KatieJane Garside

KatieJane Garside
Garside performing with Queen Adreena in London, 2005
Background information
Birth name	Katrina Jane Garside
Born	(1968-07-08) 8 July 1968 Buckrose, Yorkshire, England^[1]
Origin	London, England, U.K.
Genres	Alternative rock, alternative metal, noise rock, folk noir
Occupation(s)	Vocalist, lyricist, visual artist
Years active	1989–present
Labels	One Little Indian, Blanco y Negro, Rough Trade, Imperial, Deva, A&M
Associated acts	Daisy Chainsaw, Test Department, Queenadreena, Lalleshwari, Ruby Throat, Creaming Jesus

Katrina Jane Garside (born 8 July 1968), better known as KatieJane Garside, is a British singer-songwriter, visual artist and writer. Garside was originally known as the lead vocalist of indie noise rock band Daisy Chainsaw, which she formed in 1989 with guitarist Crispin Gray. After quitting the band in 1993 and going into seclusion, Garside re-emerged in 1999, forming Queen Adreena with Gray. Garside has written and released material under her band Ruby Throat, which is a collaboration with Chris Whittingham, since the early 2000s.

Garside has also worked in performance art, film and photography. In late 2007, her exhibition "Darling, they've found the body" was shown at WOOM in Birmingham, United Kingdom.^[2] She has previously exhibited, in 2005, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Queen Adreena also recorded their first live album there, Live at the ICA (2005). Throughout her musical career, Garside has become particularly known for her manic onstage behaviour and raucous live concerts.

Early life

Garside was born in Yorkshire, but has said that her parents "grew up all over the world", and that up until she was 17, she also lived in various countries with them.^[3] She spent much of her childhood years living on a yacht before moving to London in her early adulthood.^[4]

Music career

Garside formed Daisy Chainsaw in 1989 after responding to an advert in a newspaper by guitarist Crispin Gray.^[5] Bassist Richard Adams joined the band, along with Canadian drummer Vince Johnson. The group was well known for its wild stage performances, featuring Garside drilling doll heads onstage and drinking from baby bottles.^[5] Garside's look was described as a "Gothic street urchin image, complete with dead flowers meshed into her dreadlocked hair".^[5]

The band released Eleventeen in 1992, which would be their only full-length album before Garside left the band in 1993. The album spawned "Love Your Money", which was the band's most popular single; they performed the song live on British television show The Word in 1992. "Love Your Money" reached number 26 in the UK Singles Chart in February 1992.^[6]

The band toured the United Kingdom with Hole and Mudhoney to promote the album prior to its release. Hole frontwoman Courtney Love allegedly cited Garside as one of the "first true riot grrls" in 1991;^[7]^[8] Garside never associated herself with the movement, which was based in the Pacific Northwest of the USA.

Garside performing with Daisy Chainsaw, London, 1990

After Garside left Daisy Chainsaw, she disappeared from the public eye and music scene, going into seclusion. Due to her manic onstage histrionics and bizarre behavior in interviews, rumours circulated that Garside had fallen into mental illness.^[5] Despite the rumors, Garside was given a credit in the liner notes of the 1993 Frostbite album, Second Coming. She also collaborated with the industrial band Test Department in 1995 on their album Totality.^[9]

Garside reportedly moved to the Lake District in 1996,^[10] where she lived in the historical Rigg Beck, a notorious retreat for artists and bohemians that burnt down in July 2008.^[11] She had no intentions of returning to music until the late 1990s when former guitarist Crisipin Gray contacted her; in 1999, they formed Queen Adreena and released several albums over the course of the 2000s.

Garside's solo work includes a collection of home recordings called Lalleshwari / Lullabies in a Glasswilderness released in 2006. Complementing this release was a collection of short films made by Katiejane.

Garside also co-created the comic books Indigo Vertigo and Lesions in the Brain with artist Daniel Schaffer.

Most recently, KatieJane is collaborating with Chris Whittingham in the band Ruby Throat, a more ethereal, vocal based project. They had released three albums as of 2013. According to their Facebook, they began working on a new album in the beginning of 2013.^[12] In 2014 a new song, "Secret Fires", was released on the third Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions compilation Axels & Sockets.^[13] It was accounced on August 1, 2014 that Ruby Throat's fourth album will be called Baby Darling Toporo.^[14]

Her sister, Melanie Garside, also has a career in music, and was briefly the bass player for Queen Adreena.

Personal life

Little is known about Garside aside from her professional life; she has described herself as a recluse. "I could be anywhere, really, and it wouldn't make a lot of difference, so I don't know necessarily that much about the country that I was born in and that I've lived in,"^[3] she said in 2008. In 1993, after leaving Daisy Chainsaw, rumours circulated that Garside had fallen into mental illness. Garside reportedly moved to a house in the Lake District^[10] and was not heard from until 1999 when she formed Queen Adreena.

She currently lives on a boat named Iona^[15] with her husband Chris Wittingham^[16] and their children, Dylan and Io Leilani.^[16]^[17] The boat was damaged on 7 June 2012 during a storm.^[16]^[18] They repaired it and took part in Atlantic Rally for Cruisers annual transatlantic sailing event in December 2012^[12] during which they posted a series of radio logs on Facebook documenting their journey.^[17]^[19]^[20]^[21]^[22]

Discography

Daisy Chainsaw

LoveSickPleasure EP (Deva, 1991)
Pink Flower EP (1992)
Eleventeen (One Little Indian, 1992)

Queen Adreena

Taxidermy (Blanco y Negro, 2000)
Drink Me (Rough Trade, 2002)
The Butcher and the Butterfly (One Little Indian, 2005)
Live at the ICA (One Little Indian, 2005)
Ride A Cock Horse (Imperial, 2007)
Djin (Imperial, 2008)

Solo

Lalleshwari / Lullabies in a Glasswilderness (2005) (Boxset included an audio CD and a DVD. This version was limited to 300, with the first 100 being signed and numbered)
Lalleshwari / Lullabies in a Glass Wilderness (2006) (Version did not include a DVD but included two different tracks from the previous release)
Corps Electriques (2008) (Collaboration with Hector Zazou)

Ruby Throat

The Ventriloquist (2007) (Version limited to 500, signed and numbered)
Tour EP (2009) (Limited Edition handmade 5-track EP sold exclusively on their 2009 tour, including 2 photographs)
Out of a Black Cloud Came a Bird (2009) (Version limited to 500 number copies, including 10 fine art prints, 5 photographs and a personal effect)
O' Doubt O' Stars (2012) (34-page ribboned and hand assembled litho printed art book, 12 songs, 55 minutes, 500 numbered copies) and (Albums 1–10, handwritten cover, signed and numbered, KJG original handwritten lyrics of 1 of the 12 songs (these were used in making the finished artwork litho plates). There are only 10 of these in total, so they will go 1 song lyric sheet each with the first 10 albums, signed and numbered photo)

Collaborations

Creaming Jesus – Dead Time EP (1991)
Creaming Jesus – Guilt By Association (1992)
Frostbite – The Second Coming (1993)
The Sacred Sawdust Ring: The Greatest Show Of Truth (1994)
Test Dept – Totality 1 (1995)
Test Dept – Totality (1995)
Test Dept – Totality 1 & 2: The Mixes (1997)
Mínus – Halldór Laxness (2004)
Ghostigital – In Cod We Trust (2006)
Stories From The Moon – Stories From The Moon (2006)
Jeff Zentner – The Dying Days Of Summer (2009)

References