In Conversation: Kat Moss of Scowl

Most bands don't think about the vulnerability of growing up in public until it's too late. Scowl's Kat Moss is getting ahead of the curve.

Kat Moss of Scowl live at Disturbin’ the Peace Festival. Baltimore, MD. January 28, 2023. Photo by Sean Reilly.

In the four years since releasing their self-titled EP, Scowl have shown a sense of fearlessness and exploration that have made them one of hardcore’s most talked-about bands. But along with that newfound attention comes a persistent feeling of scrutiny, and while singer Kat Moss has been dealing with much of it in private, she recently made headlines for issuing a sharp and very public rebuke of some of the more egregious criticism—and specifically, the clearly gendered accusations of Scowl being “industry plants.” It was, to be frank, a liberating read for many of us.

I realized that this moment was a special one, not only for Scowl—who have been going from strength to strength while evolving in real time—but also for Kat, who truly seems to be stepping into her own voice as a public figure in the hardcore scene and beyond. When I asked her to join me for a conversation, she was more than ready to discuss all of it.

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I guess I want to start with something I thought was really cute [laughs]. It was this story you told once about how you knew you wanted to be different when you were young, but when you were eleven years old, you walked past a Hot Topic because you were literally too scared to walk in.

KAT: Yeah, that’s a thing! That’s real life.

So I’m a little curious about the fear. What was in your head growing up that would make something like that scary?

KAT: Just to give a little perspective, I was born in 1997. I lived in a small, kind of suburban, but very lower-middle class, very white city, and it was going through a lot of changes. There was a constant growth and suburban flowering that was happening around me that I didn’t really think about too much because that was just what I was growing up around. So we had a really big mall open when I was young, and I remember going when I was in fifth or sixth grade, which was right at the time when you start getting a little self-aware of the idea that this was a place to go—that you went and hung out at the mall.

I had a lot of shame and fear around expressing myself growing up, and I don’t think that was necessarily because of my family. I think I was just intimidated by being different, and that had more to do with the culture and community I was growing up in. There weren't any punks. There were scene kids and there were emo kids, and to me, that was my punk. Oh, don’t quote that please, that is so… [laughs]. 

Why?

KAT: I mean, to be honest, that was just the generation.

OK, hang on. I’ll interrupt you for one second here because, first of all, that is the absolute least self-conscious thing you’ll probably say today! The fact is that one of the reasons why relaunching Anti-Matter has been so great for me is because of our generational divide. Like, Anti-Matter is technically older than you [laughs]. 

KAT: That’s so exciting though. To feel like I get to be a part of this. 

It is! And I think that’s the point. There’s no shame in that story at all. You grew up at a certain time and in a certain place, and this is what was happening. We don’t all get born in the gutter with a copy of Victim in Pain [laughs].

KAT: Yeah. I mean, at the time, what culminated as the epitome of “punk culture” at that time, it was Hot Topic, Warped Tour, scene kids. It was that. Those were the kids in middle school that I felt like I kind of resonated with, but also everyone had their own little thing. We barely bonded over music. Everyone knew we should stick together, but it wasn’t an exact fit. It was just the Island of Misfit Toys that we could get because we didn’t have anything else like that in our community. Like, I have a little bit of jealousy for kids who grew up with actual punks and hardcore kids who were really about it, kids who had shows around them. I didn’t have that. That wasn’t a thing for me.

So yeah, Hot Topic was scary to me because I was young and I didn’t feel like I was emulating what I wanted to emulate. I mean, I didn’t even know what I wanted to emulate yet. When you’re eleven, you have no fucking clue. Truly no idea. You’re just one foot in this really awkward, shameful puberty era and another foot in, like, “I just figured out what eyeliner is” [laughs]. So Hot Topic scared the shit out of me—not because I was afraid of those people, but because I was afraid of those people thinking I wasn’t the real deal. Because I didn’t feel it yet, and I wanted to fit in with them. You want to fit in with the people you see yourself in so bad. That was so important to me, appealing to the people who were in my Island of Misfit Toys. So why would I walk into a Hot Topic unless I was going to stun, you know? [laughs] 

It’s weird because now that I’m talking about it, I’m thinking about myself as an adult. Of course, this is a much different level of my life, but I remember when I started a band saying that I really wanted all these visual aspects of my performance to be very intentional and perfected, but it’s like, this is your first fucking band. You can’t do that. You have to fall on your face a million times—at least in my experience. I’m still in my first band, falling on my face.

Scowl live at The Roxy, Los Angeles, CA. December 10, 2022. Photo by Michael Dubin.

Most of us get a few shots at falling on our face in relative privacy before we have that band that people respond to. But your trajectory as a first band has been where you’re sort of growing up in public. How do you feel like you’re navigating that?

KAT: Probably a lot better than I think, because a lot of times I just think I’m a wreck of insecurity or, like, a sponge of negativity. But I’d like to think I have a really good centered mindset because, to be frank with you, I’ve spent a lot of years in therapy and a lot of years doing self-care work long before I really had much of a social life. In my teenage years, I was in and out of hospitals. I was not well. So I feel like going into my twenties, I kind of had this little folder of like, “Oh. I know how to take care of myself!” [laughs]. But yeah, going into this, it all just happened so fast and there wasn’t really a mental preparation for it because with the hardcore scene, I just didn’t expect to have that many eyes on me or being perceived that much. I just expected to play some shows with my friends.

I really appreciate you recognizing the fact that there is a little sense of growing up in front of it and growing up with such an audience. I started the band when I was like 20 or 21. You don’t have much figured out. You’re just stepping into the shoes of what you might think is adulthood. So there is a level of growing up and growing into myself and growing into being a woman here, and finding my balance while doing that with a platform is scary because I don’t want to mess it up. Of course, there’s a large part of me that’s like, “I don’t give a fuck what people think,” but right now my job is playing music, and what people think is important for the sake of that.

I mean, sure, we’re punk. We like to say we don’t care what anybody says. But we internalize that shit just like anybody else.

KAT: We do! We fucking do! And I’m tired of acting cool about getting pissed off or getting irritated or having my feelings hurt. I’m sorry. I’m sensitive. And that doesn’t change whether I have 50 followers on Instagram or I have this fucking number I can’t comprehend, right? I don’t care about that. I’m still this person. And that’s scary, too. I feel like I grew up realizing and knowing deep down that I’m a sensitive person.

I don’t wanna go here yet, but part of it is also being a sensitive girl in a van full of boys, and being in that environment, you have to learn to really pick and choose the way you say things and where your boundaries are and how to protect yourself—but without coming off like a bitch, or coming off like a baby. Because they don’t understand the perspective you’re in and the kind of shit you’re dealing with.

The reason I even think about this, honestly, is because this is something I went through. I remember specifically when I joined Shelter in 1992, they were, at that point, one of the biggest bands in the hardcore scene. It was the first time I understood what it meant to grow up in public. Because I only lasted a year and a half before I quit, and part of that was because I was tired of looking over my shoulder. I felt like people were wanting me to fuck up—even over stupid things. Like, the Hare Krishnas don’t eat onions and garlic, so every time I had a slice of pizza, I felt like I was looking over my shoulder [laughs].

KAT: Dude, it’s crazy how much I relate to that. Obviously, it’s not the exact same experience, but I have to protect myself so much in so many ways, and be hypervigilant in so many ways, I could have never prepared myself for it. And I’m not a fucking celebrity. We’re regular people. But even in our culture, unfortunately, there’s still that pressure of those eyes on you and that part is hard. I just have to accept that there are people that are going to perceive me as this thing that I’m not. And because of that I have to protect myself. 

I realized that last year with some weird interactions where I had people overstepping boundaries that I would assume were common sense. I don’t really go into detail or talk about this stuff too much because I never want it to come off like I am complaining about this life being so hard, when in reality I have a lot of privilege and I’ve garnered a lot of experiences that not everyone gets to have. So there’s kind of that level of, well, “Don’t be ungrateful, Kat.” But at the same time, I feel like I should be allowed to be upset about people taking pictures of me through a window or following me into a dressing room or breaking into venues during a soundcheck. Like, things that are clearly overstepping boundaries and that are going to make me feel a little bit unsafe. But I feel like I have this internalized fear about it all, where I think if I talk about this, people are going to think I’m complaining for attention and that “It’s just so hard to be me!” [laughs]. I hope this all makes sense.

It makes me think of this thing from last year when we were on tour with My Chemical Romance. We were hanging out with Frank Iero one day, and I don’t remember what we were talking about, but he was complaining about something and then he just sort of stopped himself and said, “Oh, is this starting to sound like my diamond slippers are too tight?”

KAT: That’s amazing! [laughs] Just that phrase alone. It’s so hard because it’s like, there is a level where I should be allowed to feel like my boundaries are crossed or feel almost disrespected in certain easy, but I have to be careful with who I communicate those feelings to because I don’t know if everyone has my best interest in mind when they’re understand and consuming me, if that makes sense.

I am constantly like, how am I making an effort to honor myself and honor the people who love me and, like, help me eat? Because that’s the reality of it. And how do I honor them in a way that the relationship is equal but the boundaries are there? And do they truly see me for me if they’re going to be alienated by me expressing myself, which is what I’ve done this entire time?

I mean, I can give you where I’ve landed on this question, and this took many, many, many years to get here, but here it is: I cannot control how people feel.

KAT: Fuck no. Hell no [laughs]. Like, the power to completely own “I have no control over others”—I’ve been working on that for so long. And I probably will my whole life because that’s just the world we live in. That’s just what it is. We are constantly concerned with other people, whether it’s a really personal relationship or it’s a parasocial fan relationship. That’s a specific dichotomy that not everyone has an understanding of. And you can’t prepare yourself for it. It goes back to the beginning of the conversation: There was no preparing my brain and my mental health and emotions for being perceived on this level. Because I thought I was just going to be playing shows to my friends. I mean, hopefully a sold-out room at a Scowl show is friends, right? But it’s a lot different than the people I’m hanging out with every day, getting coffee with, people I have in my contacts. It’s very different.

In hearing you speak—and even in your lyrics, kind of—I feel like there’s this push/pull between “wanting to make myself feel small” and “I ain’t afraid to take up space.”

KAT: You’re calling me out! [laughs] I feel like that’s my little plight. I had this conversation with my sister recently. I love her so much. She’s my very best friend, and she partially raised me in a lot of ways. We are always cheering each other on. I was telling her about how a lot of my life feels like this dream come true—like an actual dream come true, I would have never expected it. I had kind of accepted that my life would be like, maybe I would just get to work at a grocery store for a long time, make some money and be comfortable, right? So this is very leftfield, what I’m doing now. But at the same time, there’s a lot of personal stuff and a lot of things that I’m experiencing that feel like a living nightmare. But through therapy, for a long time, I always had the black-and-white thinking. It was always the ultimate fantasized good and then this really dark hellish-shit bad, and then trying to meet in the middle with that. So it’s funny that you’re calling me out on that, because I want so badly to step into my confidence and fully embrace myself. And I think I’m getting there in a healthy way. But ego terrifies me. It actually terrifies me.

As a gay man, the whole concept of wanting to make myself feel small is very relatable. When you’re in the closet, it’s basically like, “Don’t pay attention to me. Nothing to see here!” 

KAT: So many people are so offended by you literally just existing. And that’s so relatable, bro. Like, you just want to do your thing. Just let me vibe. It’s nobody else’s problem. At the end of the day, everyone is allowed to celebrate themselves a little. So why should you not be allowed to as a gay man? Because it’s unsafe? Because there are people who genuinely don’t understand? And when you actually start to think about the way you’ve lived your life and how it was first constructed for you, it makes you grieve. It makes you grieve over the things you’ve missed out on and the feelings you’ve missed out on and the joy. You missed the experiences that you had to sell yourself short on because you had to be hypervigilant of the world you’re living in. And that’s really relatable to me in my queer identity and in being a woman. I always feel like, on one hand, I’m so angry about the bullshit I’ve had to put up with because of my identity, but on the other hand, I’m still making space for it. I’m like, “Oh no, it’s OK. If you don’t want to hear about it, it’s OK.” The amount of lyrics and artistic choices I’ve decided not to make because, in the back of mind, I’ve had to think that most of our fans, by default, are going to be straight white men… I have to think like that.

I have stories that I’ve never told about both my experience as a queer person in hardcore and as a person of color in hardcore that I have literally never said in public because I still feel this need to protect other people.

KAT: The amount of stress and emotional back-breaking that we’ve done… I will never live your experience. I respect it. And I understand that you’ve had to do so much overarching just to feel comfortable in a room—not to throw off the vibe or take it there. It’s hard because I love this scene and I love this world and I love these people, but there’s also an aspect that makes me really fucking angry because it still perpetuates certain things. And I hate the fact that sometimes I will stand in a room and be like, “I feel at home here because I love these people. I love this so much. I live and breathe this. But I’m not going to bring my experience up and fucking ruin the vibes.” That sucks.

Scowl live at Brooklyn Steel. Brooklyn, NY. March 24, 2023. Photo by Michael Dubin.

At this stage in my life, I feel like my love for this community is so strong and well-established that I feel like I need to mess the vibe up sometimes [laughs].

KAT: Yeah, I really fuck with that! To be honest, this is a recent thing for me. I have been very polite and would pride myself on being polite and biting my tongue and being silent almost to a level where it was like, “Damn, girl. The internalized patriarchy is getting you! You’re proud to be quiet? What’s that about? That’s not who you are [laughs].” But there’s a moment where I kind of snapped a little. I was like, that’s not who I fucking am. At the same time, when you do snap, that fear and shame is so heavy. Even though I know I did the right thing for myself, it’s so heavy that you feel like something is fucking wrong with me. It feels like I’m the only person going through this, but I know I’m not.

When I think about the first iteration of Anti-Matter, to me, it was very coded. I was going through a lot of things. I wasn’t out. I was struggling. So I was sort of trying to communicate things through other people. That was how I’d know I wasn’t the only person going through it. To this day, I feel like what I want to do here is allow ourselves to say some of these things if for no other reason than to open a conversation that might allow someone else to feel that, and walk through that door.

KAT: I really appreciate that. Because being able to be this honest and speak about this stuff, that doesn’t happen. A lot of the time I’m preparing myself for what I’m going to have to say or the direction I want to take it. And sometimes, when I do get a little vulnerable in a space like this, I feel so much shame again. To be honest, those things are tied for me. That’s a Kat thing—vulnerability and shame! She’s dealing with it [laughs]. It’s just really relevant in my life right now. And I really appreciate you creating a space to do that, for me to feel comfortable to talk about that. Because I’m going to talk about it one way or another, whether it’s in lyrics, whether it’s in my art, whether I make a big fucking Instagram post about it.

I focus so hard on articulating myself, and at the end of the day, I’m still constantly contradicting myself and the words I say and the things I feel—and that’s really human. Unfortunately, I can’t expect myself to be this perfectly articulate woman… I’m still discovering myself. There’s so much of my identity that I’m still figuring out. I’m still learning who in my life is safe, who will protect that identity, and who I can be vulnerable with. 

It’s also important to find those people that allow you to evolve. Because I feel like hardcore can be this weird paradox of “screaming for change” and being stubborn as hell [laughs].

KAT: It’s so frustrating. Speaking from a younger version of myself who came into the hardcore scene and felt entirely like, “Oh my God, I found my place. I found my people. I found utopia.” I was desperate for that for so long and I had no idea until I found it. Like, this is it. But it’s not utopia. That’s OK! It’s the closest I’ve found. Things are going to be flawed. 

I still feel very strongly that my criticism of hardcore comes from a place of love. I’m skeptical of people who think everything is perfect. It can always be better. And to be fair, where the scene is right now, where we are right now, it’s amazing. It’s one of the reasons I was inspired to start publishing again. Because thirty years ago, for one thing, it was really difficult to find a band that wasn’t just four straight white men. That’s not the case right now at all.

KAT: That perspective brings me back to reality a little. I have a friend who has been going to shows at Gilman since the early 2000s or the late ‘90s. She’s older than me. And she told me recently, “My only example of high femininity in hardcore was Anthony [Anzaldo] from Ceremony.” That’s amazing and also, like, wow. I never thought about how badly young people might need that. I’m not trying to give myself a big pat on the back, but it puts things into perspective to realize that that’s not something that’s been happening for a long time. And it’s cool that there’s comfort now in this community to express that, and to create spaces to celebrate those things.

Not even just high femininity, but celebrate BIPOC people. The fact that there are bands like Zulu right now who are an all-Black band that are heavily celebrating that and heavily speaking about the shit they experience both structurally and culturally… It's amazing that we can have that and that people are making space for that. That is very exciting. All my anger and resentment and little mental bullshit kind of dissipates when I recognize that the work is being done. We are putting the work in. I don’t need to be this jaded [laughs].

I had a joke when I started playing with Thursday that we only have one less gay member than Pansy Division now [laughs]. But it’s like, in my mind, I was actually kind of celebrating that a band in Thursday’s position can be two-fifths gay—that would have been inconceivable to me at some point in hardcore.

KAT: Let’s fucking go! [laughs] I think about that so much with Scowl. When we started, I was like, “We only have two straight members. Let’s go!” [laughs] I love that, and while I’ve never really made that a part of our identity necessarily, it just felt like a personal win, because I never expected my first band to have other queer people in it. This is an experience I don’t really talk about, but my whole teen years, I didn’t date boys. I dated girls. I remember the fear of the young teenage queer experience and all the things I went through. And as soon as I stepped into hardcore, there was a level where I was like, “Oh my God, these people don’t know and I’m not sure how to navigate that.” So when Scowl started and we were like the Spider-Man meme—“wait, we’re queer, this is cool!”—it was really exciting and special to me because my queer identity is a large part of me, but I don’t know how to speak on that yet. Of course, I’m talking about it now and it’s fun, but that’s a whole thing.

I think people expect us to be these fully-formed queer people when we tell them who we are. But it takes time to figure it out.

KAT: Yes. I’m still figuring it out.

And one of the beautiful things about queerness is that my queerness is different from yours. Everyone just has to work it out.

KAT: It’s a very personal experience in that way. As my life has progressed and I’ve operated through different subcultures and communities, I feel like my queerness is always kind of this little secret—and it doesn’t have to be a secret, I’m proud of it, but I never know when is the time to communicate about it or highlight it. And hearing myself talk about it, I’m recognizing that’s how I am with all these vulnerable aspects of myself, whether it’s an identity thing, whether it’s the experience of being a woman, whether it’s being queer. It’s just my vulnerability. My emotional vulnerability is something that I’m just getting my sea legs with talking about or highlighting, and it’s really scary.

The other side of vulnerability is the fear that something will happen or the fear that you are opening a door to something you can’t walk back from. What do you think that something is when you feel that tightness in your chest from being vulnerable? What’s that tightness trying to protect you from?

KAT: Rejection, for sure. Rejection is the first answer in my brain because, you know, we’ve all been bullied. And now it’s on a greater scale with being in a touring band and having so many eyes on me. It’s like, what if I do something for the sake of art that feels rightfully vulnerable but my bandmates don’t like. The label doesn’t like it. My managers don’t like it. My fanbase doesn’t like it. Social media or this or that… It creates this really isolating, very lonely experience. That’s kind of the source of it, where I’m recognizing my low-key fear of rejection and vulnerability is inhabiting my loneliness in this experience.

That’s something I’ve talked to my friends about, where I’m like, I’m so lonely in this. And I’m sad for myself because that’s not who I am. It’s OK if that’s what I am right now and I have to experience that and that’s just this chapter of life—because I respect chapters of life. I respect that plight of, “OK, I’m going through this right now. I’m gonna get through it. It’s gonna be OK. I’m gonna become more wise and appreciative of this thing or that thing,” right? But this one definitely feels a little bit like the highest peak, the highest Mount Everest I’ve had to climb—just settling into that fear and becoming comfortable with it. That was a lot, sorry [laughs].

No! Honestly, I think that’s something a lot of people in bands can relate to. I’ve been in that place. With Texas is the Reason, there was a literal correlation between the bigger we got and the amount of time I spent in my bunk with the curtains drawn [laughs].

KAT: That is so relatable. Like, the way I am starved for independence… Because this way of life is, like, you don’t get time alone. You literally do not get time alone in a band. When you’re that busy and when you start experiencing that thing of where this tour ends and you fly to start another tour, and you’re not home, the only time alone is when you’re in the bathroom. Like, you have got to be fucking kidding me! It’s so crazy though, because while I’m saying never get your alone time, you’re also so lonely. And the weird thing is that all the success and growth and attention makes you feel more alone. That’s something I’m still trying to figure out in this experience. So my biggest goal and my biggest priority in life is taking care of myself and finding joy in everything, and maybe this part is kind of hippy-dippy, but constantly grounding myself with nature because that’s the thing that makes me feel the most OK. Going on walks has literally changed my life. I feel so corny or silly talking about it.

I don’t want to obsess with highlighting this, but when I did that Instagram post thing, I didn’t expect it to have this kind of wave. But when I talked to the band before I did it, I was like, “Hey, can I post this? Because I know this reflects not only on me, but on all of you guys, so are you comfortable with this?” And I read it to them and they were like, “That was beautiful. Absolutely. We support you.” And there was this moment where I was like, You actually see me. You see me for me. This is why I’m with you guys. I feel safe. I feel seen. And that’s really cool. I want to strive to keep that up. And it also goes back to falling on my face a couple of times to figure it out.

Kat Moss of Scowl live at Disturbin’ the Peace Festival. Baltimore, MD. January 28, 2023. Photo by Sean Reilly.

One of my favorite early lyrics is the one that goes, “My point of existence measured only in green”—something like that, from “Retail Hell.” I love that line. But you wrote that very early in the band’s existence, and now two years later, you’re in a place where you’re navigating that friction between “doing the band because I love it” and “making the band financially viable enough so I can still do it.” 

KAT: This is the hardest because I was such a punk when I got into this stuff. I would be lying if there wasn’t a little nineteen-year-old Kat screaming, “You fucking sold out!” [laughs] But at the same time, nineteen-year-old Kat didn’t have a grip on a lot of things. I respect and I love her and I hold space for her, you know? And she would also fucking faint if she knew half the shit this band has done and that I have done for myself. But it is really challenging to find that balance of being in a band, doing what you love, and reaching that goal of quitting my day job—and taking that one by scraping by. You know what it’s like.

Absolutely no one is getting rich.

KAT: No one. It’s about doing what you love. My whole life, having a passion and spending time with that passion has always been a priority. So if I wake up tomorrow and playing music or being in a band or being in Scowl is no longer my passion, if it doesn’t make me happy or doesn’t fuel my fire, I will drop it. I’ll go do something else. I’ll find something else. I won’t do that to myself. I really value doing something that makes me happy and that is valuable to me. Not necessarily by money, but valuable to me with my time. So yeah, when I was able to quit my groceries job and quit my coffee job to go on tour, I was freaking out—I was stoked. And when I figured out that touring full-time is really hard financially when you’re in a hardcore band, I was like, yeah, no shit, but at least I love this. But there’s a point when you’re like, “I’m kind of tired of stealing from Whole Foods. I’m tired of not having the means to rest, to take care of myself, and to also indulge a little,” right? There are things I want to do for myself.

It goes back to the question of self-worth.

KAT: Yes, yes. That’s another thing is recognizing when to say no to things has a large correlation to your self-worth as a band, especially. And when we recognized that we weren’t in starvation mode anymore and that we didn’t have to say yes to every opportunity and that it didn’t feel like a loss if we said no, it was a very light-bulb moment. I think that’s a very underrated moment in a band’s career. And then there are those moments where the once in a lifetime things happen and you’re like, I have to do this because this will not only be so crazy and ridiculous, but oh my God, I can tell my mom I was in a Taco Bell commercial [laughs]. Like, that’s so stupid! But my parents are actually proud.

The thing about the Taco Bell thing specifically, not that I want to spend a bunch of time talking about this, but I have given so much money to Taco Bell. Do you know how much Taco Bell I’ve eaten in my life? Like, the fact that they were like, “Hey, we want to put on for you, and we want to pay some of your bills”—like, yes, what the fuck? [laughs]

I get that. New End Original licensed a song to Coca-Cola in 2003 and while I was trying to figure out how I felt about it, it was kind of hard to get self-righteous because… do you even understand how much Diet Coke I drink? [laughs]

KAT: I’d be surprised if the amount of money I’ve given to Taco Bell since I was a little kid will ever be reached in payback—like, that will never happen. But we live in this capitalist country. I don’t like it, but I have to fucking exist here. I have to pay bills. I have to pay rent. I have to pay. It doesn’t matter. Like, I’m a fucking person. I’m not trying to be rich, and if I had the ability to be rich, you goddamn know I’d be opening an all-ages venue! If this Taco Bell stuff makes me a billionaire, we are opening all-ages venues [laughs]. I love this scene. I love this community. The table is not all for me. If I’m eating, everybody eats. And that’s the thing when it boils down to it. I need to feed myself. I need to take care of myself. I want to be able to play music and sing and write music until I’m 80, you know? I don’t want to stop doing that. But I have to be able to pay some of my bills doing it for that to be possible. And if I make enough where I have extra lying around, I would have to be extremely jaded and burnt to not give back to the community that has literally created this for me.

I think that’s where I get a little sensitive. Because it hurts my feelings that people assume the worst. But at the same time, when I hear myself say that, I understand why people would assume the worst. Look at the world we live in. Look at people with platforms and people with power who have betrayed us so many times. There are a lot of bands that were my favorite fucking bands and it turned out the singer’s a scumbag. It’s betrayal in its truest form. So while it hurts to feel like people don’t trust me or might believe that I have my priorities in a good place, I understand that experience and I understand why people would not trust in that person on that pedestal.

Ultimately, you just have to follow your own moral compass, hope you’re doing the right thing, take feedback, and not let it control you when you get it.

KAT: Exactly. The bottom line of it all is recognizing that I’m growing up, and I’m growing up with a lot of people paying attention, and that’s OK. I accept that as my experience, but I’m also allowed to find my footing in it. There’s nothing wrong with being sensitive or vulnerable, but my largest point of validation has to come from within. And the people that are around me can’t be people who are always telling me what I want to hear. They can’t be people that are always saying yes to me. I value so much having people around me who have known me for a long time. They know who I am. They see me for me. They recognize me for who I am, and they’re going to tell me when I’m not being true to myself or when they feel like…

…when you’re fucking up.

KAT: Yes! I know I’m always gonna fuck up a little. That’s human. And I need to be around people who are also willing to hear it from me. That’s something I’ve been visiting a lot. But going back to the lyric you brought up—“My point of existence measured only in green”—it’s funny that I wrote that at the time about my grocery store job, and three years later, it’s still very relevant in my life. I can be doing what pumps the blood in my veins and what makes me happy, but I still have to make a living, and that kind of sucks sometimes! And the truth is, that can be just as bleak; that can be just as dreary as scanning groceries. So the bottom line is that I have to find joy in everything.

All right, I have one more thing that I wanted to ask, and I want you to take your time with it for a minute. I was wondering if you can share an experience or a moment in your life when you felt the most aligned with who you believe that you are. A moment where you had no psychological or emotional dissonance and everything just felt right. It doesn’t have to be a band thing.

KAT: To me, my immediate thought does have to do with being in the band and performing, and then my other answer has nothing to do with that. On the band side, we’ve all played a lot of shows. Some shows are like, “OK, I did it.” Other times, on the rare occasion—or hopefully rare occasion—you come off stage and you’re like, “That fucking sucked and I hated that, glad it’s over.” But you’ve also played shows where there was magic in the room. You couldn’t see or touch it, but it was there. That is very, very special. And whether it was five people in the room or 5,000 people, it was magic. It’s a very internal experience. That’s the moment when I feel most truly like myself and aligned. No ego, no insecurities, no fear, nothing. Just truly centered and right, kind of like a Zen moment.

It’s the same feeling I have if I go out on a sunny day and I lay in the grass. I close my eyes and I meditate. I love meditating. But those two things, it’s the same exact feeling. And it’s crazy because the venues for the experience are so wildly different. I mean, I don’t want to jump to an answer, but that is the moment I feel that way. I think that, for personal reasons, I just never gave myself glimpses of that growing up. I never truly allowed myself that, or had a safe environment to experience that. So I’m building that for myself now. I wish I had more creative words to say about it, but it’s magic. It’s not like, “Oh, the energy in the room was great. That was a good show.” It’s like, no. Everything else disappeared. No makeup, no outfit, no hair, no fucking like material bullshit, just the feeling. That’s all that exists in that moment, and trying to capture that feeling is what I now live for.

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