I was a dog groomer. I delivered radiators; I was a photography producer. I typed classified ads for many years. It was my longest term job - years of typing classified ads while I was in bands.
Janet Weiss
This band has a weight to it. Our songs feel important to play... That was missing in my life without Sleater-Kinney.
With every record, with each band, I just try to make a song good. I'm not so much focusing on my technique. There are a million better drummers than me. I try to adapt to the songwriter; I try to adapt to the situation and retain my sort of melodic power. My goal is for the band to be good.
A band asked me to go on tour when I was 22 and asked me to play drums, and I taught myself so I could go on this trip with these people. The drums found me; I didn't find them. When I started playing, I realized how appropriate an instrument it was for me.
I feel like a part of my role being a musician and part of why I want to be a musician is to show women an alternative to sort of the cultural norms, the stereotypes of what we're supposed to be, demure and quiet and motherly.
Sleater-Kinney becomes bigger than the three of us. It pulls us along, in a way.
You don't hear it on the radio. There's something about the voices in Sleater-Kinney that's a little too challenging to ever be on the inside.
The advice I like to give to drummers is that there's no right or wrong way of playing the drums. I think the drumming community can be very antiquated and very stuck in the past of, like, this Neil Peart style, technical Guitar Center drum video kind of approach. That you need to have played for 15 years before you ever do anything worthwhile.
Just really be yourself, and if being yourself means you play two snare drums and nothing else, then play two snare drums and nothing else! Really figure out who you are and how you want your drums to feel because it's a very emotional instrument.
Don't get too caught up in the typical ideas of what makes a good drummer. Those things are sort of unattainable, and they're not always creatively your most useful things to know.
You can ride your bike to anywhere in Portland if you want to. I think there was a charming underdog mentality when I first moved here in the late '80s that is definitely gone. People acted more like underdogs, dressed more like underdogs.
I liken Sleater-Kinney to a freight train. It felt like this incredible, forward-moving, powerful energy.
