MUSIC PREVIEW – Feed the Kitty still on the prowl
Feed the Kitty releases Goin’ Country April 22. Photo by Mozy Mosanko
Local band debuts new record at Saint Rocke
Two thousand eight was a rough year for Jed Mottley and Jack Maher. Although their band, Feed The Kitty, had released their self-titled debut album, they had no promotion or distribution, no money, and an unnerving notion that a return to a generic desk jobs would soon become a part of their future.
“We really found ourselves on some trying and downtrodden times,” says Maher, Feed The Kitty’s singer and guitarist. “I remember one day, Jed looking at me and asking, ‘Do you want to play every night, so we can keep doing this?’ I said yes, and it hasn’t changed since then.”
With a strict six, occasionally seven, day playing schedule — one that Feed The Kitty has maintained for seven years now – the trio has created and mastered a formula through which Maher, Mottley, and drummer Jon Shumway can make a consistent living playing their music.
“I like to call it the backdoor approach to getting into the music industry,” says Maher. “We feed the creative and writing process with the money that we get from doing a gig every night; six nights a week. Everything gets funneled back into the project and each show we play financially allows us to continue to make our music.”
While Feed The Kitty’s constant playing schedule continues to perpetuate their existence and ability to create, it has also helped in garnering a devoted fan base throughout the South Bay. With regular weekly slots at Redondo’s HT Grill, Mickie Finnz, and a range of intermittent shows at renowned venues like The Viper Room, the band not only clocked over 308 shows in 2014, but has had the convenient advantage of being able to try out new material in front of a responsive and avid audience nightly; one that played an integral role in the curation of the band’s new album, Goin’ Country.
“We’ve played in every single city in Southern California, and no other community has embraced us as much as the South Bay has,” says Feed The Kitty bassist Jed Mottley. “They love their live music and they are real picky about it. We started playing some Johnny Cash at a couple of our weekly nights, and people liked it, so we started writing our own original country songs and it was nice to have this audience to be able to play these songs to and get a reaction from them. A lot of these songs are on the record because our local fans fell in love with them.”
Over the course of the last year, and relying heavily on their incomparable schooling and experience working on their first album with well-known producer Baraka (Weezer, Sting), Feed The Kitty has meticulously crafted and self-produced a well-polished, country-inspired collection of songs that not only gives way to the trio’s diverse sound, but also demonstrated their innate ability to build a well-rounded record.
“Having had the opportunity to watch and learn Baraka’s process on tracks like, ‘Free,’ and ‘DNA,’ we kind of took it from there and I did it ourselves,” says Mottley. “I mean if some record label isn’t going to help you, then you’re going to do it yourself, and I think doing this record all on our own, it allowed for added creativity to the process.”
Feed The Kitty will celebrate the release of their second CD “Goin’ Country” at their upcoming CD Release Party at Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach, Wednesday, April 22nd at 8 p.m.