It Ain't Easy Being a 'Bad-Assed' Woman Who Calls Herself That B-Word

EDGE: Do you ever get any blowback from your name?

Bitch: Some people have a really hard time embracing it. I understand and I have figured out my ways of disarming people because I'm not trying to retraumatize anyone. People have been traumatized in very real ways. Our friend, our enemy Mark Zuckerberg has been such a nightmare as Facebook algorithms have gotten smarter. They see the word as hate speech. When I put out my album I couldn't advertise anything in the metaverse. And yet, weirdly, in this new universe, I just texted my social media person this morning to see if Zuckerberg taking down the hate speech is going to be good for me.

I say this in an old version of the play, "You can say bitch all you want on TV, as long as you're insulting women. And then as soon as a feminist artist tries to take the tool of her oppression and turn it into the sound of her own liberation, she gets silenced." It's just classic.

EDGE: How did you go from being Karen from the suburbs of Michigan to Bitch, the indie musician?

Bitch: I was originally from the suburbs of Philadelphia, but we moved to Michigan when I was 11. I identify as being from Michigan and it's where the play is set. You have to come see the play. At least I hope you're going to come see it.

EDGE: Bitch please, I wouldn't miss it.

Bitch: Good! So I had played violin my entire life. When Animal and I met in acting school we started making music together. But we kind of thought of it as feminist theater. We were actors, thespians. We played one gig in Chicago after we graduated and we felt like we were on to something based on how people looked at us when we left the show. I literally quit my job the next day and we immediately moved to New York where we started the hustle. After a couple of years I invited some crazy person to live with us for free and she took over our lives. So we left her the lease and took off to Provincetown for the summer to play music. Ani DiFranco heard us and took us on tour. That launched our career. I've been doing it ever since.

EDGE: Would you call yourself a musician now?

Bitch: I remember the first time Animal and I got a piece of press when we were on tour with Ani. They called us a band, but we never thought of ourselves as that. We were doing performance art. But so much is about what other people say about you. I've always considered myself an artist, a performing artist, but I guess I was in the indie scene, though not quite rock. Animal and I were more in the folk world because we were touring with Ani a lot, but we never quite fit in no matter what genre we were placed in. We were always kind of the odd kids. And as you get older you appreciate that. I'm so fucking weird and I don't even care. It's so liberating.

EDGE: Why did you leave New York?

Bitch: I went through a very hard time in my career, which I go into in the play. It became hard to survive there. I was in a very stressful situation. My partner at the time had a log cabin in the middle of nowhere in Michigan and one day we just headed there. I didn't even tell anybody in New York. People would call and ask, "Hey what are you doing Tuesday?" and I'd say, "I won't be there." It took years for me to say that I actually left.

EDGE: Were you doing music in Michigan?

Bitch: I was there for three years and I was writing these songs; but I was in a hard place, not creatively, but in my outward facing life. When I was making "Bitchcraft" I thought I might just be making this for me and the squirrels.