C r a c k i n g W e i s s
Interview by Chaia Milstein, a bass girl in SF.

Janet Weissshares a name with one of the main characters from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," and her beats rock hard. She currently drums for Portland-based Sleater-Kinney and Quasi, and is a graduate of Motorgoat and Junior High. She considers the term "background music" an insult; in about 90% of the pictures I've seen of her behind her kit, she drums with a big sweet smile on her face.

Though Sleater-Kinney has played the Bay Area at least twice since I moved to San Francisco, it took me until last fall to finally get off my tuchus and buy their newest CD, "Dig Me Out." When I heard Janet's drumming on the album, I cursed my hermit tendencies, got ahold of the latest from Quasi -"R&B Transmogrification"-and resolved to get out of the house more often. Then I got a chance to interview Janet. We talked about drums and women and music and stuff like that, plus other stuff. You know-stuff. Anyway, read the interview.

A Little Something Interesting



Born: Hollywood, CA

Current residence: Portland, OR

Favorite color: silver

Favorite food: sushi

Favorite book: "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Favorite movie: too many to choose from

Favorite TV show: "The Simpsons"

Favorite band: Built to Spill

Favorite drummer: "I just watched the Carpenter biography, and I just have to say that at this moment, [Karen] is definitely my favorite drummer."

Favorite actor: Robert De Niro

Favorite city: Portland!

Favorite country: Spain

Favorite shoes: "Yes! I think they're NaNa shoes. They're black, and they have a pretty round toe, and they have a seam that cuts at about the base of your toes. They're my favorite."

Write-in for 5th Beatle: me!



d-girl:Are drums your musical instrument of choice?

Janet: Yes.

d-girl: What about them appeals to you?

Janet: You can sit down... If you try to play several different instruments, at least for me anyway-I mean I played guitar and I played a few other sort of less significant-ish instruments, not very well, and I think that the drums were the first instruments that I felt like I fit right. It was just really obvious that that was going to be my instrument. Like right from the start. I guess because they're rhythmic and kind of melodic combined, and just fun, a lot of fun, and I kind of felt that I was good at them, which always helps to keep you interested.

d-girl:Definitely.

Janet: If you try something and you really suck, you're probably not going to want to do it for really long.

d-girl (okay, b-girl!): You know, I've been playing electric bass for about six or seven years on and off, and there are things that I like about it, but I didn't have that "fitting" experience until I picked up the upright, about a year ago. It was that "Oh, this is it! This is what it's about!" Was there a song or album or musician or somebody that made you want to start to play?

Janet: Actually, I got asked to go on tour with a band. I had never even played a sit-down kit before, and I had about two weeks to decide. I got their record and kind of tried to figure out most of the basic beats. I just went for it. I went on tour and was forced to play every night, which helped me get better out of fear of embarrassment.

d-girl: What band was it?

Janet: [laughing] I'm not going to tell you that.

d-girl: [also laughing] Ooookay.

Janet: Well, I'm not going to tell you because you're from San Francisco and a lot of people are going to know.

d-girl: Oh, okay.

Janet: My hidden past.

d-girl: We can keep that, you know, wherever it needs to stay. So...how long have you been playing?

Janet: I've been playing for 10 years.

D-girl: I was going to ask you what your learning process was like, but I guess the tour was pretty much a big part of it.

Janet: Yeah, it definitely involved, like, plateaus. I'd get better over a three- or four-month period and then kind of hit the wall and feel for a month that I wasn't really learning anything. All of a sudden I would think up all these new things to try. Sometimes taking a break and not playing for a week or two can make the creative process a little easier-because I'm always thinking about it, and I listen to music pretty constantly. But I can remember feeling frustrated at times because I wasn't learning as much as I had a month or so earlier.

D-girl: Did you take lessons?

Janet: No. Ever since I started, I've really been playing a lot. I play all the time; I'm in two bands, I was in three bands at one point. If I don't play for a while I get pretty stir crazy.

d-girl: Are you like a music theory-head?

Janet: No, not at all. I'm a complete learn-by-ear. I feel like my pitch is pretty good, and I can hear what notes are what, and it's all organic. I really don't know much theory at all.

d-girl: Do you have any favorite exercises that you do or anything?

Janet: On my last year of tour, I started getting cramps in my right hand, so I just warm up during the band before us now, just, like, drum on something, drum along to the band, and jump around a lot. If I'm kind of sweaty by the time I start, I'm going to be warm enough that I'm not going to get any kind of muscle cramps. It's pretty much like drumming along on something-a drum case or something. Pretty scientific-if those are the muscles that get cramps, you may as well do the activity that cramps them until they warm. That's what I figure. Some people have gotten carpal tunnel that I know, so they do more specific tendon exercises.

d-girl: So when you started, did you get support for drumming?

Janet: What do you mean?

d-girl: Did the people around you think it was okay? Well, I guess you got asked, so that was one thing...

Janet: Yeah, I did. San Francisco at the time was pretty supportive; all the musicians were really supportive of each other. Clubs and club owners were not very supportive of the bands, but there was a definite network of people playing, and everyone was really, really nice. Open.

d-girl: Cool.

Janet: It's kind of artsy and crazy, no one's very judgmental down there [in SF] at all, which is nice. A plus.

d-girl: Yeah. Definitely. So did anyone give you shit because you're female?

Janet: Only on tour.

d-girl: Wow.

Janet: Really. Although I think I remember playing The Starry Plough [a club in Berkeley] once and some guy was like, "Oh, you're pretty good for a girl." Even though I wasn't very good!

d-girl: [cracking up] God, I don't know what's worse!

Janet: I know, it's like people get so clouded, they can't watch and not see the girl playing.

d-girl: Yeah.

Janet: People don't really say that to me now. I would just laugh if they did. [both of us kind of quietly chuckle for a moment]

d-girl: So you don't really get those "duh" comments too much.

Janet: Not really. I don't get those now too much.

d-girl: That's good.

Janet: I mean, it's more like, dealing with the sound people is sort of interesting...you know, [they're] condescending and [they try to] make you feel like you don't know anything. I've been playing a long time so, for me, I'm tough enough to where I just don't take that, but for someone who's starting out, I have to feel that that would be really difficult. Someone telling you, "Oh no, you need to have a hole cut in the front of your drum head," you know. You need to be a good enough sound person to make it sound good without a hole. I don't run into too much discrimination.

D-girl: That's good.

Janet: Sound people and the press.

D-girl:You know, pretty much like every article that I've looked up on the Web about either Sleater-Kinney or Quasi is like, well, all the ones about Sleater-Kinney are all like, "This GIRL BAND, blah blah blah, this GIRL BAND, blah blah blah..."

Janet: Ha!

d-girl: It's like, please, can't you get past that?

Janet: Never will.

d-girl: Yeah. And then the ones about Quasi are about, like, your relationship with the other person in the band.

Janet: [laughs] I know, it's The Angle. [more general chuckles]

d-girl: Do you have any general thoughts about the state of women in music or when you started out?

Janet: Well, I think that there have always been really amazing women in music that haven't in most cases been in the mainstream. I guess now there's such a big deal being made about, you know, "WOMEN IN ROCK"... "LILITH FAIR." Whatever, that's just more examples of ...I don't really relate to those things. They haven't struck me, they don't inspire me, really.

d-girl:You mean the mainstream music or the attitudes?

Janet: The whole "Women in Rock," like when we [Sleater-Kinney] were in Europe, we got a lot of questions about the Spice Girls.

d-girl: No way!

Janet: There's nothing about that that relates to my musical tastes or my musical life at all. They're more of a pop-culture phenomenon, which is fine, I'm not against it or anything. But I don't think it's, like, forwarding the cause of women's advancements in any areas at all. It's hard to believe that anyone does think that. I don't think they think that. I'm just happy to be playing with some good musicians. That's what inspires me.

d-girl: How did you start playing with...wait, okay, so, this is a two-part question: How did you start playing in Sleater-Kinney, and also how did you start up Quasi?

Janet: I was listening to "Call the Doctor" all the time and then I heard that Sleater-Kinney needed a drummer, and I don't know why, I just said to a friend of mine who knew them, "Oh, you should tell them to call me," because we had played together before. And then Corin called me the next day and I'm like, "Why don't you come over and we'll just play, mess around. . ." I never left. We just started practicing, and then they had a date at CMJ, [and they said], "Well, come to CMJ, it'll be our trial." We just had the best time. We ended up writing all the songs for that record pretty quickly after that.

d-girl:Cool.

Janet: It was productive and fun and we all got along. It feels permanent, now, so it's great. Just great. And then Quasi, let's see, how did we...Sam and I used to play with this guy named Brad in Motorgoat, but then Brad kind of...moved back to San Francisco, let's put it that way, and Sam and I decided that we would play as a two-piece. We had already done a lot of recording at home , so we started playing as a two-piece and adding our friends to play with us at shows, and we would learn the songs that we had sort of taped and learn covers, and each show was different. And then we just sort of evolved into playing, the two of us, and writing songs just as a two-piece, and that's what we've been doing pretty much ever since.

©2001 Happy Mazza Media Co.

All rights reserved. No reprinting without permission



drummergirl thanks Janet and her publicist, Julie, for their time and terrificness!



Find out more about that Weiss chick:

Totally Janet http://home.earthlink.nrrrl/ As the title says . . .

Sleater-Kinney Media Empire http://www.napanet.net/~lina/sk. News, tour dates, words, pics, sounds, and more.