Kittie is an all-female metal band from London, Ontario that has been putting out heavy metal albums for over 10 years. The band returned to Bakersfield to play at Narducci’s Café on April 28.
The drummer for Kittie, Mercedes Lander, said being an all-girl metal band isn’t really that big of a deal to them.
“We didn’t set out to be an all-female band,” said Lander. “We had a guy in the band for three years.”
The last time they played in Bakersfield was in 2007 and since then they’ve put out two more albums and went through some lineup changes. Bassist, Trish Doan, left the band in 2008 and rejoined in March.
“It’s great having her back in the band,” said Lander.
Kittie was originally supposed to play at The Underground at the Golden State Hall but due to unknown reasons, the concert was moved to Narducci’s Cafe the day before the concert.
Because there was already a concert for Moonshine Bandits scheduled for Narducci’s that night, they combined the concerts and nine bands ended up performing.
Moonshine is a rap group and that night they had a country band opening for them, which created a really diverse audience, but it was obvious who was there for the metal bands and who wasn’t.
Leslie Dickey, who was there to see Kittie and their opener The Agonist, thought the whole show was odd.
“It was a strange transition going from metal, to country, to cover music, to rockish hip hop, then back to metal,” said Dickey. “Definitely weird seeing the mash-up.”
The show was set up in a way that neither of the headliners closed the show. All of Kittie’s opening acts went on first, Moonshine Bandits’ openers followed, and then the headlining acts went on. Unfortunately Moonshine Bandits performed before Kittie, and after they were done about half of the audience left. Even though most of the people left after Moonshine Bandits, Kittie performed to an elated audience. They played mostly new songs, but appeased the audience with classics like “Spit” and “Run Like Hell.”
The closing band, locals Meditated Assault, only played to an audience of about 25 people, but they received four requests from everyone to keep playing after they finished and gladly obliged.