the exciting conclusion, we just released an EP [B=TEC=Bitch and the Exciting Conclusion] which I’m excited about, you can hear three songs from it on our website, and a lot of it is a very “city” record. We made it in Winter time in Brooklyn. I’m about to go on tour and move into my RV. My tour ends in May and I’ll stay in the RV the rest of the summer. I hate being in the city in the summer, you can’t swim anywhere. Next week I move into the RV and I’m there to stay. I can drive and park somewhere and stay there for a few weeks. I can stay stay my moms house. I like to say home is where you park it.

TNG: How has it been breaking up with Animal? Was it hard to get used to playing solo?

B: Its been awesome. You have to change in life, try out new relationships, different callings in you soul. Especially as a creative person, you have to give yourself new circumstances to keep yourself alive. I feel like I’ve flourished being a solo artist recently. Coming into The Exciting Conclusion, its been, well… exciting.

TNG: And conclusive?

B: What?

TNG: I said ‘And conclusive,” it was a bad joke.

B: Oh [laughs, belatedly.]

TNG: But anyway- how has being with the new band affected your music?

B: I feel like my writing has gotten more personal, there’s more freedom I feel on stage with my band backing me up. That’s always been one of my goals, to exercise freedom on stage. The way Animal and I did it is different than this band, we were so physically connected that where ever one of us went, the other could follow. With my band we have such a momentous understanding between each other, there’s such an excitement that it carries through to the audience.

TNG: Cool. And just so I don’t embarrass myself later- Did you have a romantic connection to Animal and to Daniela Sea?

B: Both.

TNG: What was it like to go from dating one one musical partner to dating the other?

B: Daniela and started the band together, we’re still partners in love and life, but we both decided it would be good to have the band feeling without one of my lovers. She also didn’t wanna tour and live that whole life, so we replaced with her with Gabriel. Daniela was involved in the audition process, I play her every song as soon as I write it, but she’s not as involved as far as the touring aspect. Me and Gabe and Lee have taken it to a new level, I’m really liking it, its a deep platonic thing. It’s new for me.

TNG: Daniela is such a lesbian icon because of her role on “The L Word.” Does that show ever overshadow The Exciting Conclusion or your own music?

B: Yeah, the TV thing catapults it. I haven’t felt overshadowed by any means, Daniella and I have been together for six years, we were together when she was a street vagabond, but that whole relationship has definitely caused a shift in our relationship. She has a lot of personal engagements, we can’t be together as much, but if anything that shift has helped me appreciate my own type of celebrity that I’ve carved out for myself. I’m happy its not that mainstream, TV fan feeling, its very strange how people treat someone who’s on TV. I’ve been able to see it, when someone recognizes me there is a certain understanding that we’ve been in the same room together, we’ve had a common experience, whereas Daniela’s fans have a tendency to treat her like a monkey in a zoo. Its helped me understand the counterculture-ness of my career and the people that helped me be radical and great. Not that Daniela’s not, but the actual medium I’m in has helped me feel really grateful for my people.

TNG: I see that you used to be on Righteous Babe, Ani Difranco’s record label. I’m always interested in hearing lesbi
an musician’s professional opinion of Ani Difranco, since most lesbian musicians will in some way get compared to her. Is she someone to be exalted, or overcame? How much do you feel that you’re in her shadow?

B: I think in every single ways she’s someone to be completely respected, period. She was doing somethings so radical, but it’s something that punk musicians have been doing for years, never signing with labels. She’s embodying this really DIY aesthetic. There’s been a whole culture of it for years, she managed to take it to this level all because she’s a great artist and poet, and was always very outspoken about what she was doing. And she has the rabid fans, but I don’t see much difference between her and Fugazi. A lot of people look at her and say ’she did it on her own,’ but yeah, people have been doing it on their own for a long time. She’s one of my idols and always will be. Any shadow she’s cast over us is something we should bathe in.

TNG: On a similar note, you’re a lesbian musician with dreads. How do you keep yourself separate from the old stereotype of the gay girl musician with guitar-driven music?

B: For me, what makes me different is that my main instruments are electric violin and bass, so I don’t play regular acoustic guitar. I think I’ve always had a very rhythmic approach to my lyrics and stuff, the spoken word element of my song writing sets me apart, and my fashion sense. I’ve always been very bold and colorful, though now as I get a little older I am preferring the most comfortable clothes.I just need to be different because of my instrumentation and influences. I was raised with a tap dancer mother who was always singing showtunes and my dad was always listening to jazz. I didn’t have much perspective on folk music till sixteen or seventeen.

TNG: Then how’d you get into the electric violin? Was it hard to learn?

B: Its the same as an acoustic, you play it the same way. I started playing when I was four, I begged my parents after seeing an episode of Sesame Street where a cartoon character played fiddle. They signed me me up for classical lessons, I played classical till I was 18. When I met Animal I learned to bust out and play from my heart, not just what I was reading, It’s a difficult instrument, but I’ve played my whole life, it doesn’t seem that difficult. On our new CD I’m using it a lot, it sounds like the electric guitar because I have effects on it and stuff.

(At this point in the interview, I let Bitch know that the TNG vernal equinox party is the same day as her concert and I ask her if she would like to come. She say’s she’ll consider it. I’ll spare you an exact reproduction of our small talk. However, she does want me to mention the following:)

B: I just took my first pass at being a producer this winter, i produced a record of Ferron, the famous lesbian folk singer. She’s a legend, she’s our elder. She’s probably in her fifties, she had to deal with Warner Bros. in the eighties. I always thought her records were overproduced and missing the core of what her songs were, which is a great poet. It’s going to come out on our new label, a lot of people are playing on it. JD Samson, Ani, Indigo Girls, all the people playing are huge Ferron fans. Ani used to tour with her, we’re all playing on the record and were all really excited. I picked all the songs,a whole hour of music, and its definitely paying homage to one of our foremothers. TNG